Henry Hungerford Marmaduke – Captain, Confederate States of America Navy

Confederate Veteran Magazine Vol XXXIII January 1925 No. 1, pg. 25

Captain Henry Hungerford Marmaduke, doubtless the last of those who participated in the first battle of ironclads, died in Washington, D. C., on November 14, 1924, at the age of eighty two years. Interment was in Arlington National Cemetery, with full military honors.

Captain Marmaduke was born in Saline County, Missouri, the son of M. M.  Marmaduke, Governor of Missouri in 1844; and his elder brother, John S. Marmaduke, was elected governor of Missouri in 1884. He was the last of the family of six brothers and three sisters and had never married.

He left Missouri at the age of sixteen to enter the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, and when the war came on in 1861, he became a midshipman in the Confederate navy, serving first with the fleet at New Orleans. When the Merrimac was fitted out as the ironclad Virginia, he was assigned to that vessel as a gunner, and directed a gun crew of fourteen men during that historic combat with the Monitor in   Hampton Roads; and his bravery in this encounter while seriously wounded was officially recognized by Admiral Buchanan. Later he was assigned to the Shenandoah, and then to the Albemarle, until it was destroyed by Cushing’s torpedo boat. In 1865 he was placed in command of the naval batteries on James River in front of Richmond, and, after the fall of that city, he commanded a company in the naval brigade and was wounded and captured in the battle of Sailor’s Creek.

At the close of the war he was in prison at Johnson’s Island. Two of his brothers had been killed in action.

Since the war most of his life had been spent in Washington. For some years he was Superintendent of the Consular Bureaus of the South American Republics, until 1902, when he was asked by the Colombian government to man the warship Bogota with an American crew, and with which he chased rebel ships up and down the coast. After the
Colombian government won the war, Marmaduke was discharged with thanks and returned to his own, country, feeling that he was past the age for further adventures of the kind. Since then he had lived in Washington, where he was connected with the Bureau of Republics for some years, later being agent for the collection of Confederate records in the office of Navy Records, from which he had retired.

Marmaduke, Henry Hungerford, Acting Midshipman.  Slight arm wound on March 8. Marmaduke was the son of Missouri Governor Meredith Miles Marmaduke, who remained a unionist during the Civil War. Confederate General John Sappington Marmaduke, a brother of Henry H. Marmaduke, was Missouri Governor after the War. Ironically, the CSS Virginia went to battle without an ensignshowing Missouri as one of the stars.

NOTE: His great-great niece Lalla Jane Cary McCormick, the wife of William Morgan McCormick, Rear Admiral, United States Navy, and the daughter of Robert Webster Cary, Jr., Rear Admiral, United States Navy, died in September 2009 and was laid to rest with her husband, who had died in 1982, in Arlington National Cemetery.

MARMADUKE, HENRY H

• 1ST LT PROVISIONAL NAVY C S A
• VETERAN SERVICE DATES: Unknown
• DATE OF DEATH: 11/15/1924
• DATE OF INTERMENT: Unknown
• BURIED AT:  ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY

Michael Robert Patterson

Michael Robert Patterson was born in Arlington and is the son of a former officer of the US Army. So it was no wonder that sooner or later his interests drew him to American history and especially to American military history. Many of his articles can be found on renowned portals like the New York Times, Washingtonpost or Wikipedia.

Reviewed by: Michael Howard