Richard Worsam Meade II

Captain Richard Worsam Meade II (May 21, 1807 – April 16, 1870) was an American naval officer. He was also called Richard Worsam Meade, Sr., in relation to his son, Rear Admiral Richard Worsam Meade III. Life and career Meade was born in Cádiz, Spain on May 21, 1807, to American parents, Richard Worsam Meade I and his wife Margaret Coats Butler Meade; his younger brother was Major General George Gordon Meade, the victor of Gettysburg. Meade entered the Navy as a midshipman in April 1826, appointed from the state of Pennsylvania. During the next decade he served in a number of ships, among them the frigate Brandywine (during the later 1820s and early 1830s) and sloop-of-war Saint Louis (in the mid-1830s). He was promoted to lieutenant in December 1837 and was subsequently assigned to the U.S. Coast Survey, the New York Navy Yard, the steamer Fulton and storeship Erie. Beginning in the mid-1840s his Navy service became intermittent, with a long period of "waiting orders" broken in 1847 by assignment to the steamer Scourge. Lieutenant Meade resigned his commission in December 1851, but was again in service in 1854–1855 as commanding officer of the steamship Massachusetts, part of the Pacific Squadron. He once more left the Navy in September 1855.