In the author’s pages on England, published in 1837, was expressed a wish to write a story on “the teeming and glorious naval history of that land.”  Our own country at that time had no fleet, but Cooper’s interest in his youthful profession made quite fitting to himself the words of his old shipmate, Ned Myers:  “I can say conscientiously that if my life were to be passed over again it would he passed in the navy—­God bless the flag!” Out of England’s long naval records Cooper made “The Two Admirals,” an old-time, attractive story of the evolution of fleets, and the warm friendship between two strong-hearted men in a navy full of such, and at a time before the days of steam.  “Cooper’s ships live,” so says Captain Mahan; and continues:  “They are handled as ships then were, and act as ships still would act under the circumstances.”  This naval historian thought “the water a noble field for the story-teller.”  “The Two Admirals” first appeared in Graham’s Magazine, for which Cooper was regularly engaged to write in 1842.  On June 16 of this year a decision was rendered in the “Naval History” dispute.  One of the questions was whether Cooper’s account of the battle of Lake Erie was accurate and fair and did justice to the officers in command, and whether he was right in asserting that Elliott, second in command, whom Perry at first warmly commended and later preferred charges against, did his duty in that action.  Cooper maintained that while Perry’s victory in 1813 had won for himself, “as all the world knows, deathless glory,” injustice had been done to Elliott.  Three arbitrators chosen by the parties to the dispute decided that Cooper had fulfilled his duty as an historian; that “the narrative of his battle of Lake Erie was true; that it was impartial”; and that his critics’ “review was untrue, not impartial”; and that they “should publish this decision in New York, Washington, and Albany papers.”  Later Commodore Elliott presented Cooper with a bronze medal for this able and disinterested “defense of his brother-sailor.”

[Illustration:  JESSE D. ELLIOTT’S LAKE ERIE MEDAL.]

[Illustration:  MEDAL GIVEN TO JAMES FENIMORE COOPER BY JESSE D. ELLIOTT.]

Professor Lounsbury’s summary of Cooper’s “Naval History” is:  “It is safe to say, that for the period which it covers it is little likely to be superseded as the standard history of the American navy.  Later investigation may show some of the author’s assertions to be erroneous.  Some of his conclusions may turn out as mistaken as have his prophecies about the use of steam in war vessels.  But such defects, assuming that they exist, are more than counterbalanced by advantages which make it a final authority on points that can never again be so fully considered.  Many sources of information which were then accessible no longer exist.  The men who shared in the scenes described, and who communicated information directly to Cooper, have all passed away.  These are losses that can never be replaced, even were it reasonable to expect that the same practical knowledge, the same judicial spirit and the same power of graphic description could be found united again in the same person.”  Most amusing was Cooper’s own story of a disputing man who being told:  “Why, that is as plain as two and two make four,” replied:  “But I dispute that too, for two and two make twenty-two.”