Forty-Five Years under the Flag

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p. 4: About the year 1855 a number of comparatively new books, such as Midshipman Easy, Peter Simple, Jacob Faithful and Frank Mildmay, written by that inimitable author of sea fiction, Captain Marryat, came into the writer's reach and so fas cinated his young mind as to determine an almost unconquerable desire for a sea life. Under this influence, joined to the fact that his great namesake and sponsor, General Winfield Scott—a conspicuous figure in the war of 1812 and that of Mexico in 1847 and 1848—had encouraged the idea of a military life, and had promised his influence to this end when the writer had reached the proper age, a military career with its ambitions and hopes seemed to exclude thoughts of all others. Nothing was known of the limitations to a military life in that time, and no thought of its requirements, its sacrifices, its exposures or its responsibilities could enter a mind filled with dreams and hopes that the time would come in later life when there might be such opportunities as others had had to do some lasting benefit to their home and country.

The Rescue of Greely.

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The author sums up the expedition on p. 142 as follows: