A year prior to this, he was committed to a psychiatric hospital for two months for signs of an unbalanced mind, but sufficiently recovered to return to active duty aboard the USS Vandalia in the Mediterranean Sea, attached to General Ulysses S. Grant's cruise.

Unfortunately, he was ineffective to the expedition and rendered unfit for duty on December 22, 1879, due to a months-long and ever increasingly treatment-resistant eye inflammation caused by syphilis.

Danenhower, with one eye bandaged and one covered by a dark goggle, complained often about not being allowed to take command of a group of men or lead a task, seemingly oblivious to his incapacitation.

He assumed command of the USS Constellation on April 11, 1887, at Norfolk, but upon the ship's grounding while leaving Hampton Roads harbor, he returned to the academy, disturbed.

Danenhower's grandson was writer Sloan Wilson, who wrote The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and was captain of a U.S. Coast Guard ship in World War II.