Stockton (ROBERT FIELD an American naval)

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

ROBERT FIELD, an American naval officer; born in Princeton, N. J., Aug. 20, 1795; entered the navy in 1810; was promoted lieutenant in 1814; engaged in the war with Tripoli in 1814-1815; went to Africa in 1821 in command of the "Erie," where he secured the territory forming the present republic of Liberia; was sent against the pirates and slavers in the West Indies in the fall of the same year; and served as flag-officer in the Mediterranean under Preble in 1838-1839. He was one of the earliest advocates of a steam navy; drew the plans for the steam sloop of war "Princeton," the explosion of one of whose guns at Washington in 1844 caused the death of the secretaries of war and the navy; was actively interested in the construction of the Delaware and Raritan canal; and during the Mexican War, as commander of the naval forces on the Pacific, took possession of California in the name of the United States. On his return in 1850 he resigned his commission; entered politics; and in 1851 was elected to the United States Senate, where he introduced and put through a bill for the abolition of flogging in the navy, and also urged the adoption of measures for coast defense. In 1853, however, he retired from the Senate, and devoted himself to the development of the Delaware and Raritan canal. He died in Princeton, N. J., Oct. 7, 1866. an American author; born in Rochester, librarian; he did also much reviewing N. Y., Aug. 7, 1843; studied (without graduating) at the University of California; was for some time an actor; for seven years special traveling correspondent of the San Francisco "Chronicle," visiting nearly every quarter of the globe, including five years in the South Seas; from 1885 to 1887 Professor of English Literature at Notre Dame College, Indiana; and from 1889 at the Catholic University of America. Among his publications are: "South Sea Idylls" (1873); "Summer Cruising in the South Seas" (1874); "Mashallah" (1880); "The Lepers of Molokai" (1885); "Lazy Letters from Low Latitudes" (1894); "Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska" (1899); "Hither and Yon"; "The Dream Lady"; etc. He died April 24, 1909.