Thomas Jefferson Page

Thomas Jefferson Page (January 4, 1808–October 23, 1899) was a United States Navy and Confederate States Navy officer. He was the commander of the gunboat USS Water Witch in 1853 when it was shelled by Paraguayan forces, leading to the American Paraguay expedition. Page served in the Confederate Navy during the Civil War, captaining the ironclad CSS Stonewall.

Page was born January 4, 1808 in Rosewell, Virginia, the fourteenth son of Mann Page. His mother, Elizabeth, was a daughter of Thomas Nelson Jr., a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Page served in the Caribbean, carried out a hydrographical survey of the New York coastline, and worked under Lieutenant Matthew Fontaine Maury at the Naval Observatory in Washington. Page commanded the USS Plymouth in 1849 in the East China Sea and the Sea of Japan. He battled Japanese pirates in the brig USS Dolphin at the mouth of the Yangtze River at the request of the Qing Government. Due to personal reservations about the interests of western powers in China, Page did not accompany Admiral Perry's expedition to the Far East.

Following this, Lieutenant Page commanded the USS Water Witch in which during 1853–56 he explored the South American Río de la Plata basin including its tributaries the rivers Paraná, Paraguay (and its tributaries the rivers Bermejo and Apa) and Uruguay, making the first detailed hydrological studies of the Rio de la Plata. While in Paraguayan waters his ship was fired on by the Paraguayan fort Itapirú, killing his helmsman. This was a cause of the Paraguay expedition. The United States government ordered an expedition of redress against Paraguay which, however eventually came to nothing. He wrote an account of the South American expedition which was published in 1859.

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