David Farragut aboard his flagship, the Hartford, in the Aug. Landsmen Wilson Brown, a former slave from Natchez, Mississippi, and John Lawson, a free Black from Philadelphia, were with then-Rear Adm. They served in all of the major battles at sea that contributed to the Union victory. Others were listed as "contrabands," or slaves who had been taken into custody as Union forces pressed South. Some were free Blacks living in the North. Some were former slaves or escaped slaves.
Most of the Black sailors held the rank of "landsman," the lowest rank in the Navy at the time, which was given to those with little or no experience at sea, Quarstein said. Some of these people just disappeared" when their service was done, Quarstein, who has written on the contributions of Black Civil War sailors, told
Military records at the time were filled with inaccuracies, and "many sailors when they joined used an alias. "The Navy just couldn't find him" after the war to give him the medal, said historian John Quarstein, director emeritus of the USS Monitor Center at the Mariners' Museum and Park in Newport News, Virginia.
Pease was one of eight Black sailors awarded the Medal of Honor from among about 18,000 Black sailors who served the Union during the Civil War, according to Navy records, but he never received the medal. The date mix-up, possibly the fault of the engraver, was one of several mistakes or oversights the Navy made in seeking to record who Pease was, where he was from, how he came to enlist, and what happened to him when he left the service. Kearsarge/Destruction of the Alabama/June 9, 1864," but the date is wrong - the battle was fought on June 19. The inscription engraved on the back of his medal reads: "Personal Valor/Joachim Pease/(Colored Seaman)/ U.S.S.
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