ENSIGN EDMUND UNDERWOOD LOOMIS

Cadet Engineer Naval Academy, 1 October, 1872.
Graduated 21 June, 1875.
Lost on the USS Huron, 24 November, 1877.

From details for the erection of a monument at Annapolis:
Cadet Engineer Edmund U. Loomis, of the State of Maryland, and a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, who had performed two years and four months' sea-service and two years and six months' shore-duty was lost at sea.

USS Huron, was an iron sloop-rigged screw steam gunboat built by John Roach & Sons in Chester, Pennsylvania from 1873-75 and commissioned at Philadelphia Navy Yard on 15 November 1875, Commander George P. Ryan in command.

Huron arrived on December 11 1875 for duty at the Norfolk Navy Yard, and spent the next two years cruising in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. She stopped at Vera Cruz and Key West on her first cruise, returning to Port Royal on 4 August 1876 and visited many Caribbean and Venezuelan ports from March-June 1877.

After repairs at New York Navy Yard in August, the ship sailed to Hampton Roads, and departed on 23 November 1877 for a scientific cruise on the coast of Cuba. Soon after her departure, Huron ran aground off Nags Head, North Carolina in heavy weather, and was wrecked shortly after 1 a.m. next morning. For a time, her crew worked in relatively little danger, attempting to free their ship, but she soon heeled over, carrying 98 officers and men to their deaths.

Loomis, Edmund U, ENS