It is not absolutely certain that Brady attended, or chose to resign rather than attend. If he did attend, it is not certain that he graduated. It is documented that he was on the Plymouth. She was with the Mediterranean Squadron until October, 1846, too late for Brady to have been in the Class of 1846, if he was with her the whole time, which is questionable. Although it was true that whalers were gone for years at a time, it was not true for ships on station. Transfers to or from the ships happened frequently. They must also have been in port frequently, That being so, midshipmen such as Brady were probably given a time aboard every ship in the squadron. He could have been reassigned in time for the Class of 1846, or even 1847. If most of the sources say that he graduated, they probably got the information from Brady himself, who was alive well into the age of photography. Surveyor of the Fisher-Miller land grant In 1846, Peter Brady, an urbane citizen of the nation's capital, well-educated and well-travelled in the Mediterranean region, left the United States Navy and the capital to travel to the desert country of West Texas, full of hostile Native Americans, never to return to the east, and never, in essence, to travel anywhere else except Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. He had no personal reason to go there, no friends or relatives, and no knowledge of the people or the terrain. The answer to this conundrum is perhaps to be found in the subsequent events of his life. He was a businessman, getting caught up in the gold rush and trying his hand at various enterprises, such as ranching. The immediate cause was some high-paying work as a surveyor, which was similar to practical navigation. He would have to take bearings and lay out triangles on a chart, which he had been trained to do. Texas had been admitted by Congress to the Union as a slave state in 1845 without any interim as territory. One result was war with Mexico, which considered that they still owned it. The Texans, needing a quick build-up of population, were offering free land in a large slice of West Texas. In offering this land for free, the new Texan-Americans were not being entirely candid. Whatever reasons they had, settlement of the Fisher–Miller Land Grant,