From the February 13, 2013 New York Times Opinionator by Rick Beard.
Charles Rivers Ellet was one of the Union's youngest colonels at age 19. A Feb. 2, 1863 report of Rear Admiral D.D. Porter said "the kind of man I like to command" a "gallant and daring officer" who will undertake anything I wish him to without asking questions. But, he added, "The only trouble I have is to hold him in and keep him out of trouble." He essentially was the army's counterpart to the Navy's William Cushing on the Atlantic coast.
That same day he had ordered Ellet to take the Queen of the West past Vicksburg and to reconnoiter the lower Red River and destroy any Confederate ships he encountered.
The young colonel had been a medical student when the war broke out and the fleet of Union rams, including the Queen of the West, were launched by his father, Charles Ellet, Jr., who, before the war had designed wire cable suspension bridges including the one over the Schuylkill River and the one in Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia), over the Ohio River and a 770-foot footbridge at Niagara Falls. He had also built canals and railroads. Quite the engineer.
Quite the Family. --Old B-Runner
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