Charles Stewart (28 July 1778 – 6 November 1869) was an officer in the United States Navy who commanded a number of US Navy ships, including . He saw service during the Quasi War and both Barbary Wars in the Mediterranean along North Africa and the War of 1812. He later commanded the navy yard in Philadelphia and was promoted to become the Navy's first flag officer shortly before retiring. He was promoted to rear admiral after he retired from the Navy. He lived a long life and was the last surviving Navy captain who had served in the War of 1812. Early life On 28 July 1778, Stewart was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Charles and Sarah Harding (née Ford) Stewart, Scots-Irish immigrants from Belfast, only a month after the British evacuated the city. His father died in 1780, leaving his mother little means to support him and his three siblings. She later remarried a former bodyguard of General Washington. Stewart attended Dr. Abercrombie's Episcopal Academy in Philadelphia where he met Stephen Decatur and Richard Somers. He went to sea at the age of thirteen as a cabin boy and rose through the grades to become master of a merchantman. Early naval service During the Quasi-War with France, Stewart was one of the first officers in the rebirth of the United States Navy. At the age of nineteen, he was commissioned a lieutenant on 9 March 1798 and joined the frigate , under the command of John Barry, as fourth lieutenant for a cruise in the West Indies to restrain French privateers. Stewart was in charge of the ship's outfitting and recruiting of crew. On 16 July 1800 he assumed command of the schooner and captured two armed French vessels and recapturing several American ships. While anchored at the island of Dominica for water, he secured the release of an American impressed on a British warship. He later rescued approximately seventy people, mostly women and children from a vessel in distress at a reef near Saona Island, just before the schooner sank, for which the Governor of Santo Domingo sent a letter of thanks to President Jefferson. After brief command of in 1801 and service in in 1802, Stewart sailed to the Mediterranean in command of the brig . He was promoted to master-commandant on 19 May 1804. There, he participated in the destruction of after her capture by