Cadwalader Ringgold was born August 20, 1802, in Washington County, Maryland, at Fountain Rock, the 18,000-acre (7,300 ha) family estate.

Some sources spell his first name with two "l"s.[1] His father was Samuel Ringgold, a Maryland politician who later served in the U.S. House of Representatives.

He had an older brother, Samuel Ringgold, an army officer called "the father of modern artillery" and who died in the Battle of Palo Alto.

Ringgold entered the U.S. Navy in 1819 and commanded the schooner USS Weasel in action against West Indies pirates during the late 1820s.

[4] Soon afterward, Fijians on the island of Malolo ambushed and killed two popular officers of the expedition, and the Americans took revenge.

[5] Ringgold was promoted to commander on July 16, 1849, and began the definitive survey of the San Francisco Bay region, suddenly important because of the discovery of gold in the area.

A board of naval doctors convened by Perry declared Ringgold unfit for active service, and he was put on the reserve list on September 13, 1855.

Unsuccessful there, he appealed to a Court of Inquiry, and eventually succeeded in returning to the active list on January 23, 1858, (retroactive to April 2, 1856), a campaign of more than two years.

While in command of the frigate Sabine on November 1, 1861, he effected the rescue of a battalion of 400 Marines from Maryland whose transport steamer, Governor, was sinking during a severe storm near Port Royal, South Carolina.

For these rescues, Ringgold received commendations from the Maryland Legislature and the U.S. Congress, along with a gold medal from the Life Saving Benevolent Association.

[5] Promoted to commodore on July 16, 1862, he was sent (still on the Sabine), to cruise the Azores, Cape Verde Islands, the coast of Brazil and then back to New York in a fruitless search for the Confederate raider CSS Alabama from November 1862 to February 1863.

In mid-1863, Ringgold's assignment was to search (again unsuccessfully) in the vicinity of Bermuda and then the New England coast for the bark CSS Tacony, another Confederate raider.