There were stirring events in and around the Gulf of Mexico during the year 1861--some of them stirring the naval sailors in one way and some in another. The trouble began there very early in the year--on January 12th, in fact, when Colonel Lomax and Major W. H. Chase, with some Florida and Alabama troops, surrounded the navy yard at Pensacola and compelled Commodore James Armstrong to surrender it to the Confederates. It was very well known that an attack impended a long time before it actually happened, but no effort was made by any one in the yard to preserve any of the government property for government use. Armstrong was not, indeed, disloyal, but he was very properly suspended from the navy for five years for his failure at Pensacola. The executive officer under him, Commander Ebenezer Farrand, and Lieut. Francis B. Renshaw had already decided to join the Confederate forces, and it should not be forgotten that they were among the men willing to serve the Confederates while still wearing the uniform of the government. Renshaw himself, while in national uniform, had the old flag hauled down and the Confederate flag sent up in its place. Farrand did still worse. He refused to allow the powder to be removed from the magazine when a loyal officer, Commander Henry Walke, proposed removing it. He kept it in the magazine unguarded in order that the Confederates might get it. When he could do no more for the Confederates by remaining in the pay of the government, he sent in his resignation. [Illustration: Surrender of the Navy Yard at Pensacola. _From a painting by Admiral Walke._] Meantime the soldiers in charge of the three forts that guarded the harbor had been concentrated at Fort Pickens on the 10th by Lieut. Adam J. Slemmer, U. S. A. At that time Commander Henry Walke was in Pensacola, in command of the transport _Supply_. She was _en route_ to Vera Cruz with stores for the government ships lying there. On January 9th, Walke was ordered by Commodore Armstrong to assist Slemmer in concentrating the troops and army supplies at Fort Pickens. Walke at once started to obey this order; but when about to engage in doing so, another order came under which he was to merely give some food to the men already in Fort Pickens and then return to the navy yard, leaving the army forces scattered among the three forts about the harbor. Walke, in his “Reminiscences,” says Farrand “hood-winked” the commodore into issuing that order. Walke showed it to Slemmer, and Slemmer, in despair, said if that order was obeyed, no further effort to hold the forts should be made. But Walke at once determined to disobey the order in so far as he must in order to concentrate the army forces at Fort Pickens.