Thatcher, Henry Knox, 1806-1880

Career officer in Navy, 1823-1868.

American naval officer.

Henry Knox Thatcher (1806-1880) was an admiral in the United States Navy who served during the American Civil War. He commanded the blockade of Mobile, Alabama, and on 10 May 1865, accepted the surrender of the Confederate Naval Forces in the waters of Alabama. Two ships were named after him (USS Thatcher, launched 1918, and USS Thatcher, launched 1942).

Naval officer.

Henry Knox Thatcher was born in Thomaston, Maine, to Ebenezer and Lucy Flucker (Knox) Thatcher in 1806. A grandson of Gen. Henry Knox, the famed artillery commander of the Continental Army, young Thatcher was destined for a military life. Yet although appointed to the Military Academy at West Point in 1822, he was absent on sick leave for most of his first year and finally submitted his resignation in April 1823. In fact, he had merely exchanged the academic training at West Point for a practical course in the United States Navy, which he entered as midshipman in March 1823.

Thatcher passed his course as midshipman in March 1829 and began his rise through the ranks. In 1833, he was promoted to Lieutenant, and achieved the rank of Commander in 1855. After commanding first the Sloop Decator in the Pacific and the Sloop Constellation in the Mediterranean, he was appointed as Commodore in 1862 without ever having held the rank of Captain. Thatcher returned from the Mediterranean in July 1863 to take charge of the Union steam frigate Colorado, then serving on the North Atlantic blockade of the Southern states. He rose to the rank of Acting Rear Admiral in advance of his regular promotion to that grade, and succeeded Vice-Admiral Farragut in command of the Union's Western Gulf squadron at Mobile. There he conducted joint military operations with the Union Army that resulted in the surrender of the city and the Confederate fleet. This success was followed by the quick submission of other Confederate strongholds on the Gulf, and on June 2nd, 1865, Thatcher's squadron took Galveston (Texas) without opposition, thereby restoring the entire Gulf coast to the Union. Thatcher commanded the consolidated Gulf squadrons until May 1866, and thereafter led the North Pacific squadron until August 1868. While in command of the North Pacific squadron he was presented with a medal and made a knight of the order of Kamehameha I by the king of the Hawaiian islands, an honor that he was permitted to accept by virtue of a special Act of Congress. Thatcher was commissioned Rear Admiral on July 25, 1866, and retired in May 1868.

After his retirement from active service, Thatcher served as Port Admiral in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, from 1869 to 1871. Upon stepping down from this post, he and his family established residence at Winchester, Massachusetts, where he spent the remaining 9 years of his life as a distinguished citizen. He died, after a long illness, in 1880.