Thomas Harding

He Dived Into the Surf to Save a Drowning Officer

Thomas Harding was born in 1837 in Middletown, Connecticut. Long before the American Civil War transformed the United States, he chose a life connected with the sea and entered the United States Navy. His naval career eventually carried him into wartime blockade duty along the Confederate coast, where an attempt to save a drowning officer would earn him the Medal of Honor.

Harding first entered Navy service before the Civil War and served aboard USS Dolphin. When the conflict began, he returned to naval service and became part of the Union effort to blockade the Confederate coastline. By 1864, he was serving aboard USS Dacotah with the rating of Captain of the Forecastle.

The Union blockade was one of the most important elements of Federal naval strategy. Warships patrolled Southern ports and coastal approaches in an effort to prevent Confederate blockade runners from carrying weapons, supplies, and commercial goods through the Union cordon. These operations could be dangerous even without a major naval battle. Small boats were frequently lowered into rough water, landing parties moved close to hostile shores, and sailors faced the combined dangers of enemy action, surf, weather, and shipwreck.

On June 9, 1864, USS Dacotah was operating near Beaufort, North Carolina, during events connected with the Confederate blockade runner Pevensey. The vessel had attempted to evade Union forces but was driven ashore and destroyed to prevent its capture.

Harding became part of a small-boat operation in the difficult waters surrounding the wreck. Among the men with him was Acting Master's Mate Jarvis G. Farrar. The conditions soon became dangerous when their boat was overwhelmed in the surf.

Harding knew that Farrar could not swim. Before the situation became critical, he had assured the officer that he would try to save him if anything happened.

When the boat swamped, Harding acted on that promise.

With the men thrown into the water and the surf creating an immediate threat to everyone involved, Harding disregarded his own safety and made a determined effort to save Farrar. He struggled in the water to keep the officer from drowning and continued trying to rescue him despite the danger to his own life.

The attempt was unsuccessful. Farrar drowned.

Harding's act of courage therefore was not a successful rescue followed by celebration. Its importance lay in the risk he willingly accepted for another man. In conditions where he was already fighting for his own survival, he deliberately placed himself in greater danger because a fellow sailor could not save himself.

That distinction became the foundation of Harding's Medal of Honor recognition. His citation emphasized his efforts to save Farrar while showing little concern for his own safety. The award preserved an act of selflessness that took place not during a traditional exchange of gunfire, but amid the equally deadly hazards of naval operations along a hostile coast.

Only a few weeks after the incident, Harding advanced from his rating as Captain of the Forecastle to Acting Master's Mate, the highest documented rank of his naval career. He later transferred to USS Massasoit, continuing his Navy service during the closing period of the Civil War.

Harding was awarded the Medal of Honor under General Order No. 45 on December 31, 1864. The decoration was still relatively new at the time. Congress had authorized the Navy Medal of Honor in 1861, and during the Civil War it became the principal national award used to recognize extraordinary conduct by enlisted sailors and Marines.

There is an unusual element to Harding's Medal of Honor history. Although the award was formally authorized in 1864, evidence from the years following the war indicates that his medal may have remained unclaimed rather than being personally delivered to him. His original Medal of Honor survived and was later preserved in a naval historical collection.

That detail does not diminish the award itself. Harding had been officially recognized for his conduct in 1864, and his name remained permanently associated with the attempt to save Farrar off the North Carolina coast.

His wider wartime service is also represented by the Navy Civil War Campaign Medal. The medal was authorized in 1908 to recognize qualifying naval service during the Civil War. Harding's service fell within the qualifying period. Unlike the Medal of Honor, which commemorated his individual act of courage on June 9, 1864, the campaign medal represents the broader wartime naval service of which that episode formed the most distinguished part.

After leaving the Navy, Harding eventually made his life in the American West. He settled in Wyoming, far from the Atlantic waters where his Medal of Honor action had taken place. In later years he worked for the Union Pacific Railroad as a lamplighter, performing the ordinary responsibilities of civilian life after a wartime career marked by an extraordinary act of self-sacrifice.

Harding lived for nearly half a century after the Civil War. He died on December 15, 1911, in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and was buried in Greenhill Cemetery in Laramie.

Thomas Harding's legacy is not built around sinking an enemy ship, capturing a flag, or winning a dramatic naval engagement. His defining moment came when a boat was lost in dangerous surf and a fellow officer who could not swim faced death. Harding had every reason to concentrate solely on saving himself. Instead, he turned toward the man in greater danger.

The rescue failed, but the courage behind it did not. By risking his own life in a desperate effort to save another sailor, Harding demonstrated the kind of selfless devotion the Medal of Honor was created to recognize. His story remains a reminder that heroism is measured not only by success, but also by the willingness to act when another life is in danger.