author
John Taylor Wood
1830–1904
A U.S. naval officer who cast his lot with the Confederacy, he became one of the better-known Confederate sailors of the Civil War and later rebuilt his life in Canada. His story moves from naval warfare and secret operations to exile, business, and a quieter final chapter in Halifax.
1 Audiobook
Famous Adventures and Prison Escapes of the Civil War
by Basil Wilson Duke, Thomas Henry Hines, Frank E. Moran, William Pittenger, A. E. (Adolphus Edwards) Richards, W. H. (William Henry) Shelton, Orlando B. Willcox, John Taylor Wood
About the author
Born at Fort Snelling in 1830, John Taylor Wood was the son of army surgeon Robert Crooke Wood and a grandson of Zachary Taylor. He entered the U.S. Navy as a midshipman, graduated from the Naval Academy in 1853, and served at sea before resigning at the start of the Civil War.
Wood joined the Confederate Navy and earned a reputation for daring service. He took part in the battle between the CSS Virginia and the USS Monitor, carried out raids and covert missions, and rose to the rank of captain. Contemporary reference works and later histories remember him as one of the Confederacy's more prominent naval officers.
After the war, he fled to Canada and settled in Halifax, Nova Scotia. There he worked in business, including insurance and merchant activity, and lived out the rest of his life away from the battlefield until his death in 1904.