Commodore Robert F. Stockton, 1795–1866: Protean Man for a Protean Nation
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Commodore Robert F. Stockton, 1795–1866: Protean Man for a Protea ...

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own importance, he is totally regardless of the feelings of others, vain beyond belief, he is even unable to utter a sentence without revolving every thing down to I Bob Stockton, vacillating and inactive, he is regardless of every interest that does not tend to swell his own importance. Fond of talking, he uses a prodigious quantity of bombast gas and foolishness.—Indeed he goes by the name of Gaseous Bob…He is in a word what has justly been said of him by a distinguished gentleman out here, the spoiled child of fortune, with just enough brains to keep it together, and not enough to know that in public matters, money does not screen the culprit.2

Regal? Overrated? Friend and benefactor? Gaseous Bob? Or all of the above and all at the same time?

Protean Stockton

Stockton's actions and beliefs throughout his life were varied and ever-changing, much like the shape-shifting of the sea god Proteus. The variety and shifts of his actions and beliefs were briefly captured in this 1847 editorial:

Commodore Stockton is a “Peace-maker,” and a war-maker—he can block the game in railroad stocks, or block ports—can speak with trumpets, or speak with tongues—can make laws and administer them—can govern armies or fleets, and occasionally, when a missionary is sick he can take his place, and preach a Christian discourse, as he did in the Sandwich Islands.3

Stockton was indeed a “commodore”—the highest rank in the U.S. Navy before the Civil War4—and had quite a number of significant naval achievements stretching from the War of 1812 and the Barbary War to chasing pirates in the Caribbean in the 1820s and his conquest of California in 1847. A later classifier of naval officers described Stockton as a “brilliant ‘frigate-captain’ type.”5

“Peace-maker” alludes to Stockton's attempt to create the largest naval cannon in the world in 1843; he named the cannon he purchased and tested the “Peacemaker.” “Peace-maker” could also refer to Stockton’s