I gave a talk on him at the Ross County Historical Society (Chillicothe OH) last fall that was well-received (Chillicothe was the town he grew up in, though he was born near present-day Virginia Beach). I got to tour his childhood home, which is in the process of being restored (very well, with period materials when possible) by its present owner, along with a Walke relative (a great-somethingth nephew). He's a great topic for a talk with slides because there are so many visuals with his sketches and paintings.
(The Society has one of his few large-format oil paintings, in this case the ship-of-the-line USS
North Carolina in the Elizabeth River near Norfolk... Walke served aboard her during her cruise in the Pacific and also was on her when she was a receiving ship at New York.)
Slight correction: The item you mention about the
Essex being hit was at Fort Henry, and it was Commander W.D. Porter who was saved from throwing himself overboard. (Foote was wounded at Fort Donelson.)
Author Myron J. Smith, Jr., has noted that some of Walke's writings have a bit of a 'hurt tone' to them, insofar as he was under-recognized (at least by his own lights, but I think with some justification) for his services. I think he was simply unlucky sometimes... for instance, in his memoirs, Grant confuses Walke with another naval officer, S. Ledyard Phelps, during his discussion of the battle of Belmont and some other operations, so that Walke's services were omitted from Grant's widely-read writings. In another instance, Walke in the
Sacramento almost literally passed Semmes and the
Alabama (which Walke was hunting) in the night in the South Atlantic... it wasn't actually that close, but if Walke had touched at St. Helena as Semmes did, rather than go direct to Cape Town, it's not inconceivable that Walke and the
Sacramento would occupy the place that Winslow and the
Kearsarge do (the
Sacramento was larger, faster, and somewhat more heavily armed than the
Kearsarge). And the reason Walke was on the western rivers to begin with was because he was under a bit of a cloud from a recent court-martial for a 'transgression' that really wasn't a fair charge in many people's opinions.
There are some interesting sidelights on Walke from a few journals and private letters I've transcribed. In one, a Chillicothe woman visiting Mound City while the
Carondelet was repairing there (probably after Fort Donelson) was shown around the ship by Walke and mentions that he showed her where a Confederate shot had destroyed his easel! His artwork is also noted by a seaman, coxswain John G. Morrison, who kept a diary and mentioned Walke sketching shortly after the surrender of Island No. 10 (Morrison, by the way, was awarded the Medal of Honor as a result of a commendation written by Walke, and there was a WWII destroyer USS
John G. Morrison (DD-560) as a result). Morrison seems to have had a good relationship with Walke, in contrast to the ship's steward Terry P. Robinson, who portrayed Walke as rather mercurial and something of a petty tyrant.
Obviously I could go on and on... I'll stop there.