Gustavus H. Scott

Gustavus Hall Scott (13 June 1812 – 23 March 1882) was an officer in the United States Navy who served in the Second Seminole War and the American Civil War. He rose to the rank of rear admiral and late in his career was commander-in-chief of the North Atlantic Squadron.

Early life Scott was born in Fairfax County, Virginia, on 13 June 1812, the son of Gustavus Hall Scott (b. 1786) and Elizabeth Douglas (Marshall) Scott.

Naval career

Early career

Scott was appointed as a midshipman on 1 August 1828. His first tour of duty was aboard the frigate in the Pacific Squadron from 1829 to 1831.

After turning command of Keystone State over to Commander William E. Le Roy on 12 November 1861,

Scott was promoted to captain on 4 November 1863 Scott moved on to command of the sloop-of-war in the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, engaged in operations off Charleston, South Carolina, through the end of the war in April 1865. He was the senior officer present at the surrender of Charleston in 1865.

Post-Civil War

Scott's first postwar tour was as commanding officer of the sloop of war in the Pacific Squadron. He was a member of the examining board for the admission of volunteer officers to the regular navy in 1868. Promoted to commodore on 10 February 1869, The most significant crisis of his tenure as commander-in-chief was the Virginius Affair, which took place in November 1873 when the Spanish Navy screw corvette captured the fast American sidewheel steamer SS Virginius, operated by an American and British crew and hired by Cuban insurrectionists to land men and munitions in Cuba for use against Spanish forces during Cuba's Ten Years' War. Tornado brought Virginius to Santiago de Cuba, where Spanish authorities in Cuba found the crew of Virginius guilty of piracy and sentenced them to death by firing squad. The Spanish authorities executed 53 of them before British and American warships arrived and threatened to bombard the city if the executions did not cease. In case a war with Spain broke out, the United States Department of the Navy ordered the entire North Atlantic Squadron, South Atlantic Squadron, and European Squadron to concentrate at Key West, Florida.

By the time the last of the ships arrived on 4 February 1874, the crisis had passed, but the Department of the Navy decided to take advantage of the unusual peacetime concentration of warships to conduct the first multi-ship, open-ocean tactical exercises in U.S. Navy history. During the exercises, the Department of the Navy placed the assembled ships under the overall command of the commander-in-chief of the European Squadron, Rear Admiral Augustus Case, with Commodore Foxhall A. Parker, Jr., as Case's chief of staff. Case was senior to Scott, but to avoid an awkward situation with regard to the chain of command of the combined squadrons during the exercise, the Department of the Navy ordered Scott to conduct a cruise to Cuba and the Windward Islands to assess and report on conditions there in the wake of the Virginius Affair. Temporarily turning his ships over to Case for the fleet exercises on 3 January 1874, Scott departed Key West aboard his flagship, the sloop-of-war , for his special mission. By the time he returned on 1 April 1874, Case had completed the exercises and departed, and Scott resumed his normal duties as commander-in-chief of the North Atlantic Squadron.

Scott turned over command of the North Atlantic Squadron to Rear Admiral J. R. M. Mullany on 13 June 1874 and retired from the Navy the same day, having that day reached the statutory retirement age of 62. He was initially buried in Washington at Oak Hill Cemetery. In 1896, his remains were exhumed and reburied at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.