French E. Chadwick

The death of Rear-Admiral French Ensor Chadwick comes as a reminder of the extent to which the Spanish War has fallen back into distant history. To a good many Centurions it does not seem so very long ago since the fourth of July, 1898, when the news arrived of the fleet’s great victory off Santiago. But the world has moved since then—not least of all, the United States—and, with the great European conflict a matter of yesterday, the victories of the Spanish War take their place in this generation’s mind and memory as Chapultepec and Cerro-Gordo must have done for the generation which saw the ending of the Civil War.

Chadwick had been a useful officer, of the best American type, many years before the Spanish War began. He was Naval Attaché at London in the six years after 1882; indeed, he was really our Naval Observer for the whole of Europe; and of his services in that capacity the Secretary of the Navy wrote as an achievement “of extraordinary ability and judgment,” which had exerted “a lasting influence on naval development in this country.[”] But he was very far from the popular conception of a “land seaman.” It is the testimony of close naval associates that he was “one of the ablest officers in our navy”; that he “never lacked moral or physical courage in anything that he undertook”; that, while he “was one of the first of our naval officers to study strategy, tactics, and the science of war and apply the principles to naval operations at sea,” he was also considered in the navy, “one of the best handlers of a ship.” His handling of the New York on the night of July 3, 1898, after the Battle of Santiago, is a tradition of our navy; for Chadwick then performed one of the most daring feats of seamanship ever attempted with a high-powered man of war—ramming the stern of the Spanish cruiser Colon three times, thereby shoving that vessel well up onto a ledge and preventing it from sinking—this being done at night and within fifty feet of shore, and after the commanding Admiral had considered it impracticable.

When the Maine was blown up in Havana harbor, Chadwick was one of the naval court of inquiry which reported, in that question of still undetermined circumstance and unsettled controversy, that the ship had been destroyed by a submarine mine. With Admiral Sampson’s appointment to command the Atlantic Squadron, Chadwick became his chief of staff, and, being at a distant point with his commander for a conference with General Shatter when Cervera’s fleet came out, he did not participate in the Battle of Santiago. It was inevitable that Chadwick, being just what he was, should take a hand when Schley’s adherents claimed for that officer the merit of the victory, and when the subsequent controversy brought out the facts as to Schley’s conduct in the action. Chadwick declared, in conversation with a correspondent, that so long as Schley “remains silent under these charges, I will not take his hand or meet him socially.” The talk was confidential, but the confidence was betrayed and it was published. It drew upon Chadwick the Secretary of the Navy’s formal reprimand, but nothing more.

Admiral Chadwick was retired for age in 1906, after twenty-five years of shore duty and fifteen years at sea. But he was far from superannuated; it was then that he began his active work as writer and reviewer, publishing half a dozen books and scoring notably in his Relations of the United States and Spain and his Diplomacy and the Spanish-American War. In his books as in his conversation, he was a stubborn controversialist and on some large questions he was altogether in the wrong. But his memory, with the Club and with the country which he served, will rest on his own achievements.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1920 Century Association Yearbook