The President of the United States of America, in the name of Congress, takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor to Ship’s Cook Third Class Jesse Whitfield Covington, United States Navy, for extraordinary heroism following internal explosion of the FLORENCE “H”. The sea in the vicinity of wreckage was covered by a mass of boxes of smokeless powder, which were repeatedly exploding. Ship’s Cook Third Class Jesse W. Covington, of the U.S.S. Stewart, plunged overboard to rescue a survivor who was surrounded by powder boxes and too exhausted to help himself, fully realizing that similar powder boxes in the vicinity were continually exploding and that he was thereby risking his life in saving the life of this man.