Ammen and the Mutineers

Grant's friend Danny Ammen saved his life from drowning as a child, and went on to a long career in the US Navy, retiring as a rear-admiral in 1878. During the Civil War, he led the capture of Fort Beauregard at Port Royal in 1861, and then commanded ships in operations against Confederate forts from McAllister to Sumter and Fisher.
In-between (as I learned Tuesday in a typically informative talk by Steve Trimm at Grant Cottage), Ammen was put in charge of a large contingent of soldiers drafted into the Navy and headed for the West Coast. Many of them mutinied, according to this June 16, 1864 New York Times account, but order was restored by Ammen and others killing two of the ringleaders.
Ammen and Grant were lifelong friends, and when former President Johnson died in 1875, the Grant administration's acting secretary of the Navy was Daniel Ammen.
I will, because of a conflict, be unable to go to Dave Hubbard's Aug. 4 talk at Grant Cottage about John Newman, but recommend attendance to anyone interested in learning more about that sometimes maligned reverend. And the next weekend, Aug. 11-12, I'm scheduled to be selling books at the Grant Cottage-sponsored Civil War Weekend on Ballard Road.