So much wrong with this statement.
Porter did not defer to Meigs. According to his own memoirs, Porter tried to openly defy him and even considered ramming the ship Meigs was in. Meigs only stopped Porter by interposing his ship between the Powhatan and Porter's intended target. (Confederate shore batteries.) Porter set about doing everything in his power to provoke a gunfire exchange between the Powhatan and the Confederates, and he did in fact fire on two Confederate ships while he was in Pensacola, with no word having reached him about events in Charleston.
The orders that Porter had were not incidental, they were secret orders that were not to be shared with the normal chain of command. We've seen the text of the order issued to Captain Mercer, but we have never seen the text of the order issued to David Porter, even though he's written several books on the subject. I dare say Porters actual orders are not what we have been led to believe judging by Porter's behavior in executing them.
Also left out is the fact that Porter disguised the ship so that it wouldn't be recognizable to those "who knew her well", and he sailed deep out into the Atlantic to avoid being seen by other ships, and he made the trip flying a British Flag.
If these were ordinary orders Porter was operating under (Relieving a Captain and putting a Lieutenant in charge of a major warship? A Lieutenant was two ranks below a captain in the system of that era.) then there would have been no need to conceal them from the normal chain of command because all the other orders went through that chain of command.
There is so much wrong with the claims made in this excerpt that I cannot do justice to all that is wrong with it in such a short message.
This excerpt is narrative spinning, not history.