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Title: The history of our Navy from its origin to the present day, 1775-
1897, vol. 4 (of 4)

Author: John Randolph Spears

Release date: October 5, 2023 [eBook #71797]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1897

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HISTORY
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1897, VOL. 4 (OF 4) ***

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THE HISTORY OF OUR NAVY

FARRAGUT’S FLEET PASSING FORTS JACKSON AND ST.
PHILIP.
From a painting by Carlton T. Chapman.

THE
HISTORY OF OUR NAVY
FROM ITS ORIGIN TO THE PRESENT DAY
1775–1897

BY

JOHN R. SPEARS
AUTHOR OF “THE PORT OF MISSING SHIPS,”
“THE GOLD DIGGINGS OF CAPE HORN,” ETC.

WITH MORE THAN FOUR HUNDRED ILLUSTRATIONS
MAPS AND DIAGRAMS

IN FOUR VOLUMES
VOLUME IV.

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1897

COPYRIGHT, 1897, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
MANHATTAN PRESS
474 W. BROADWAY
NEW YORK

TO ALL WHO WOULD SEEK PEACE
AND PURSUE IT

CONTENTS
PAGE
Chapter I. The State of the Navy in 1859 1
A Brief Story of the Development of the Warship that was Propelled by both Sails and
Steam—The Remarkable Floating Battery of 1814—Barron’s Idea of a Ram—The
Stevens Floating Battery—Ericsson’s Screw Propeller—Stockton and the First Screw
Warship—Experiments with Great Guns—Discoveries of Bomford and Rodman—
Practical Work by Dahlgren—A Comparison of Yankee Frigates with a Class of British
Ships “Avowedly Built to Cope” with them—The Condition of the Personnel.

Chapter II. Blockading the Southern Ports 28
Lincoln’s Proclamation—It was Something of a Task to Close 185 Inlets and Patrol 11,953
Miles of Sea-beaches, especially with the Force of Ships in Hand—One Merchant’s
Notion of the Efficiency of Thirty Sailing Vessels—Gathering and Building Blockaders
—Incentives and Favoring Circumstances for Blockade-runners—When Perjury Failed
and Uncle Sam was Able to Strike without Waiting for Act of Congress—When
Blockade-runners Came to New York and Yankee Smokeless Coal was in Demand.

Chapter III. Loss of the Norfolk Navy Yard 66
Effective Work Done by Southern Naval Officers who Continued to Wear the National
Uniform that they might the more Readily Betray the National Government—The
Secretary of the Navy was Deceived and the Commandant at Norfolk Demoralized—
William Mahone’s Tricks Added to the Demoralization at the Yard, and it was
Abandoned at Last in a Shameful Panic—Property that was Worth Millions of Dollars,
and Guns that Took Thousands of Lives, Fell into the Confederates’ Hands—The First
Naval Battle of the War—Three Little Wooden Vessels with Seven Small Guns Sent
against a Well-built Fort Mounting Thirteen Guns—The Hazardous Work of Patrolling
the Potomac.

Chapter IV. A Story of Confederate Privateers 84
They Did Plenty of Damage for a Time, but their Career was Brief—Capture of the First of
the Class, and Trial of her Crew on a Charge of Piracy—Reasons why they could not be
Held as Criminals—Luck of the Jefferson Davis—A Negro who Recaptured a
Confederate Prize to Escape the Terrors of Slavery—A Skipper who Thought a
Government Frigate was a Merchantman—The “Nest” behind Cape Hatteras.

Chapter V. The Fort of Hatteras Inlet Taken 99
An Expedition Planned by the Navy Department that Resulted in the First Federal Victory
of the Civil War—An Awkward Landing Followed by Ineffectual Fire from Ships under
Way—One Fort Taken and Abandoned—Anchored beyond Range of the Fort and
Compelled Surrender by Means of the Big Pivot Guns—A Wearisome Race from

Chicamicomico to Hatteras Lighthouse Won by the Federals—Capture of Roanoke
Island—Origin of the American Medal of Honor.

Chapter VI. Along Shore in the Gulf of Mexico 112
The Shameful Story of Pensacola and Fort Pickens—When Lieutenant Russell Burned the
Judah—A British Consul’s Actions when Confederate Forts were Attacked at Galveston
—Extraordinary Panic at the Head of the Passes in the Mississippi when Four Great
Warships, Carrying Forty-five of the Best Guns Afloat, Fled from a Disabled Tugboat
that was Really Unarmed—Once more in Galveston—Lieutenant Jouett’s Fierce Fight
when he Destroyed the Royal Yacht.

Chapter VII. Story of the Trent Affair 140
Capt. Charles Wilkes, of the American Navy, Took Four Confederate Diplomatic Agents
from a British Ship Bound on a Regular Voyage between Neutral Parts, and without any
Judicial Proceeding Cast them into a Military Prison—A Case that Created Great
Excitement Throughout the Civilized World—A Swift Demand, with a Threat of War
Added, Made by the British—Comparing this Case with another of Like Nature—The
United States once Went to War to Establish the Principle which Captain Wilkes Ignored
—The British Officially Acknowledge that the Americans were Justified in Declaring
War in 1812.

Chapter VIII. The Capture of Port Royal 161
A Fleet of Seventeen Ships, Carrying 155 Guns, Sent to Take a Harbor that would Make a
Convenient Naval Station for the Atlantic Blockaders—There were Two “Exceedingly
Well-built Earthworks” “Rather Heavily Armed” Defending the Channel, but one Part of
the Squadron Attacked them in Front, another Enfiladed them, and in Less than Five
Hours the Confederates Fled for Life—A Heavy Gale Weathered with Small Loss—
Interesting Incidents of the Battle.

Chapter IX. The Monitor and the Merrimac 184
Superior Activity of the Confederates in Preparing for Ironclad Warfare Afloat—Story of
the Building and Arming of the Merrimac—She was a Formidable Ship in Spite of
Defects in Detail, but her Design was not the Best Conceivable—Origin and Description
of the Ship that Revolutionized the Navies of the World—A Wondrous Trial Trip—For
One Day the Merrimac was Irresistibly Triumphant—Two Fine Ships of the Old Style
Destroyed while she Herself Suffered but Little—The Magnificent Fight of the
Cumberland—A Difference in Opinions.

Chapter X. First Battle between Ironclads 214
A Comparison between the Monitor and the Merrimac by the English Standard of 1812—It
Astonished the Spectators to See the Tiny Monitor’s Temerity—After Half a Day’s
Firing it was Plain that the Guns could not Penetrate the Armor—Attempts to Ram that
Failed—The Merrimac A-leak—Captain Worden of the Monitor Disabled when the
Merrimac’s Fire was Concentrated on the Pilot-house—Where the Monitor’s Gunners
Failed—Fair Statement of the Result of the Battle—Worden’s Faithful Crew—The
Merrimac Defied the Monitor in May, but when Norfolk was Evacuated she had to be
Abandoned and was Burned at Craney Island—Loss of the Monitor.

Chapter XI. With the Mississippi Gunboats 239
Creating a Fleet for the Opening of the Water Route across the Confederacy—Ironclads
that were not Shot-proof, but Fairly Efficient nevertheless—Guns that Burst and Boilers
that were Searched by Shot from the Enemy—When Grant Retreated and was Covered
by a Gunboat—First View of Torpedoes—Capture of Fort Henry—A Disastrous Attack
on Fort Donelson—When Walke Braved the Batteries at Island No. 10—The
Confederate Defence Squadron at Fort Pillow—The First Battle of Steam Rams—
Frightful Effects of Bursted Boilers—In the White River—Farragut Appears.

Chapter XII. Farragut at New Orleans 311
It was Hard Work Getting the Squadron into the Mississippi—Preparing the Ships to Run
by the Forts Guarding the River—Mortar Schooners Hidden by Tree Branches—The
Forts were Well Planned, but Poorly Armed—A Barrier Chain that was no Barrier at the
Last—The Heterogeneous Confederate Squadron—The Fire-rafts—Work of the Coast
Survey—Bravery of Caldwell—Foreigners who Interfered—Work of the Mortar Fleet—
When the Squadron Drove past the Forts—Scattering the Confederate Squadron—
Nevertheless, at least Three Good Captains were Found among them—Sinking the
Varuna—Fate of the Ram Manassas—Surrender of the Forts—End of the Ironclad
Louisiana—The Work of the Mississippi Squadron.

Chapter XIII. Farragut at Mobile 377
The Forts and the Confederate Squadron the Union Forces were Compelled to Face—The
Confederate Ironclad just Missed being a most Formidable Ship—Tedious Wait for
Monitors—When the Southwest Wind Favored—There was a Fierce Blast from the
Forts at First, but the Torpedo was Worse than Many Guns—Fate of the Tecumseh and
Captain Craven—The Last Words of the Man for whom “there was no Afterward”—
Torpedoes that Failed beneath the Flagship—Captain Stevens on the Deck of his
Monitor—When Neilds Unfurled the Old Flag in the midst of the Storm—How Farragut
was Lashed to the Mast—Jouett would not be Intimidated by a Leadsman—Mobbing the
Tennessee.

Chapter XIV. Tales of the Confederate Cruisers 407
The most Instructive Chapter in the History of the United States—Work Accomplished by
an Energetic Seaman in a Ship his Brother Officers Condemned—Brilliant Work of the
Florida under John Newland Maffitt—Bad Marksmanship and a Worse Lookout off
Mobile—A Case of Violated Neutrality—Semmes and the Alabama—The Battle with
the Kearsarge—What Kind of a Man is it that Fights his Ship till she Sinks under him?
—American Commerce Destroyed—The British without a Rival on the Sea, at Last, and
at Very Small Cost.

Chapter XV. The Albemarle and Cushing 452
A Formidable Warship was Built under Remarkable Conditions to Enable the Confederates
to Regain Control of the Inland Waters of North Carolina—Very Successful at First, but
she was Laid up to Await the Building of another One, and then came Cushing with his
Little Torpedo Boat, and the Confederate Hopes were Destroyed with their Ship.

Chapter XVI. The Navy at Charleston 465

It was a Well-guarded Harbor, and the Channel was Long and Crooked—The “Stone Fleet”
and the Attitude of Foreign Powers—Brief Career of Two Confederate Ironclads—The
Blockade was not Raised—A Confederate Cruiser Burned—Utter Failure of the Ironclad
Attacks on the Forts—Capture of the Confederate Warship Atlanta—“Boarders Away” at
Fort Sumter—Magnificent Bravery of the Men who Manned the Confederate Torpedo
Boats.

Chapter XVII. Capture of Fort Fisher 503
It was One of the Best Works in the South, though not well Located—Butler’s Powder-boat
Scheme, and what he Expected to Accomplish by it—Throwing 15,000 Shells at the Fort
Disabled Eight Great Guns out of a Total of Thirty-eight—Butler Thought the Fort still
too Strong and would not Try—He did not even Make Intrenchments According to
Orders—Gen. A. H. Terry, with 6,000 Soldiers and 2,000 from the Ships, Easily Took
the Fort Three Weeks Later—The Navy’s Last Fight in the Civil War.

Chapter XVIII. Story of the New Navy 523
The Folly of Allowing other Nations to Experiment for us—In Spite of what we Learned
from their Mistakes, we were Unable, when we First Began for ourselves, to Build even
a First-class Cruiser—The Result of Ten Years of Earnest Work—Battle-ships whose
Power is Conceded by Foreign Writers—Cruisers that Awakened the Pride of the Nation
—Three “Newfangled Notions”—A Yankee Admiral at Rio Janeiro and a Yankee
Lieutenant on the Coast of Mexico—The One Important Fact about the New Navy.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Farragut’s Fleet Passing Forts Jackson and St. Philip. (From a
painting by Carlton T. Chapman), Frontispiece
A Thirty-two-pound Carronade from the Constitution. 1
The Minnesota as a Receiving Ship. (From a photograph by
Rau), 3
A Loop-pattern Gun of 1836—a Type which Runs back over
100 Years, 4
A Thirty-two-pounder from the Captured Macedonian—now
at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. (From a photograph), 5
A Thirty-two-pounder from the Captured Macedonian. 7
Old Cast-iron Thirty-two-pounder (Believed to be Spanish), 8
John Ericsson, 10
The Great Western—One of the First Steamships to Cross
the Atlantic Ocean. (After an old painting), 13
Twelve-inch Wrought-iron Gun—the Mate to the
“Peacemaker,” which Burst on the Princeton. (From a
photograph of the original at the Brooklyn Navy Yard), 14
U. S. Ironclad Steamship Roanoke. (From an old lithograph), 15
U. S. Frigate Pensacola off Alexandria. (From a photograph
taken in 1865), 16
A Twelve-pound Bronze Howitzer—the First One Made in
the United States. (From a photograph of the original at
the Brooklyn Navy Yard), 18
A Dahlgren Gun, 19
Two Blakely Guns at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, 22
The Blockaded Coast. (From “The Navy in the Civil War”), 29
Map Showing Position of United States Ships of War in
Commission March 4, 1861, 33
Gideon Welles. (From a photograph), 34

Gustavus V. Fox. (From an engraving), 36
Garrett J. Pendergrast, 39
A Four-pound Cast-iron Gun Captured from a Blockade-
runner, 49
An Eighteen-pound Rifle Captured from a Blockade-
runner, 52
A Six-pound Gun Captured from a Blockade-runner, 53
A Nassau View—Along the Shore East of the Town. (From
a photograph by Rau), 54
Nassau Schooners. (From a photograph by Rau), 55
The Blockade-runner Teaser. (From a photograph made in
1864), 60
Washington, D. C., and its Vicinity, 67
Hiram Paulding. (From an engraving by Hall), 71
A View of the Norfolk Navy Yard. (From a photograph by
Cook), 73
The Old New Hampshire at the Norfolk Navy Yard. (From a
photograph by Cook), 77
Burning of the Vessels at the Norfolk Navy Yard, 79
The Confederate States Privateer Savannah, Letter of
Marque No. 1, Captured off Charleston by the U. S.
Brig Perry, Lieutenant Parrott, 88
Destruction of the Privateer Petrel by the St. Lawrence.
(From an engraving by Hinshelwood of the painting by
Manzoni), 95
S. H. Stringham. (From an engraving by Buttre), 100
B. F. Butler. (From a photograph), 101
Bombardment and Capture of the Forts at Hatteras Inlet,
N. C. (From a lithograph published by Currier & Ives), 103
Eight-inch Mortar Captured at Hatteras, 107
L. M. Goldsborough. (From an engraving by Buttre), 108
Stephen C. Rowan. (From a photograph), 109
Attack on Roanoke Island—Landing of the Troops. (From
an engraving of the painting by Chappel), 110

Landing of Troops on Roanoke Island. (From an engraving
by Perine of a drawing by Momberger), 110
Surrender of the Navy Yard at Pensacola. (From a painting
by Admiral Walke), 113
Henry Walke. (From a photograph), 114
John G. Sproston. (From a photograph at the Naval Academy,
Annapolis), 120
Galveston Harbor. (From “The Navy in the Civil War”), 122
Passes of the Mississippi. (From “The Navy in the Civil
War”), 126
James Murray Mason and John Slidell. (The two captured
commissioners), 141
Charles Wilkes. (From an engraving by Dodson of the
portrait by Sully), 143
William H. Seward. (From a photograph), 155
S. F. Dupont. (From a photograph), 163
C. R. P. Rodgers. (From a photograph), 164
S. W. Godon. (From a painting at the Naval Academy,
Annapolis), 165
Josiah Tattnall. (From an engraving by Hall), 168
Plan of Fort Walker on Hilton Head. (From a drawing by
R. Sturgis, Jr., in 1861), 169
Bombardment of Port Royal, S. C. (From an engraving by
Ridgeway of a drawing by Parsons), 175
Bombardment and Capture of Forts Walker and
Beauregard, November 7, 1861. (From an engraving by
Perine), 179
Franklin Buchanan, 189
The New Ironsides in Action. (From a photograph, of a
drawing, owned by Mr. C. B. Hall), 190
The Giant and the Dwarfs; or, John E. and the Little
Mariners. (From a Swedish caricature, February 10, 1867), 191
The Monitor, 192
Hampton Roads. (From “The Navy in the Civil War”), 196
Fortress Monroe and its Vicinity, 199

The Sinking of the Cumberland by the Ironclad Merrimac.
(From a lithograph published by Currier & Ives), 202
The Merrimac Ramming the Cumberland. (From a drawing by
M. J. Burns), 205
George U. Morris. (From a photograph owned by Mr. C. B.
Hall), 207
J. L. Worden. (From a photograph), 216
Deck View of the Monitor and her Crew. (From a
photograph), 219
The Fight between the Merrimac and the Monitor. (From a
lithograph published by Currier & Ives), 221
In the Monitor’s Turret, 223
The Action between the Monitor and the Merrimac. (From
an engraving of the picture by Chappel), 227
Group of Officers on Deck of the Monitor. (From a
photograph), 232
Destruction of the Merrimac off Craney Island. (From a
lithograph published by Currier & Ives), 237
Mississippi Valley—Cairo to Memphis. (From “The Navy in
the Civil War”), 242–3
The Cairo. (From a photograph), 244
The Pittsburg. (After a photograph), 245
The Mississippi Fleet off Mound City, Illinois. (From a
photograph owned by Mr. C. B. Hall), 247
A. H. Foote. (From a photograph), 250
The Battle of Belmont: First Attack by the Taylor and the
Lexington. (From a painting by Admiral Walke), 253
Battle of Belmont: U. S. Gunboats Repulsing the Enemy
during the Debarkation. (From a painting by Admiral
Walke), 257
Interior of the Taylor during the Battle of Belmont. (From
a painting by Admiral Walke), 259
Battle of Fort Henry. (From a painting by Admiral Walke), 263
Battle of Fort Donelson. (From a painting by Admiral
Walke), 269

Explosion on Board the Carondelet at the Battle of Fort
Donelson. (From a painting by Admiral Walke), 273
U. S. Flotilla Descending the Mississippi River. (From a
painting by Admiral Walke), 277
Battle with Fort No. 1 above Island No. 10. (From a
painting by Admiral Walke), 279
The Carondelet Running the Gauntlet at Island No. 10.
(From a painting by Admiral Walke), 285
The Carondelet Attacking the Forts below Island No. 10.
(From a painting by Admiral Walke), 287
U. S. Gunboats Capturing the Confederate Forts below
Island No. 10, April 7th. (From a painting by Admiral
Walke), 291
Battle of Fort Pillow. (From a painting by Admiral Walke) 295
The Battle of Fort Pillow. (From a painting by Admiral
Walke), 299
The Battle of Memphis—First Position. (From a painting by
Admiral Walke), 303
After the Battle of Memphis. (From a painting by Admiral
Walke), 305
Battle of Memphis—The Confederates Retreating. (From a
painting by Admiral Walke), 309
David Glasgow Farragut. (From a photograph), 312
Thirteen-inch Mortar from Farragut’s Fleet. (From a
photograph made at the Brooklyn Navy Yard), 316
New Orleans, La., and its Vicinity, 319
Mortar Boats. (From an engraving), 322
Beginning of the Battle of New Orleans. (From a painting
by Admiral Walke), 327
Battle of New Orleans. (From “The Navy in the Civil
War”), 331
The Battle of New Orleans. (From a painting by Admiral
Walke), 335
Confederate Ironclad Ram Stonewall Jackson. (From a
photograph), 337

The Essex after Running the Batteries at Vicksburg and
Port Hudson. (After a photograph), 341
The Carondelet after Passing Vicksburg. (From a
photograph), 342
Battle between the Carondelet and the Arkansas. (From a
painting by Admiral Walke), 346
Battle between the Arkansas and the Carondelet. (From a
painting by Admiral Walke), 347
Destruction of the Arkansas near Baton Rouge, August 4,
1862. (From a lithograph published by Currier & Ives), 349
David D. Porter. (From a photograph), 350
Admiral Farragut Passing Port Hudson. (From a painting
by Admiral Walke), 353
The U. S. Flotilla Passing the Vicksburg Batteries. (From a
painting by Admiral Walke), 355
Battle of Grand Gulf—First Position. (From a painting by
Admiral Walke), 359
Battle of Grand Gulf—Second Position. (From a painting
by Admiral Walke), 363
Battle of Grand Gulf—Third Position. (From a painting by
Admiral Walke), 365
Admiral Porter on Deck of Flagship at Grand Écore, La.
(From a photograph), 368
U. S. Ram Lafayette. (From a photograph), 369
U. S. Gunboat Fort Hindman. (From a photograph), 370
Joseph Bailey. (From a photograph), 371
Red River Dam. (From “The Navy in the Civil War”), 373
The Fleet Passing the Dam. (From an engraving), 375
Entrance to Mobile Bay. (From “The Navy in the Civil
War”), 378
Farragut and Drayton on Board the Hartford at Mobile
Bay. (Drawn by I. W. Taber from a photograph), 387
Battle of Mobile Bay. (From “The Navy in the Civil War”), 390–91
T. A. M. Craven (From a photograph owned by Mr. C. B.
Hall), 393

Battle of Mobile Bay. (From a painting by Admiral Walke), 397
The Confederate Ram Tennessee, Captured at Mobile. (From
a photograph), 404
Raphael Semmes. (From a photograph owned by Mr. C. B.
Hall), 408
The Florida Running the Blockade at Mobile. (After a
painting by R. S. Floyd), 421
“A Prize Disposed and One Proposed.” (After a painting by
R. S. Floyd), 425
Raphael Semmes and his Alabama Officers. (From a
photograph owned by Mr. C. B. Hall), 433
John A. Winslow. (From a photograph), 436
Engagement between the U. S. S. Kearsarge and the Alabama
off Cherbourg, on Sunday, June 19, 1864. (From a French
lithograph), 439
The Kearsarge Sinking the Alabama. (From an engraving), 443
Action between the Kearsarge and the Alabama. (From an
engraving of the painting by Chappel), 445
Whitworth Rifle Captured from the Shenandoah, 448
Three Famous Confederate Cruisers. (From a painting by
M. J. Burns), 449
William B. Cushing. (From a photograph), 457
Cushing Blowing up the Albemarle, 462
Charleston Harbor. (From “The Navy in the Civil War”), 466
Battery Brown: Twenty-eight-inch Parrott Rifle. (From a
photograph by Haas & Peale), 468
In the Charleston Batteries: 300-pounder Parrott Rifle
after Bursting of Nozzle. (From a photograph by Haas &
Peale), 469
General Map of Charleston Harbor, South Carolina,
Showing Confederate Defences and Obstructions, 476–7
Ironclads and Monitors Bombarding the Defences at
Charleston. (From an engraving), 481
Confederate Ironclad Atlanta, Captured at Wassaw Sound,
June 17, 1863. (From “The Navy in the Civil War”), 487

The Weehawken and the Atlanta. (From a wood-cut), 488
John A. B. Dahlgren. (From a photograph), 489
Bomb-proof of Fort Wagner. (From a photograph by Haas &
Peale), 491
Battery Hayes: Eighteen-inch Parrott Rifle—Dismounted
Breaching Battery against Sumter. (From a photograph
by Haas & Peale), 492
Battery Kirby: Twenty-eight-inch Seacoast Mortars
against Sumter. (From a photograph by Haas & Peale), 493
Admiral Dahlgren and Staff on the Pawnee at Charleston.
(From a photograph), 496
Sketch Showing Torpedo Boats as Constructed at
Charleston, S. C. (From “The Navy in the Civil War”), 498
The Entrance to Cape Fear River, Showing Fort Fisher.
(From “The Navy in the Civil War”), 504
Plan and Sections of Fort Fisher. (From “The Navy in the
Civil War”), 506
The Bombardment of Fort Fisher. (From a lithograph), 517
T. O. Selfredge. (From a photograph owned by Mr. C. B.
Hall), 519
Second Attack upon Fort Fisher by the U. S. Navy, under
Rear-admiral D. D. Porter, January 13, 14, 15, 1865, 521
The Old Method of Handling a Ship’s Bowsprit. (From an
old engraving), 524
Hauling a Vessel into Port a Hundred Years Ago. (From an
old engraving), 525
The White Squadron in Mid-ocean. (From a drawing by R. F.
Zogbaum), 529
U. S. S. Charleston, San Diego Harbor. (From a
photograph), 531
The Columbia on her Government Speed Trial. (From a
photograph by Rau), 534
Plan of the Iowa, 536
Plan of the Constitution, 537
The Vesuvius. (From a photograph by Rau), 541

Launching of one of the Holland Boats, the Holland, at
Elizabethport, N. J., 1897. (From a photograph belonging
to the John P. Holland Co.), 543
Another of the Holland Submarine Boats: the Plunger.
(From a photograph of a drawing belonging to the John P.
Holland Co.), 545
The Harbor of Rio Janeiro, Showing the Frigate Savannah
Struck by a Squall, July 5, 1856. (From a lithograph), 549
The Stern and Propeller of the Nipsic after the Samoan
Hurricane. (From a photograph), 551
The Harbor after the Samoan Hurricane. (From a
photograph), 553

A Thirty-two-pound Carronade from the
Constitution.

THE HISTORY OF OUR NAVY

CHAPTER I

THE STATE OF THE NAVY IN 1859
A BRIEF STORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WARSHIP
THAT WAS PROPELLED BY BOTH SAILS AND STEAM—
THE REMARKABLE FLOATING BATTERY OF 1814—
BARRON’S IDEA OF A RAM—THE STEVENS FLOATING
BATTERY—ERICSSON’S SCREW PROPELLER—STOCKTON
AND THE FIRST SCREW WARSHIP—EXPERIMENTS WITH
GREAT GUNS—DISCOVERIES OF BOMFORD AND
RODMAN—PRACTICAL WORK BY DAHLGREN—A
COMPARISON OF YANKEE FRIGATES WITH A CLASS OF
BRITISH SHIPS “AVOWEDLY BUILT TO COPE” WITH THEM
—THE CONDITION OF THE PERSONNEL.

From the point of view of a naval seaman it was a far cry from the first
war in defence of the nation’s life to the last one—so far, indeed, that all the
progress made in the construction of ships of war from the time when men
first went afloat to fight, down to the war of the Revolution, had not
equalled that made in the eighty odd years that elapsed between, say, the
battle of Lake Champlain, which was the most important battle afloat in the
Revolution, and that of Hampton Roads, which was first in the Civil War.
Consider the forces that Arnold mustered against the whelming odds
under the ambitious Carleton. Though two of the vessels were dignified
with the name of schooner and one was called a sloop, the flagship of the
squadron was a galley managed by means of oars, and the fleet as a whole,
including the Royal Savage, was inferior to an equal number of the galleys
with which the Romans, in the days of Carthage, held sway over the
Mediterranean.

And then consider the ships that in 1860 graced the register of the
American navy—ships that with the aid of steam could hold their own
against wind and tide, and that carried guns of so large a calibre that any but
the largest from Arnold’s fleet might have been shoved down their throats
after the trunnions were knocked off. Arnold in his flagship, the galley
Congress, had eight guns of which the bore was about three and a half
inches in diameter, and the shot weighed six pounds. But when the Civil
War came, the Minnesota was armed with forty-two guns of a nine-inch
calibre and one of eleven inches, besides four rifles that threw elongated
projectiles weighing 100 pounds and one rifle with a projectile weighing
150. Arnold’s Congress could throw at a broadside twenty-four pounds of
metal over an effective range of perhaps 300 yards; the Minnesota could
throw 1,861 pounds over an effective range of 1,600 yards.
And a still more wondrous advance was in the minds of men; it was at
hand—an advance to a point where steel forts were to be sent afloat in place
of the ships that were in 1859 the pride of naval seamen.

The Minnesota as a
Receiving Ship.
From a photograph by Rau.

Remarkable as it seems to the present-day student of naval history, the
changes in naval ships that produced the Minnesota before the year 1859—
even the changes that gave us the steel fort afloat—were foreshadowed in
1813 when the immortal Fulton made plans for a ship of war that should not

only be propelled by steam, but should be as impregnable to the guns of that
day as were the ironclads of 1862 to the guns of their day.

A Loop-pattern Gun of 1836—a Type which
Runs back over 100 Years.
Although this ship was designed in 1813, she was not sent afloat until
October 29, 1814, and even then, although swifter and more convenient
than Fulton had promised that she should be—although she was the very
craft that on a smooth-water day could meet and destroy the insolent
blockading squadron then off Sandy Hook—she was not put into
commission immediately, and the war came to an end before there was
opportunity to show what steam might do for the sea power of a nation.

A Thirty-two-pounder from the Captured Macedonian—now at the
Brooklyn Navy Yard.
From a photograph.

But because this was the first steam warship the world ever saw, and
because, when sent on trial trips, she more than fulfilled every promise of
her designer, it is worth while giving a full description of her. Her length
was 150 feet; breadth, 56 feet; depth, 20 feet; water-wheel, 16 feet
diameter; length of bucket, 14 feet; dip, 4 feet; engine, 48-inch cylinder, 5-
feet stroke; boiler, length, 22 feet; breadth, 12 feet; and depth, 8 feet;
tonnage, 2,475. She was the largest steamer by many hundreds of tons that
had been built at the date of her launch. The commissioners appointed to
examine her, in their report say:
“She is a structure resting upon two boats, keels separated from end to
end by a canal fifteen feet wide and sixty-six feet long. One boat contains
the caldrons of copper to prepare her steam. The vast cylinder of iron, with
its piston, levers, and wheels, occupies a part of its fellow; the great water-

wheel revolves in the space between them; the main or gun-deck supporting
her armament is protected by a bulwark four feet ten inches thick, of solid
timber. This is pierced by thirty portholes, to enable as many 32-pounders to
fire red-hot balls; her upper or spar deck, upon which several thousand men
might parade, is encompassed by a bulwark which affords safe quarters.
She is rigged with two short masts, each of which supports a large lateen
yard and sails. She has two bowsprits and jibs and four rudders, two at each
extremity of the boat; so that she can be steered with either end foremost.
Her machinery is calculated for the addition of an engine which will
discharge an immense column of water, which it is intended to throw upon
the decks and all through the ports of an enemy. If, in addition to all this, we
suppose her to be furnished, according to Mr. Fulton’s intention, with 100-
pounder columbiads, two suspended from each bow, so as to discharge a
ball of that size into an enemy’s ship ten or twelve feet below the water-
line, it must be allowed that she has the appearance at least of being the
most formidable engine of warfare that human ingenuity has contrived.”

A Thirty-two-pounder from the Captured
Macedonian.
Formidable she certainly was, but no war came to demonstrate her
powers, and she lay in the Brooklyn Navy Yard as a receiving-ship until the
4th of June, 1829, when her magazine was fired, presumably by a drunken
member of the crew, and she was blown to pieces.

Old Cast-iron Thirty-two-pounder (Believed to be
Spanish).
Robert L. Stevens, of Hoboken, in 1832, conceived the idea of an
ironclad ship that was to be 250 feet long and twenty-eight wide—
something lean and eager in pursuit and yet shot-proof. It was an idea that
cost him and his family nearly $2,000,000 before he was done with it; but
nothing came of it, save as it kept the restless inventors of the world
thinking on the subject of swift, impregnable ships of war. Mr. Clinton
Roosevelt, of New York, proposed to build a steamer that should be sharp at
both ends, “plating them with polished iron armor, with high bulwarks, and
a sharp roof plated in like manner, with the design of glancing the balls. The
means of offense are a torpedo, made to lower on nearing an enemy, and
driven by a mortar into the enemy’s side under water, where, by a fusee, it
will explode.” The idea of polishing the armor to make it slippery seems
amusing now; but the fact is that even as late as 1862 the armor of vessels
in the Civil War was greased to make the projectiles glance off. Of course,
the grease was of no use.
It is worth noting that it was in 1836 that John Ericsson patented in
England his screw propeller. A model boat forty-five feet long, which he
named, for the American consul at Liverpool, the Francis B. Ogden,
attained in 1837 a speed of ten miles an hour. The Lords of the Admiralty
took a trip in this boat, and the opinion of Sir William Symonds, who spoke
for the others, is worth giving as showing how thick-skulled prejudice
operates to retard naval progress. He said: “Even if the propeller had the
power of propelling a vessel, it would be found altogether useless in

practice, because the power being applied in the stern, it would be
absolutely impossible to make the vessel steer.”

John Ericsson.

However, Capt. Robert F. Stockton made a trip on the Ogden, and
fortunately Stockton was at once a man of wealth and of common sense.
Being convinced of the value of the invention, he induced Ericsson to leave
England for the United States in the year 1839, and that was, in a way, one
of the most interesting events in the history of the American republic.
Meantime, however, a steamer to replace the old Demologos, Fulton’s
first war steamer, had been launched in 1837. Practically the Fulton 2d, as
she was called, was a sloop-of-war—a ship of one deck of guns, propelled
by paddle-wheels. She was broad and shallow in model, being 180 feet long
by thirty-five wide and thirteen deep. She had horizontal engines lying on
her upper deck. Her paddle-wheels were twenty-two feet in diameter,
towering high above the deck, and her boilers were made of copper.
However, she carried eight long forty-twos and a long twenty-four—a right
powerful set of guns for that day, and she behaved so well that Capt.
Mathew C. Perry, who was assigned to her, expressed the opinion that a
time would come when sails, as a means of propelling a man-of-war, would
become obsolete. However, it must be said that this remark made almost
every one who heard of it, and especially the other officers of the navy,
think that Perry was a “visionary.”

It was in 1839 that Perry risked his reputation by an expression of
opinion—about the time that Ericsson reached the United States. Backed by
Stockton, Ericsson planned a man-of-war that should be driven through the
water by a submerged screw at the stern. The idea of a ship being driven by
machinery that was placed wholly below the water-line, and so out of
danger from an enemy’s shot, was of a kind to appeal even to a backwoods
congressman, and an appropriation was obtained. In 1843 the ship was
launched under the name of Princeton, and she was in a variety of ways
vastly superior to anything built before her. She was 164 feet long by thirty
wide and twenty-one deep, and with 200 tons of coal and all supplies on
board, she had a draft of nearly twenty feet.
Among other features, it appears that she was the first warship fitted to
burn anthracite coal, thus avoiding the dense volumes of black smoke
which revealed all foreign war-steamers. She was the first to carry
telescopic funnels that could be lowered to the level of the rail out of the
way of sails, and the first to use blowers to force the draft in the furnaces.
She was also the first to couple the screw directly to the engine instead
having cog-wheels intervene.
Her armament was also peculiar, for she was fitted with two long
wrought-iron guns that threw balls about a foot in diameter, weighing 225
pounds—guns that, when fired at a target at a range of 560 yards, pierced
fifty-seven inches of solid oak timber.

The Great Western—One of the First Steamships to Cross the
Atlantic Ocean.
After an old painting.

And there was one other peculiarity to which Stockton, who
commanded her, called attention with pride: “To economise room, and that
the ship may be better ventilated, curtains of American manufactured linen
are substituted for the usual wooden bulkheads.”

Twelve-inch Wrought-iron Gun—the Mate to the
“Peacemaker,” which Burst on the Princeton.
(The carriage is a mortar carriage from Porter’s mortar fleet at
New Orleans.)
From a photograph of the original at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

As a steamship the Princeton was a very great success, but the art of
forging was not then sufficiently advanced to warrant the manufacture of
any but cast-iron guns. On a trial trip made from Washington in 1844, one
of the great forged guns burst, killing and wounding a number of
gentlemen, including the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Navy,
with several ladies who had been invited to go on the trip. Stockton had
boasted that “the numerical force of other navies, so long boasted, may be
set at naught, and the rights of the smallest as well as the greatest nations
may once more be respected.” And the boast would have been almost
justified but for the failure of the wrought-iron gun.

U. S. Ironclad Steamship Roanoke.
(The first turreted frigate in the United States, 1863.)
From an old lithograph.

However, the success of the Princeton as a ship was so pronounced that
money was appropriated from time to time for others designed much as she
was until the navy had six screw frigates—the Niagara, the Roanoke, the
Colorado, the Merrimac, the Minnesota, and the Wabash; six screw sloops
of the first class—the San Jacinto, the Lancaster, the Brooklyn, the
Hartford, the Richmond, and the Pensacola, besides eight screw sloops of
the second class, of which the Iroquois was a type, and five of the third
class, of which the Mohawk was a type. There was also a screw frigate on
the stocks at the Portsmouth, New Hampshire, dock-yard. The guns that
these ships carried, when compared with those of the war of the Revolution,
were quite as interesting as the ships themselves.

U. S. Frigate Pensacola off Alexandria.
From a photograph taken in 1865.

The prejudices in the way of improving great guns were not only
strong, but they were founded on experiences that were seemingly
convincing beyond peradventure. For instance, under Charles V a cannon
was cast at Genoa that was fifty-eight calibres long; that is, it was of about
six inches diameter of bore and twenty-nine feet long. When fired, its ball
of thirty-six pounds weight had less range than an ordinary twelve-pounder.
So they cut off four feet of the gun and found that its range increased.
Cutting off three feet more still further increased the range, as did another
cut of six inches—“which shows,” says Simpson’s text-book on gunnery,
printed in 1862, “that there is for each piece a maximum length which
should not be exceeded.” So that dictum stood in the way of arriving at the
design of a gun like the modern rifle, that would really give the greatest
possible range to a projectile. Then, the distribution of the metal in the
cannon with which Arnold fought on Lake Champlain seems now
ridiculous. One must needs see a picture of the old gun beside one of the
guns as developed just previous to the Civil War to realize the difference;
but it may be said that, with the bell-shaped muzzle and the “rings” and
“reinforces,” the old gun in outline had as many ups and downs as some

step-ladders, while the cast-iron weapon of 1860 was as smooth and
symmetrical as the hull of a Yankee clipper.

A Twelve-pound Bronze Howitzer—the First One
Made in the United States.
From a photograph of the original at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

A curious series of experiments, made by Colonel Bomford of the
United States Ordnance Department, told for the first time where the
greatest strain was exerted on the bore of a gun, and gave some idea of the
relative strain elsewhere along the bore. Taking an old cannon, he drilled a
hole from the side near the muzzle directly into the bore and inserted a
pistol-barrel. Then he put a bullet into the pistol-barrel, and after loading the
cannon in the ordinary way, he fired it. Of course, as the cannon-ball was
driven from the big gun the powder gas behind it drove the pistol-ball from
the pistol-barrel. The colonel measured the velocity of the pistol-ball and
made a note of it. Then he drilled another hole in the cannon some inches
farther from the muzzle, and repeated the experiment. The force exerted on
the pistol-ball was slightly greater there. By drilling other holes he learned
approximately the pressure all along the bore. It appeared that the greatest
pressure was directly over the shot when it was rammed home against the
powder. From there the pressure decreased rapidly, being only about half as
much when the ball had travelled four times its own diameter from its
original resting place.

A Dahlgren Gun.
Captain Rodman of the Ordnance Department, put a piston in place of
Bomford’s pistol-barrel and let the piston punch into a piece of copper, and
then determined the pressure on the piston by forcing the same kind of a
piston into the same kind of a piece of copper by a known weight.
“Although not an accurate process,” it was good enough, and with the
figures obtained by it before him, Lieut. John Dahlgren, of the United States
navy, designed the gun of smooth outline that by its splendid success in the
hands of both forces, during the Civil War, made him famous. The greatest
thickness of metal was placed around the greatest strain, and a proper
thickness at every inch of length of the bore.
It was not alone, however, in putting the metal where it would prove
most serviceable that Dahlgren made his gun efficient. He was a
metallurgist, and was careful to improve the quality of iron used.
Meantime Captain Rodman had proposed to cast cannon hollow and
cool them from the interior, instead of casting a solid log of iron and boring
it out on the old plan. Although the first experiments did not show any
especial improvement in the strength of a gun so cast, the method was
eventually found to be the best.
With Dahlgren’s model a gun of eleven inches of diameter of bore was
cast in 1852. It was fired 500 times with shells and 655 times with solid
shot that weighed 170 pounds, the service charge of powder being fifteen
pounds. The gun was not seriously injured or worn even by the work. That
settled the status of the Dahlgren guns, and from that time on they were
furnished with reasonable rapidity to the new steam warships of the navy.
Meantime rifled cannon made of cast iron reinforced over the breech
by a wrought-iron jacket that was shrunk on had been introduced into the
American navy. They varied from thirty-pounders up to 100-pounders, and,

except for the smaller calibres, were in many cases more dangerous for their
crews than for the enemy. It must be told also that a cast-iron rifle known as
the Brooke, because designed by Commander John M. Brooke, of the
Confederate navy, was produced in Richmond that was better than the
Parrott. It was strengthened in its early service days by a series of wrought-
iron bands two inches thick and six wide, that were shrunk on over the
breech. Later a second series of bands was shrunk on over the first,
breaking joints with them, of course, and so a very good 150-pounder was
produced.
Meantime one Dahlgren smooth-bore, with a bore fifteen inches in
diameter, had been successfully made, and the shells for all the Dahlgren
guns were provided with fuzes that could be set to explode just about where
and when the gunner wished to have them do so. But whether the damage to
be done by a fifteen-inch round shot smashing its way through a ship’s side
would be greater or less than that of a rifle projectile boring its way through
was a question that had not been decided. It was granted that the rifle had
the longer range—with a reasonable elevation a rifle would carry three
miles, maybe four, and do some damage when the projectile arrived, while
the effective range of the smooth-bore was, say, 1,500 or 1,600 yards,
though gunners made efforts, when the time came, to run in to a range of
600 yards or less instead. But, on the whole, it was the belief among
American naval officers before the Civil War that the big Dahlgren smooth-
bore was the best gun afloat.

Two Blakely Guns at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
So it came to pass that the newest and best ships of the navy were
armed with the Dahlgren gun. The Merrimac, which was not the best of the
frigates, carried twenty-four nine-inch guns on her gun deck, with fourteen
eight-inch and two ten-inch pivots on her spar deck. She could throw 864
pounds of metal from her gun-deck broadside, 360 pounds from her
broadside of eight-inch guns, and 200 from her ten-inch, both of which
could be fired over either rail.
Mr. Hans Busk, M.A., of Trinity College, Cambridge, was moved to
write on page 104, in his “Navies of the World,” that “the navy of the
United States has a tolerably imposing appearance upon paper,” but he
concludes that a British frigate of the Diadem class, “avowedly built to cope
with those of the description of the Merrimac, etc., would speedily capture
her great ungainly enemy.” To fully appreciate this remarkable statement it
must be known that the Diadem could fire at a broadside ten ten-inch shells,
weighing in the aggregate 820 pounds, five thirty-two-pound solid shot, and
two sixty-eight-pound solid shot—in all 1,116 pounds of shot to 1,424
pounds that the Merrimac’s broadside weighed.

The frigate Minnesota carried, soon after the Civil War broke out, no
less than forty-two nine-inch Dahlgrens, one of eleven inches, four 100-
pounder rifles, and one 150-pounder rifle. She could throw 1,861 pounds of
metal at a broadside. Moreover, it was not a mere matter of weight of metal.
The diameter of the American projectiles was a matter for serious
consideration by the enemy, and so was the ability of the gun to stand
service. The best English gun could stand a charge of twelve pounds of
powder, and the best American fifteen. There was a vast difference in the
smashing effect of an eleven-inch shell driven by fifteen pounds of powder
and a ten-inch shell driven by twelve.
All this seems worth telling only because it shows that the ideas of
armament which prevailed among the English and the Americans before the
War of 1812 were still held by the two nations in 1859. Indeed, the
disproportion between the Minnesota’s armament and that of the Diadem
was very much greater than that between the United States and the
Macedonian.
In short, all things considered, the American people had just the fleet
they needed for that day to resist foreign aggression.
But while the patriot holds up his head in pride at the thought of the
ships of 1859, he hesitates and stammers when he comes to tell of the men
—of the personnel of the navy. It was a far cry from the sailing ships of the
old days to the steam frigates of the later, but it was a farther one, and a cry
over the shoulder at that, from the men who swept the seas under the once-
despised gridiron flag to those who carried the American naval
commissions in 1859. It was not that courage and enterprise were dead, or
knowledge and skill were lacking. There were, of course, men a-plenty who
were brave and tactful and energetic and learned—plenty who were to
become during the war men of the widest fame. But “long years of peace,
the unbroken course of seniority promotion, and the absence of any
provision for retirement,” had served the officers as lying in ordinary served
white oak ships. Nearly all of the captains were more than sixty years old.
The commanders at the head of the list were between fifty-eight and sixty
years of age. There were lieutenants more than fifty years old, and only a
few of the lieutenants had known the responsibility of a separate command.

And then, “as a matter of fact,” as Professor J. R. Soley says in his
work on “The Blockade and the Cruisers,” “it was no uncommon thing, in
1861, to find officers in command of steamers who had never served in
steamers before, and who were far more anxious about their boilers than
about their enemy.”
But that was not all nor the worst that can be said of the personnel of
that day, for a sentiment—a faith—had developed and spread to a degree
that now seems almost incredible, under which men who had made oath
that they would always defend the Constitution of the United States came to
believe that they were under obligations to draw their swords against the
flag they had sworn to defend—the flag which some of them had defended
with magnificent courage.
That the politicians should have been secessionists is not at all a matter
of wonder. It was entirely natural. But how a Tatnall, the story of whose
bravery at Vera Cruz still thrills the heart; how an Ingraham, whose quick
defence of the rights of a half-fledged American in the Mediterranean is still
an example to all naval officers—how these men could have placed the call
of friends and neighbors and a State above the obligation of their oath to
support the Constitution, is something that is now incomprehensible.
It must be granted that they were of good conscience. There was not a
sordid thought in their minds—not one. Indeed, most of them felt that they
were making the greatest of sacrifices for the sake of principle. But, if the
writer may express his thoughts without offence, no patriot can now read of
the glorious achievements of the men who in other days fought afloat for
the honor of the nation, without feeling inexpressibly shocked at the
thought that any man of the navy should have been found willing under any
circumstances to strike at the gridiron flag.
There is not a little interest in considering the actual numbers of the
men who left the navy to take part with the Southern States. Before South
Carolina passed her ordinance of secession there were 1,563 officers,
commissioned and warrant, on the naval register. Of these, 677 were from
Southern States; but 350 of these Southern-born men remained true to the
flag, while 321 resigned to enter the Confederate navy. Of thirty-eight
Southern captains, sixteen resigned; of sixty-four Southern commanders,

thirty-four resigned; of 151 Southern lieutenants, seventy-six resigned; of
128 Southern acting midshipmen, 106 resigned.
And that is to say that so demoralized had the navy become under the
influence of quarrelling politicians that more than one-fifth of all the
officers were ready to forsake their allegiance.

CHAPTER II

BLOCKADING THE SOUTHERN PORTS
LINCOLN’S PROCLAMATION—IT WAS SOMETHING OF A
TASK TO CLOSE 185 INLETS AND PATROL 11,953 MILES OF
SEA-BEACHES, ESPECIALLY WITH THE FORCE OF SHIPS
IN HAND—ONE MERCHANT’S NOTION OF THE
EFFICIENCY OF THIRTY SAILING VESSELS—GATHERING
AND BUILDING BLOCKADERS—INCENTIVES AND
FAVORING CIRCUMSTANCES FOR BLOCKADE-RUNNERS
—WHEN PERJURY FAILED AND UNCLE SAM WAS ABLE
TO STRIKE WITHOUT WAITING FOR ACT OF CONGRESS—
WHEN BLOCKADE-RUNNERS CAME TO NEW YORK AND
YANKEE SMOKELESS COAL WAS IN DEMAND.

The story of the actual work done by the navy in this last war for the
preservation of the life of the nation begins when a blockade of the ports of
the seceded States was ordered. Two proclamations were issued to provide
for this measure. The first was issued on April 19, 1861, which, as the
reader will remember, was six days after the capture of Fort Sumter, in
Charleston harbor, by the secessionists. It covered all the ports of the South
except those of Virginia and Texas; but on the 27th of the same month,
these two States having also joined the Confederacy, their ports were
included by a second proclamation. Because, from a naval point of view,
that was the most important proclamation issued by a President of the
United States since the War of 1812, its words shall be given literally.

The Blockaded Coast.
From “The Navy in the Civil War.”

“Now therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States ...
have further deemed it advisable to set on foot a blockade of the ports
within the States aforesaid, in pursuance of the laws of the United States
and of the Law of Nations in such case provided. For this purpose a
competent force will be posted so as to prevent entrance and exit of vessels
from the ports aforesaid. If, therefore, with a view to violate such blockade,
a vessel shall approach or shall attempt to leave any of the said ports, she
will be duly warned by the commander of one of the blockading vessels,
who will endorse on her register the fact and date of such warning, and if
the same vessel shall again attempt to enter or leave the blockaded port, she
will be captured, and sent to the nearest convenient port for such

proceedings against her, and her cargo as prize, as may be deemed
advisable.”
It is worth while considering in advance some of the facts relating to
the task that was thus set for the navy. The coast line invested extended
from Alexandria, Virginia, to the borders of Mexico on the Rio Grande. The
continental line was 3,549 miles long. The coast or shore line, including
bays and similar openings, was 6,789 miles long; and if to this be added the
shore lines of the islands which were included in the blockade and which
were necessarily watched by the blockading fleet, the entire length of
beaches under guard was exactly 11,953 miles.
The South Carolina islands, as described by Jedidiah Morse, “are
surrounded by navigable creeks, between which and the mainland is a large
extent of salt marsh fronting the whole State, not less on an average than 4
or 5 miles in breadth, intersected with creeks in various directions,
admitting through the whole an inland navigation between the islands and
mainland from the northeast to the southeast corners of the State. The east
sides of these islands are for the most part clean, hard, sandy beaches,
exposed to the wash of the ocean. Between these islands are the entrances
of the rivers from the interior country, winding through the low salt marshes
and delivering their waters into the sounds, which form capacious harbours
of from 3 to 8 miles over, and which communicate with each other by
parallel salt creeks.” And that will apply to the whole coast.
More than that, in this length of shore line were found 185 harbor and
river openings that might be used for the purposes of commerce with the
Confederate States. It is also an important fact that these harbor openings
were, in almost every instance, too shoal for the ordinary ocean-going cargo
ships of that day. If too shoal for a merchantman, they were so for a man-o’-
war, and the more intricate and variable the channels the better adapted they
were to the purposes of a trade that was to be carried on in spite of the
blockade.
To close these 185 harbor openings the government had, on the day the
proclamation was issued, twenty-six steamers and sixteen sailing ships in
commission. But let not the uninformed reader suppose that such a great
fleet as this was at once started off on that duty. There were in the home
squadron but five sailing ships and seven steamers, while of these a number

were at sea en route from nearby foreign to American ports, and of those
actually in the United States harbors but three—the Pawnee, the Mohawk,
and the Crusader—were in Northern waters. To close 185 harbor openings
the Secretary of the Navy had for the moment just three steamers, the rest of
the commissioned fleet being either in the ports of the Southern States or
scattered the wide world over. And that is to say, there was for the moment
no force adequate to blockade efficiently even the one Southern port of
Charleston.
The navy register showed, however, in addition to the forty-two ships
in commission, twenty-seven that were lying at the navy yards in ordinary
but fit for service. The government had thirty-nine steamers and thirty-four
sailing ships that might be brought together in the course of a few months to
enforce the blockade of the 185 harbors of the South and keep contraband
trade clear of the eleven thousand and odd miles of Southern sea-beaches.

Map Showing Position of
UNITED STATES SHIPS OF WAR
In Commission March 4, 1861.
NOTE:—There is no log book for the John Adams (No. 18) for the year 1861, but it is known
that this ship was at Manilla, January 14, 1861, and at Hong Kong, May 1, 1861.

It is worth noting here that when the Navy Department was first
considering its lack of ships for the purpose of enforcing the blockade, a
consultation was had with a number of the most eminent ship-owners of

New York. The leader of these eminent ship-owners, after considering the
subject carefully, said to Secretary Welles that thirty sailing vessels would
have to be purchased before an actual blockade of the ports could be
completed. As a matter of fact, over 600 ships were employed at the end,
and even then some blockaders got through.

Gideon Welles.
From a photograph.

But it was not alone in a lack of ships that the government was
embarrassed. It was necessary to find officers and crews for the ships that
were not in commission. Hundreds of men were needed to man even one of
the five screw frigates, and yet to man the whole twenty-seven ships not in
commission there were, on March 4, 1861, “only 207 men in all the ports
and receiving ships on the Atlantic coast.” “It is a striking illustration of the
improvidence of naval legislation and administration that in a country of
thirty millions of people only a couple of hundred were at the disposal of
the Navy Department.”
And as for the officers, as has been already shown, when the need of
the nation was greatest, a fifth of them drew swords against the flag instead
of defending it.

To still further hamper the work of the Navy Department, Congress was
very slow to learn that a vast naval force was needed. The fact that the
South had no navy and no merchant marine of its own, seemed, in the
minds of the Congressmen, to make it wholly unnecessary to spend money
on fighting ships. Indeed, a Navy Department has rarely been in a more
distressful condition than was that under Mr. Gideon Welles in the first six
months or so of the administration of President Lincoln.
However, a beginning was made. Perhaps the first step of importance in
fitting the navy for war was the appointment of Mr. Gustavus V. Fox as
assistant to Mr. Welles, for Fox had been a naval lieutenant and brought a
practical knowledge of naval affairs with him when he was placed in charge
of the actual war operations of the ships.
First of all, of course, was the work of getting men by a call for
volunteers. The call was answered by hosts, but never by as great numbers
as were needed. Captains and mates from the Northern ports and the Great
Lakes were the more valuable part of this volunteer force, but so great was
the need of officers that not a few men who had never been at sea received
appointments. The youngsters at the Naval Academy who had had one
year’s instruction, or more, were taken at once into the service. They were
mere boys, but they had learned something of warships, and some of them
made names that will not be easily forgotten.

Gustavus V. Fox.
From an engraving.

The next effort after the call for men was to issue a call for ships. The
department strove to buy “everything afloat that could be made of service,”
and where owners would not sell, to charter the ships. At first the ships
were purchased by the department direct or by naval officers. Altogether,
twelve steamers had been purchased and nine chartered by July 1, 1861;
and it is worth recording that, because greed was a stronger passion than
love of country, the prices charged were outrageously high. Afterwards a
business man was appointed to the task of buying ships, and somewhat
better rates were then obtained, while a board of naval officers inspected the
ships to decide on their fitness and the alterations needed to make them
serviceable.
It was a heterogeneous collection, a nautical curiosity shop, that they
got together—deep-water ships, inland-water steamers, ferryboats, and
harbor tugs. The inspecting officers were compelled by stress of need to
accept about everything that would float and carry a gun. And, singular as it
may seem at first thought to those who in these days ride on them, the
double-ended ferryboats made very successful naval ships. It was the Fulton
ferryboat Somerset that captured the blockade-runner Circassian off
Havana—a prize that yielded $315,371.39 to her captors. Nor was that her
only service. Being well built to stand the hard knocks of their ordinary
service, the ferryboats were easily fitted with heavy guns and served well in
battering down alongshore forts.
By the 1st of December, 1861, the government had purchased 137
vessels, of which, however, fifty-eight were sailing vessels; and it may as
well be told here as elsewhere that 418 vessels were purchased during the
war, of which 313 were steamers.
Meantime the department started the work of building ships. Congress
authorized seven sloops-of-war, and the department laid down eight, of
which four were built to the lines of the sloops of 1858 in order to save
time; and it is worth noting that the Kearsarge was among the four. The
eight were begun immediately, and six more were laid down before the end
of the year.
Without waiting for an appropriation, the department contracted with
private shipyards for the building of twenty-three heavily armed screw
gunboats. And this contract is worth more space than the mere statement of

the fact, for it draws attention to the importance of the private shipbuilder as
a factor in the sea power of a nation. Even in the War of 1812, when
wooden sailing ships were the sole evidence of sea power, the private
shipbuilder was of essential importance. It was a private shipbuilder from
New York, Mr. Noah Brown, who sent Perry’s victorious squadron afloat on
Lake Erie, and it was the private shipbuilder who gave the Americans the
supremacy that they enjoyed from time to time on Lake Ontario. Without
private yards amply equipped for the construction of the best warships
afloat, no nation can have a sea power adequate for the protection of its
honor and the preservation of peace.
These twenty-three gunboats mounted from four to five guns each, of
which one was an eleven-inch smooth-bore. They were wooden boats, of
course, and they were known as the ninety-day fleet because some of them
were in commission within three months from the signing of the contract.

Garrett J. Pendergrast.

The fact that they were so quickly built is also worth considering in
connection with the fact that ships relatively as efficient as they were could

not now be built in less than a year. The day of a ninety-day fleet passed
when steel was substituted for wood.
The first point actually blockaded was Hampton Roads. Flag Officer
G. J. Pendergrast established the blockade there, and issued the following
proclamation on April 30, 1861:

“To all whom it may concern:
“I hereby call attention to the Proclamation of his Excellency
Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, under date of the
27th April, 1861, for an efficient blockade of the ports of Virginia and
North Carolina, and warn all persons interested that I have a sufficient
naval force there for the purpose of carrying out that Proclamation.
“All vessels passing the Capes of Virginia, coming from a distance
and ignorant of the Proclamation, will be warned off, and those passing
Fortress Monroe will be required to anchor under the guns of the fort,
and subject themselves to an examination.
“United States’ Flagship Cumberland, off
“Fortress Monroe, Virginia, April 30, 1861.
(Signed) “G. J. Pendergrast,
“Commanding Home Squadron.”

This proclamation is worth careful perusal for two reasons: The first
reason is that it contained an untrue statement. Instead of having “sufficient
naval force” “for an efficient blockade of the ports of Virginia and North
Carolina,” he had barely enough for Virginia alone. Wilmington was a most
important harbor of the South; it eventually became the favorite with
blockade-runners, but there was not a ship ready to close it for many weeks
after this proclamation was issued.
More important still is the second reason for reading the proclamation
carefully—the fact that it was issued at the behest of the Navy Department,
and illustrates clearly the department’s idea of a blockade at that time. It is
necessary to say here that, owing to the excitement of the times, the
government was making a very grave error—it was trying to establish a
“paper blockade.” That is to say, there was a determined effort made to

interdict trade where there was no blockade de facto—not a ship, or a
rowboat even, stationed to close the port. And this was a most remarkable
undertaking, because the “free trade” for which the War of 1812 was waged
was the freedom to trade in any belligerent port not actually closed by the
presence of a warship. The government was sacrificing a great principle for
the sake of a temporary advantage.
This was not due to the mistake of a naval officer. It was the deliberate
action of the administration, and it is not unlikely that it will come back,
some time, to plague us when we are the neutral nation seeking for trade in
a belligerent port.
Proof of the fact that the whole Cabinet was involved is found in the
correspondence of Mr. Seward relating to the blockade off Charleston. The
Niagara had arrived home from Japan on April 24th, and was sent to
blockade Charleston as soon as possible, arriving off the bar on May 11th.
She remained there four days only, and then went away in search of a ship
that was said to be bringing arms from Belgium to a port further south, and
there was no warship off that harbor until May 28th (some accounts say the
29th), when the Minnesota came to take the Niagara’s place. The Harriet
Lane, a revenue cutter, used as a warship, did lie off the harbor on the 19th,
but for thirteen days Charleston was entirely uncovered.
On May 22, 1861, Lord Lyons, the British minister at Washington, in
the interest of British ships at Charleston, called the attention of Mr. Seward
to the fact that the Niagara had left Charleston on the 15th and that the
harbor was thereby opened. Replying to this, Mr. Seward wrote, along with
other things, the following:
“The blockade of the port of Charleston has been neither abandoned,
relinquished, nor remitted, as the letter of Her Britannic Majesty’s Consul
would lead you to infer. We are informed that the Niagara was replaced by
the steamer Harriet Lane, but that, owing to some accident, the latter vessel
failed to reach the station as ordered until a day or two after the Niagara
had left.
“I hasten, however, to express the dissent of this Government from the
position which seems to be assumed by your note, that that temporary
absence impairs the blockade and renders necessary a new notice of its
existence. This Government holds that the blockade took effect at

Charleston on the 11th day of this month, and that it will continually be in
effect until notice of its relinquishment shall be given by Proclamation of
the President of the United States.”
On May 13th the British ship Perthshire appeared off Pensacola,
having heard nothing of the blockade there, but she was told that Mobile
was open. So she went to Mobile, loaded cotton, and sailed on the 30th,
although the port was closed on the 26th by the Powhatan. She was
captured at sea on June 9th, by the Massachusetts, but released by the
flagship Niagara, whose captain “considered the capture illegal, as, by
order of the Department, no neutral vessel not having on board contraband
of war was to be detained or captured unless attempting to leave or enter a
blockaded port after the notification of blockade had been indorsed on her
register,” The owner made a claim for £200 compensation on account of the
detention of his ship, which had lost twelve days of her voyage; and the
claim was allowed and paid by the government of the United States.
The United States had now to abide by the law that its navy had in
1812 established. The ship of a neutral had a right to enter any port left
open by the government ships, and for several months after the President’s
proclamation nine-tenths of the 185 Southern harbors remained open.
This matter is of importance because of the right of neutrals in case the
blockade of a port was actually abandoned or raised even for an hour. The
opening of the port made it legally necessary for the blockaders to begin
over again as if no blockade had existed. The neutral entering an opened
port had a right to remain fifteen days, as the law was applied, after she was
officially notified of the blockade, while neutrals approaching a re-
blockaded port had the right to go away unmolested if they had not been
notified, actually or constructively, that the new blockade existed.
New Orleans was blockaded on May 26, 1861, by the Brooklyn, and
Galveston on June 2d by the South Carolina. For celerity of movement in
carrying out orders to blockade the different ports no man exceeded
Lieutenant Woodhull, for within forty-eight hours after receiving orders to
charter a steamer he had left Washington, obtained the Keystone State in the
Delaware, carried her to Hampton Roads, and reported ready for duty.
On the whole, it may be said that on July 1, 1861, the magnitude of the
work of blockading 185 ports and inlets began to be appreciated by the

Navy Department. Moreover, the hesitation and vacillation that had
characterized the early movements of the government were becoming
submerged. The determination of the people of the North to preserve the
American nation intact was growing, under the shame of early reverses
ashore, into a mighty tide that was to be irresistible at the last. A blockade
was established within the time mentioned, in which even the critical eye of
British men-o’-warsmen, sent especially to examine it in the interests of
British commerce, could find no flaw. When, on the 13th of July,
Commodore Pendergrast issued another proclamation saying Virginia and
North Carolina were legally closed, he stated the fact, and from that time on
the whole coast was, at worst, under guard, if not impassable. It was a
blockade that was to starve the hosts fighting against the flag into
abandoning their arms and returning once more to the ballot-box for a
redress of grievances.
This is by no means to say that the blockade was absolutely effectual.
Tales of the blockade-runners are to be told further on, but some of the
difficulties in the way of effecting a blockade, even when ships a-plenty
were on the coast, must be considered here. Mention has already been made
of the physical aspects of the coast. No more difficult coast for a blockade
can be found in the world. With this in mind, let the reader recall the fact
that the South in those days was about the only producer of cotton in the
world, and that the sap of the long-leaved pine was converted into tar and
turpentine, which were produced there in very great quantities. On the other
hand, consider that the South had scarcely anything in the way of factories.
The people there were dependent on commerce for their supplies of even
the most common necessities of life—for household goods, for clothing,
and even for some kinds of food. And as for the arms and supplies needed
for a war, there was one small powder mill, but nothing more in all the
South, unless, indeed, the existence of the Tredegar iron mills at Richmond
might be called a gun and engine factory.
Here, then, were the conditions for commerce: The South was the chief
source of cotton and naval stores, and it was in desperate need of
manufactured articles in a great variety. The blockade stopped all lawful
traffic between it and the rest of the world. The cotton for the mills of the
world was shut off. The mills of France and England were shut down for
want of raw material, and people starved to death in England because the

mills were shut down, and there was no way in which the unfortunate
operators could get money for food. We can afford to recall this fact when
we feel embittered by the attitude of a certain part of the English people
toward us during our struggle for national life. In Lancashire, England, no
less than ten million dollars had been given away by relief committees to
the starving mill hands within two years after the war began. Moreover, the
English government was not always one-sided, as will appear further on.
The price of cotton rose to a level that now seems fabulous in the
markets of the world. The prices of the goods that the people of the South
were accustomed to import rose as rapidly there, while munitions of war
commanded any price that might be asked by one who could supply them.
Here was a chance for profit such as the world had not seen since the wars
of Napoleon, and greed is the steam that turns the wheels of commerce.
Just off the Southern coast lay the Bahama Islands, while the Bermudas
were but a day’s sail farther away. It is 674 miles from Bermuda to
Wilmington, and 515 from Nassau to Charleston—three days’ run, or less,
in either case. Here were neutral ports to serve as a basis for the contraband
trade, and thither the contraband traders flocked as the pirates of old
swarmed about Jamaica.
Nassau was a natural resort for the blockade runners, for its people had
been wreckers—had “thanked God for a good wrack”—for time out of
mind. Besides that, it was not only near by the Southern coast, but it was
surrounded by a host of reefs awash, every one of which was neutral
territory, and was surrounded by its marine league of neutral waters, where
a blockade-runner was safe.
As the reader will remember, the blockade-running traffic was chiefly
in the hands of the British, although Yankees were found not unwilling to
turn a contraband dollar with one hand while they flapped the old flag in the
air with the other and shouted over Union victories vociferously.
At the beginning of the contraband business the vessels were loaded in
England, cleared for Bermuda or Nassau, and sent thence to the Southern
destination, Charleston being the chief port. Any vessel, even a condemned
sailing schooner, was counted good enough; in fact, worthless vessels were
preferred because the loss would be less in case of failure.

The touch at the neutral port was, of course, a mere device to deceive
the American government officials; but a change was soon made in that
game, for the courts held to the doctrine of the continuity of a voyage. If the
ultimate destination of the ship and cargo was Charleston, she might be
lawfully captured anywhere en route in spite of the fact that she was cleared
for a neutral port when the voyage began.

A Four-pound Cast-iron Gun Captured from a
Blockade-runner.
There being no appeal from this decision, the contraband dealers
resorted to shipping goods from England to the neutral port off the coast,
and there unloading the goods. The papers, of course, were made out in
proper form, under oath, giving the neutral port as the ultimate destination.
They showed, for instance, that a house in Nassau was buying shoes,
woollens, guns, gunpowder, swords, etc., sufficient to supply an army, and
it was called legitimate trade. Perjury was as common in this contraband
business as the drinking of wine. In fact, one cannot help quoting here the
words of the favorite “Naval History of Great Britain”—the words of James
where he is writing of American traders in the days of the “paper
blockades” of 1812. He says:
“Every citizen of every town in the United States, to which a creek
leads that can float a canoe, becomes henceforward ‘a merchant’; and the
grower of wheat or tobacco sends his son to a counting-house, that he may

be initiated in the profitable art of falsifying ship’s papers, and covering
belligerent property. Here the young American learns to bolt custom-house
oaths by the dozen, and to condemn a lie only when clumsily told, or when
timorously or inadequately applied. After a few years of probation, he is
sent on board a vessel as mate, or supercargo; and, in due time, besides
fabricating fraudulent papers, and swearing to their genuineness, he learns
(using a homely phrase) to humbug British officers, and to decoy and make
American citizens of British seamen.”
What Mr. James says of the American people as a whole, can be
truthfully said in substance of the British blockade-runners. They were an
infamous lot, without exception, and ever ready to sacrifice honor and risk
life so long as the number of pieces of gold was large enough.
But this is not meant to apply to the Confederates engaged in running
supplies through the blockaded lines. Their case was entirely different, for
they were legally belligerents, and to obtain supplies was, from their point
of view, a patriotic duty. So it might—so it usually did happen that a
blockade-runner carried one man (the pilot) whose courage and firmness
excite the heartiest approbation of every unprejudiced mind, while every
other member of the crew was at heart a coward who dared not fight the
blockaders in pursuit, and a sneak who would sell his soul for gold.
However, even the trick of transferring cargo at Nassau did not serve
them long, for “it was held that the ships carrying on this traffic to neutral
ports were confiscable, provided the ultimate destination of the cargo to a
blockaded port was known to the owner.”

An Eighteen-pound Rifle Captured from a
Blockade-runner.

For this “the United States were accused of sacrificing the rights of
neutrals, which they had hitherto upheld, to the interests of belligerents, and
of disregarding great principles for the sake of momentary advantage.” In
fact, however, Lord Stowell had held where a neutral, when trading
between two ports of a belligerent, had landed the cargo in a neutral port
and re-shipped it on another vessel, the continuity of the voyage was not
broken. Cargoes shipped in due form to Nassau and taken before reaching
that port having been declared lawful prizes in spite of perjury, the
contraband traders then adopted the bold expedient of shipping their goods
by regular lines to New York and there re-shipping them to Nassau and
Bermuda; but the moment this trade attracted attention the New York
customs officials were instructed to refuse clearances to ships “which,
whatever their ostensible destination, were believed to be intended for
Southern ports, or whose cargoes were in imminent danger of falling into
the hands of the enemy.”

A Six-pound Gun Captured from a Blockade-runner.
The Nassau merchants got the British authorities to inquire into this
refusal to clear ships to their port, the ground taken being that an unjust
discrimination was made against them, but after considerable
correspondence the British decided to let Uncle Sam alone in that matter.
The subject is of special interest for the reason that it shows how strong the
American government is in an emergency, even though the Executive is
very often obliged to wait on Congress before making a move.

A Nassau View—Along the Shore East of the
Town.
From a photograph by Rau.

So, at last, the contraband traders were obliged to rely entirely on their
ability as sneaks. The goods were sent to Nassau and Bermuda as before,
though, meantime, Havana, Cuba, and Matamoras, Mexico, on the Rio
Grande, were of considerable importance. Cargoes of Southern products
were safe after reaching these ports, if cargoes of contraband goods en route
to them were not. Moreover, there was a change in the forms of ships used
that made these nearby ports absolutely necessary to the traffic; for soon
after the blockading fleets became efficient the use of condemned ships as
blockade-runners was abandoned and smaller and swifter vessels were
adopted. The transition from these to vessels built especially to run between
the islands and the Confederate ports was easy and was quickly made. The
inventive talent of the traders was worthy of a better cause. Low and
slender hulls, with the most powerful engines and twin screws or feathering
paddles, were adopted. The paint used was of an obscuring color. There was
no spar save that necessary to support a crow’s nest for the lookout. The one
thing that they could not keep from betraying them, at the last, was the
smoke, but at one time they burned anthracite coal, and they stopped using

it only when the American government prohibited the export of it. As time
passed and the strangulation caused by the blockade became more severe,
the skill and ingenuity of the blockaders increased, so that the traffic never
was stopped. There was, at one time, talk in Richmond of having the
Confederate government take the traffic into its own hands absolutely,
because of the demoralization caused by the illegitimate traders. They
brought what they could sell at the most profit, of course. They brought
liquors where medicines were needed, and silks and fancy slippers in place
of the necessities of life for which the people suffered. It is a pity that the
change was not made, for then one might have considered the blockade-
runners with other feelings than disgust.

Nassau Schooners.
From a photograph by Rau.

But if the traffic never ceased absolutely, the constriction of the
blockade was and is now manifest. It was so efficient that one can scarcely
read of the effects produced by it in the South without tears. One can
believe that the blockade was a merciful as well as a just measure of war in
that it shortened the struggle more than any other measure, and so saved
many lives on both sides; but it is a pitiful fact that those who suffered most
from the effects of the blockade were the women and the little ones. There
are many tiny graves in the South that were dug because the blockade
excluded the medicines needed by the sick.

Lest the reader think the language used here regarding the foreign
blockade-runners is too strong, a story told by one of them, Thomas E.
Taylor (see p. 110, “Running the Blockade”), shall be given. Taylor was a
leader in the business. He ran the first steel ship (the Banshee) built
especially for the purpose. Among other vessels under his control was the
Will-o’-the-Wisp. She was a wretched ship, and here is what he says:
“I found her a constant source of delay and expenditure and I decided
to sell her. After having her cobbled up with plenty of putty and paint, I was
fortunate enough to open negotiations with some Jews with a view to her
purchase. Having settled all preliminaries, we arranged for a trial trip, and
after a very sumptuous lunch I proceeded to run her over a measured mile
for the benefit of the would-be purchasers. I need scarcely mention that we
subjected her machinery to the utmost strain, bottling up steam to a pressure
of which our present Board of Trade, with its motherly care for our lives,
would express strong disapproval. The log line was whisked merrily over
the stern of the Will-o’-the-Wisp, with the satisfactory result that she logged
17½ knots. The Jews were delighted, so was I; and the bargain was
clinched.”
As to the legal status of a blockade-runner, Taylor says: “The
blockading force is entitled to treat such a ship in all respects as an enemy,
and to use any means recognized in civilized warfare to drive off, capture or
destroy her. A crew so captured may be treated as prisoners of war, nor is
any resistance to capture permitted, and a single blow or shot in his own
defence turns the blockade-runner into a pirate.” In the same line is what
Wilson’s “Iron Clads in Action” says regarding the fact that the crews of
captured blockade-runners “at least once or twice rose up on the prize crew
and recaptured the ship. It was a big risk—piracy upon the high seas—with
the penalty of death if blood was shed.”
One of the cases wherein the crew recaptured the ship from the prize
crew is described very well in the Mercantile Marine Magazine (London)
for June, 1862, p. 177. The story begins: “On Saturday, May 3, the rooms of
the Liverpool Mercantile Marine Association were crowded almost to
suffocation by the merchants and Mercantile Marine officers of Liverpool,
to witness the presentation of a magnificent testimonial to Captain William
Wilson, of the British ship Emily St. Pierre, for his pluck and gallantry in
recapturing his ship which had been seized by the United States cruiser

James Adger, off Charleston.” He had been guilty of “piracy upon the high
seas,” but 170 Liverpool merchants united to give him a silver tea and
coffee service, the association named gave him a gold medal, the owners of
the ship gave him 2,000 guineas, and his crew gave him a sextant. The
captain, in his little speech, said that the “token of your kindness” would
remind the British sailor that “his efforts for the right and true will not be
lost sight of nor go unrewarded.” The story is well worth quoting as
showing how men, naturally inclined to “the right and true,” may be led by
the exigencies of trade to applaud and reward even “piracy upon the high
seas.”
The reader should observe here that for a captured crew of one
belligerent to rise against a prize crew of the other belligerent is a very
different matter from this act of “piracy.”
As already said, the blockade-runners were at first chiefly old sailing
ships of various rigs or old steamers, the idea being to risk as little capital as
possible in this illegitimate trade while making the utmost profit—not an
unknown plan in legitimate trade, and never a wise one. Small schooners
were used all through the wars to run the numerous shoal-water inlets along
the coast, but the real interest in the blockade-runners begins when the
Liverpool merchants began to build steamers especially designed for that
purpose—build them without hindrance on the part of their government.

The Blockade-runner Teaser.
From a photograph made in 1864.

Taylor, as said, was the first to carry out one of these swift vessels, and
he describes her as follows:
“The new blockade-runner was a paddle boat, built of steel, on
extraordinarily fine lines, 214 feet long and 20 feet beam, and drew only 8
feet of water. Her masts were mere poles without yards, and with the least
possible rigging. In order to attain greater speed in a sea-way she was built
with a turtle-back deck forward. She was of 217 tons net register, and had
an anticipated sea speed of eleven knots, with a coal consumption of thirty
tons a day. Her crew, which included three engineers and twelve firemen,
consisted of thirty-six hands all told.” And she was a type of the best sort,
although they eventually reached a speed of seventeen knots.
At Nassau “everything aloft was taken down, till nothing was left
standing but the lower masts, with small cross-trees for a lookout man on
the fore, and the boats were lowered to the level of the rails. The whole ship
was then painted a sort of dull white, the precise shade of which was so
nicely ascertained by experience before the end of the war that a properly
dressed runner on a dark night was absolutely indiscernible at a cable’s
length. So particular were captains on this point that some of them even
insisted on their crews wearing white at night, holding that one black figure
on the bridge or on deck was enough to betray an otherwise invisible vessel.
“The reckless loading, to which high profits and the perquisites allowed
to officers led, is to a landsman inconceivable. That men should be found
willing to put to sea at all in these frail craft piled like hay wagons is
extraordinary enough, but that they should do so in the face of a vigilant
and active blockading force, and do it successfully, seems rather an
invention of romance than a commonplace occurrence of our own time.”
So prepared, the steamer sneaked away from port, fled from every sail
and every smoke, crossed the Gulf Stream by daylight in order to determine
her position uninfluenced by the current, and struck in on the coast at night.
The light on the blockading flagship was commonly used to locate the
harbor, and when this was seen the runner either ran away around the end of
the squadron and slipped in along the coast or else plunged boldly through
under the guns of the flagship.
The Banshee on her first inward trip received $250 per ton in gold for
freight on war material. She carried out 100 tons of tobacco at $350 per ton,

and 500 bales of cotton, that yielded $250 net per bale.
In January, 1865, Jefferson Davis, “in a message to Congress on this
subject, said that the number of vessels arriving at only two ports—
Charleston and Wilmington—from November the first to December the
sixth, had been forty-three, and that only a very small portion of those
outward bound had been captured; that out of 11,796 bales of cotton
shipped since July the first, 1864, but 1,272 bales had been lost. And the
special report of the Secretary of the Treasury in relation to the same matter
stated that there had been imported at the ports of Wilmington and
Charleston since October 26th, 1864, 8,632,000 pounds of meat, 1,507,000
pounds of lead, 1,933,000 pounds of saltpetre, 546,000 pairs of shoes,
316,000 pairs of blankets, 520,000 pounds of coffee, 69,000 rifles, 97
packages of revolvers, 2,639 packages of medicines, 43 cannon, with a very
large quantity of other articles. From March 1st, 1864, to January 1st, 1865,
the value of the shipments of cotton on Confederate government account
was shown by the Secretary’s report to have been $5,296,000 in specie, of
which $1,500,000 had been shipped out between July 1st and December
1st, 1864.
“A list of vessels which were running the blockade from Nassau and
other ports, in the period intervening between November, 1861, and March,
1864, showed that 84 steamers were engaged; of these, 37 were captured by
the enemy, 12 were totally lost, 11 were lost and the cargoes partially saved,
and one foundered at sea.
“They made 363 trips to Nassau and 65 to other parts. Among the
highest number of runs made were those of the Fanny, which ran 18 times,
and the Margaret and Jessie, which performed the same feat and was
captured. Out of 425 runs from Nassau alone (including 100 schooners),
only 62—about one in seven—were unsuccessful.”
The following estimate of the disbursements and profits of a blockade-
runner is taken from Scharf, as is the quotation above. The estimate refers
to the last part of the war, when the Confederate government took a half of
the cargo space of runners:

One captain, per month $5,000 00
First officer, $600, second do., $250; third do., $170 1,020 00

One boatswain 160 00
One carpenter 160 00
One purser 1,000 00
One steward, $150; three assistants, $80 330 00
One cook, $150; two assistants, $120 270 00
One engineer and three assistants 3,500 00
Twelve firemen and coal-heavers 2,400 00
240 tons of coal at $20 4,800 00
Rations for crew 2,700 00
Oil, tallow, and packing 1,000 00
Stevedores 5,000 00
Pilotage, out and in 3,000 00
Sea insurance 3,500 00
Wear and tear 4,250 00
Incidental expenses 1,000 00
Interest 875 00
Risks, 25 per cent 37,500 00
Provisions for passengers 3,000 00
$80,265 00
Earnings, out and home:
800 bales of cotton for government $40,000 00
800 bales of cotton for owners 40,000 00
Return freight for owners 40,000 00
Return freight for government 40,000 00
Passengers, out and home 12,000 00
$172,000 00
Leaving a monthly profit of $91,735 00

On the other hand, it should be observed that the Federal ships captured
over 1,000 prizes during the war. One of these, the Memphis, paid
$510,914.07 in prize money to her captors, two or three paid over $400,000,
and whole fleets yielded from $100,000 to $300,000. The Banshee, of
which Taylor boasts, paid $104,948.48 to the Yankee crews of the Fulton
and Grand Gulf. Blockade-running, like privateering in 1812, paid a few
firms handsomely. The Frasers of Charleston are said to have cleared

$20,000,000 in gold, but many others lost heavily—the Jews who bought
the Will-o’-the-Wisp, for instance. It was a thoroughly disreputable
business, but so much of the story must be told, if only to show the
character of part of the opposition which the government faced in the Civil
War.

CHAPTER III

LOSS OF THE NORFOLK NAVY YARD
EFFECTIVE WORK DONE BY SOUTHERN NAVAL OFFICERS
WHO CONTINUED TO WEAR THE NATIONAL UNIFORM
THAT THEY MIGHT THE MORE READILY BETRAY THE
NATIONAL GOVERNMENT—THE SECRETARY OF THE
NAVY WAS DECEIVED AND THE COMMANDANT AT
NORFOLK DEMORALIZED—WILLIAM MAHONE’S TRICKS
ADDED TO THE DEMORALIZATION AT THE YARD, AND IT
WAS ABANDONED AT LAST IN A SHAMEFUL PANIC—
PROPERTY THAT WAS WORTH MILLIONS OF DOLLARS,
AND GUNS THAT TOOK THOUSANDS OF LIVES, FELL
INTO THE CONFEDERATES’ HANDS—THE FIRST NAVAL
BATTLE OF THE WAR—THREE LITTLE WOODEN VESSELS
WITH SEVEN SMALL GUNS SENT AGAINST A WELL-BUILT
FORT MOUNTING THIRTEEN GUNS—THE HAZARDOUS
WORK OF PATROLLING THE POTOMAC.

The first actual battle of the war in which the navy took part occurred
on May 20 and 21, 1861, and resulted in the capture of the Confederate
forts that had been erected on the Potomac River at Acquia Creek to shut off
communication between Washington and the sea. As the reader will
remember, there was but one railroad running from the North to Washington
in those days. The authorities of Maryland had decided that they would
keep their State neutral during the impending strife, acting, of course, on the
theory of State sovereignty then held in the South, and had prohibited the
transportation of troops across their State. The Confederates actually
believed that this prohibition would prevent the Northern troops coming to
the defence of the nation’s capital overland, and that resort to ships would
be had in strengthening the forces at Washington. To head off the ships, the

Confederates swarmed to the bank of the Potomac River, and there were
Confederate fortifications with colors flying, in plain view of Washington
itself. The Confederates, in the few weeks following the secession of
Virginia, were confident of capturing the national capital.

Washington, D. C., and Its Vicinity.
1. Matthias Point. 2. Acquia Creek. 3. Shipping Point. 4. Fredericksburg. 5. Mt. Vernon. 6.
Alexandria. 7. Orange & Alexandria RR. 8. Loudon & Hampshire RR. 9. Manassas Junction.
10. Bull Run. 11. Centreville. 12. Fairfax Court House. 13. Vienna. 14 Falls Church. 15.
Arlington House. 16. Chain Bridge. 17. Aqueduct Bridge. 18. Long Bridge. 19. Georgetown.
20. Washington. 21. President’s House. 22. Smithsonian Institution. 23. Patent Office. 24.
General Post Office. 25. Capitol. 26. Navy Yard. 27. Arsenal. 28. Maryland shore. 29. Fort
Washington. 30. Indian Head. 31. Maryland Point. 32. Port Tobacco. 33. Forts Scott, Albany,
Runyon, Richardson, etc.

It is easy to show there was really some basis for the Confederate
confidence. While the North groped and discussed, the Confederates were
at work collecting material for war. Officers who, like Semmes, had left the
service of the nation for that of the State, had gone North—communications
being still open—and had purchased arms and ammunition in considerable
quantities. They were very near to getting good steamers, too; and a patriot
now reads with pleasure the keen words of scorn with which those officers
spoke afterwards of the Northern men who were so ready to sell these

goods—of the stay-at-home-and-make-money patriots. But the South had
not stopped at mere buying. Indeed, all the supplies purchased combined
were as a pistol-shot to a torpedo in comparison with what they obtained
when the Norfolk Navy Yard was abandoned to them.
It is certain that the whole story of this event will never be told; for it
was brought about by officers of the navy, who, after serving honorably for
many years under the flag, were not only willing to turn on the flag, as
many did with satisfied consciences, but were willing to stoop to the
shameful work of pretending to be loyal advisers of the nation’s naval
Secretary when they were secretly plotting the destruction of the nation.
While yet Virginia had not passed the ordinance of secession these men
“lost no opportunity to impress upon the mind of the Secretary of the Navy
the importance of doing nothing to offend the State of Virginia.” These
naval officers, who were working day and night to overthrow the
government, stopped at nothing. The commandant of the navy yard at
Washington was one of them. In the midst of his plottings his daughter was
married to one of the younger plotters, and the others of the gang were, of
course, present at the wedding. “The house was everywhere festooned with
the American flag, even to the bridal bed.” And down at the Norfolk Navy
Yard one of the Southern officers went to Commodore McCauley, after the
Pensacola Navy Yard had been turned over to the Confederates, and said:
“You have no Pensacola officers here, Commodore; we will never desert
you; we will stand by you to the last, even to the death.” And this was said
with the deliberate intent of keeping the commodore from doing anything
that might save the nation’s property for the use of the government. One
need not search long for words to describe such actions.

Hiram Paulding.
From an engraving by Hall.

Secretary Welles called Capt. Hiram Paulding, an officer of known
loyalty, to advise him. Paulding broke up the nest of scoundrels who wore
the uniform that they might the more easily betray the flag, but it was then
too late to prevent the accomplishment of the object for which they had
chiefly labored—the betraying of the Norfolk Navy Yard into the hands of
the enemy. Large bodies of Confederate troops were already gathering at
Norfolk, although Virginia had not passed her secession ordinances.
Commodore McCauley was an old man and no match for the young
scoundrels who at Norfolk, as in Washington, held on to their commissions
and drew their pay up to the last day possible. They were incessant in their
labors to prevent anything being done that would move a ship or a gun from
the yard or add a loyal man to its forces.
“Early in April”—note that it was not until April—“the Department
began to get very uneasy for the safety of the navy yard.” “The Department
was most anxious to get the Merrimac away, but was informed by

Commodore McCauley that it would take a month to put her machinery in
working order.” No one seemed “to reflect that a few armed towboats with
marines on board” could have taken every ship from the yard to an
anchorage under Fortress Monroe.
However, on March 31st, 250 seamen were ordered from the New York
Navy Yard to Norfolk, and fifty seamen were transferred to the revenue
cutter Harriet Lane, which was sent to Norfolk. “On April 11th Commander
James Alden was ordered to take command of the Merrimac and Chief
Engineer Isherwood was sent to Norfolk to get the ship’s engines in
working order.” “On the 14th the work was commenced, and on the 17th
the engines were in working order—so much for the commandant’s
assertion that it would take a month to get the ship ready to move.” These
quotations are from Admiral Porter’s “Naval History of the Civil War.” But
he does not say McCauley was disloyal. McCauley had merely believed the
wilful lies of those under him.

A View of the Norfolk Navy
Yard.
From a photograph by Cook.

It is cheering to read that “the disloyalty did not at that time extend to
the mechanics,” and that “they worked day and night” to get the ship ready.
“Then forty-four firemen and coal heavers volunteered for the service of
taking the Merrimac out.” At this Commodore McCauley, mindful of his

orders to do nothing to excite the suspicions of hostile intent, said “that next
morning would be time enough.” Next morning, there being a good head of
steam on, word was again sent that she was ready, but he replied that he had
decided not to send her out. “He gave as a reason the obstructions that had
been placed in the channel, and when the anxious Alden told him they could
clear away the obstructions he merely ordered the fires drawn. He had
become utterly demoralized, and his demoralization was infectious.”
At about this time came Captain Paulding in the Pawnee from
Washington with a regiment of Massachusetts volunteers. His instructions
were to “save what he could and act as he thought proper.” When he arrived
the Southern officers had just resigned, and the mechanics, being citizens of
Virginia, had been induced to leave the yard in a body. It was reported that
thousands of Virginia militia were coming to reinforce the Confederates
gathering about the yard. The report was due to a trick of William Mahone,
afterwards a noted practical politician of the State. He was president of the
Norfolk & Petersburg Railroad, and ran empty cars up the line, loaded on a
mob sent there for the purpose, and brought them back “with every man
yelling with all his might.” This was on April 19, 1861. The next day
Confederate troops did arrive, and the demoralization in the yard was
completed. It was the most disgraceful panic in the history of the nation, for
it was a panic that came on when not a gun had been fired, and the only
overt acts of war were the robbing of a government powder magazine and
the sinking of a few hulks (Mahone did this also), so that the government
officers would think the channel was being obstructed.
“The broadside of the Germantown, which was all ready for sea and
only waiting a crew, would have saved the navy yard against attack,
overawed Norfolk and Portsmouth, and prevented the channel from being
obstructed by the Confederates.” So says Porter. Elsewhere he adds, that the
“five heavy guns on a side on board the Pennsylvania” with fifty good
seamen on board, “could have bid defiance to 5,000 Confederates in arms
and held Norfolk and Portsmouth.”
Nevertheless, “after the arrival of the Pawnee had made the yard
doubly secure, the shells were drawn from the Pennsylvania’s guns, and the
guns spiked.” Every other gun in the yard, afloat and ashore, except 200,
was spiked. Men with sledge-hammers ran about the yard, vainly trying to
knock the trunnions from the guns in store. Others soaked the decks of the

ships and the buildings with tar and turpentine. Others laid a mine in the dry
dock—put twenty-six barrels (2,600 pounds) of powder there. Only the
Pawnee and the Cumberland, which were full-manned, escaped the work of
the destroyers.
“It was a beautiful starlight night, April 20th, when all the preparations
were completed. The people of Norfolk and Portsmouth were wrapped in
slumber, little dreaming that in a few hours the ships and public works
which were so essential to the prosperity of the community would be a mass
of ruins, and hundreds of people would be without employment and without
food for their families. The Pawnee had towed the Cumberland out of the
reach of the fire, and laid at anchor to receive on board those who were to
fire the public property. Commodore McCauley had gone to bed that night,
worn out with excitement and anxiety, under the impression that the force
that had arrived at Norfolk was for the purpose of holding the yard and
relieving him of responsibility, and when he was called at midnight and
informed that the torch would be applied to everything, he could hardly
realize the situation, and was chagrined and mortified at the idea of
abandoning his post without any attempt to defend it.
“At 2.30 a.m., April 21st, a rocket from the Pawnee gave the signal; the
work of destruction commenced with the Merrimac, and in ten minutes she
was one vast sheet of flame. In quick succession the trains to the other ships
and buildings were ignited and the surrounding country brilliantly
illuminated.”

The Old New Hampshire at
the Norfolk Navy Yard.
From a photograph by Cook.

At the beginning of April, 1861, there were stored at this yard 2,000
cannon, of which 300 were new Dahlgrens; 150 tons of powder, besides
vast quantities of loaded shells, machinery, castings, material for ship-
building, and ordnance and equipment stores—all in great quantities. It
contained a first-class stone dock. The steam frigate Merrimac was there
undergoing repairs, the shops of the yard being well fitted for such work.
The sailing sloops-of-war Germantown and Plymouth, of twenty-two guns
each, and the brig Dolphin, of four guns, were there, not manned, but fit for
sea. Six other sailing ships, including the famous United States, that were
not of much use, but worth something, were also there. On the whole, the
material of this yard was of more value, probably, than that in any two
beside it in the country. The Confederates estimated the value of the
property abandoned to them at $4,810,056.68 in gold. “But the greatest
misfortune to the Union caused by the destruction of the Navy Yard was the
loss of at least twelve hundred fine guns, most of which were uninjured. A
number of them were quickly mounted at Sewell’s Point to keep our ships
from approaching Norfolk; others were sent to Hatteras Inlet, Ocracoke,
Roanoke Island, and other points in the Sounds of North Carolina. Fifty-
three of them were mounted at Port Royal, others at Fernandina and at the
defences of New Orleans. They were met with at Fort Henry, Fort
Donelson, Island No. 10, Memphis, Vicksburg, Grand Gulf, and Port

Hudson. We found them up the Red River as far as the gunboats penetrated,
and took possession of some of them on the cars at Duvall’s Bluff, on White
River, bound for Little Rock. They gave us a three hours’ hard fight at
Arkansas Post, but in the end they all returned to their rightful owners,
many of them indented with Union shot, and not a few permanently
disabled.
“Had it not been for the guns captured at Norfolk and Pensacola, the
Confederates would have found it a difficult matter to arm their
fortifications for at least a year after the breaking out of hostilities, at the
expiration of which time they began to manufacture their own ordnance and
import it from abroad. Great as was, therefore, the loss of our ships, it was
much less than the loss of our guns.” So says Porter.

Burning of the Vessels at the Norfolk Navy Yard.
Rightly considered, the abandonment of the Norfolk Navy Yard was as
great a misfortune to the South as to the North, for it needlessly prolonged
and intensified a conflict that could have but one end. No one can estimate
the number of lives that these guns cost both sides—the fortifications that
were erected and the battles that were fought in consequence of their falling
into Confederate hands. But if it took the Confederates a whole year to get
at the work of casting cannon, it is not unreasonable to suppose that one
year of the war would have been saved had the government held its own.

It was with guns that were needlessly abandoned at Norfolk that the
Confederates made their first fight against the Federal navy—the battle at
Acquia Creek. Something like thirty miles below Washington the Potomac
makes a wide sweep to the east. Two creeks enter it there from the west—
one, right on the point of the elbow, being known as Potomac Creek, and
the other, that enters a little way to the north of the elbow, being called
Acquia Creek. There is a considerable bluff on the point between Acquia
Creek and the river, known in those days as Split Rock Bluff. Because this
creek was the terminus of a railroad leading to Fredericksburg, Virginia, and
because it was believed by the Confederates that the point commanded the
Potomac River, three batteries were erected. The Confederate accounts say
that there were thirteen guns here, of which two were eight-inch Dahlgrens,
brought from Norfolk. The Confederates completed this battery about May
14, 1861. They had decided to abandon Alexandria whenever the Federals
chose to take it, and make Acquia Creek their frontier post on the river.
Accordingly, when the Federals, under cover of the Pawnee, Capt.
S. C. Rowan, crossed over on the 24th, the Confederates moved out, and
there was no bloodshed until the insane hotel-keeper, Jackson, shot Colonel
Ellsworth because the Confederate flag was taken down from the Marshall
House. Then the Potomac flotilla, which was under Fleet Officer James H.
Ward, was ordered to attack the Acquia Creek batteries.
In one respect that order was one of the most remarkable ever issued in
the navy, up to that date, for Ward had under him the Freeborn, a wooden
paddle-wheel steamer of 250 tons, carrying three guns, the largest being a
thirty-two-pounder smooth-bore; the Anacostia, a screw steamer of 100
tons, carrying two little howitzers, and the Resolute, a steamer of ninety
tons, carrying two howitzers. In all, three frail wooden vessels, carrying
seven small guns, were sent to attack a well-planned, well-manned fort with
not less than thirteen guns, of which the worst was better than the best
afloat before it. This matter is especially worth considering in connection
with what a Secretary of the Navy is likely to do in future if the nation is
ever again unexpectedly obliged to fight.
However, Ward was a great man. He had already distinguished himself
as a writer on gunnery and naval tactics and as an inventor. He now showed
his pluck by bravely attacking the forts.

It was on Friday, May 31, 1861, at 10.30 o’clock at night, that the first
shot of this war was fired from a naval ship at a fort. In all, fourteen shots
were fired, and the Confederates fired fifty-six at the ships. The forts were
not damaged, and one Confederate soldier lost a finger. However, the
Confederates abandoned the battery they had erected at the water level and
took the guns to the top of the bluff. Next day, the Pawnee having come to
reinforce the fleet, the attack was renewed, and for five hours the four little
steamers hurled their shot at the forts. The Confederates fired over 1,000
shot in return. It is instructive to note that no one was hurt on either side by
all that firing. The ships were struck several times, but “there was no
irreparable damage done.” The attack failed absolutely.
Ward was afterwards killed in an attack on the Confederate forts
erected at Matthias Point, fifteen miles or so farther down the river. This
was on June 27, 1861. The Federal forces attempted to land there and were
driven off easily. But for the coolness of Lieut. J. C. Chaplin, of the
Pawnee, who rallied his force, in spite of a heavy fire, the whole landing
party would have been captured. Ward was the only one killed, but four
others were wounded.
On the whole, the work of the navy on the Potomac was confined to
patrolling the stream for the purpose of preventing the Confederates of the
two slave-holding States that bordered it from communicating with each
other. The men engaged in it have not received and never can receive the
credit they deserve for what they did, simply because there was nothing
striking about the work. More unfortunate still, they had steamers that were
wholly inadequate to the work, and the fighting, when any was done, was
like that at Acquia Creek—ineffective necessarily. Instead of an opportunity
to win fame, the men found toil of the most wearisome kind, and as a
reward for it they got the reproaches of ignorant editors at the North and the
jeers of exultant editors at the South. Nevertheless, this much was done:
The river was kept open, so far as was needed, for the transportation of
troops and supplies, to and fro, and when, in 1862, the Confederates found
that their forts could not stop traffic, even though their guns had an effective
range greater than the width of the river, they retired from the bank of the
Potomac altogether.

CHAPTER IV

A STORY OF CONFEDERATE PRIVATEERS
THEY DID PLENTY OF DAMAGE FOR A TIME, BUT THEIR
CAREER WAS BRIEF—CAPTURE OF THE FIRST OF THE
CLASS, AND TRIAL OF HER CREW ON A CHARGE OF
PIRACY—REASONS WHY THEY COULD NOT BE HELD AS
CRIMINALS—LUCK OF THE JEFFERSON DAVIS—A NEGRO
WHO RECAPTURED A CONFEDERATE PRIZE TO ESCAPE
THE TERRORS OF SLAVERY—A SKIPPER WHO THOUGHT
A GOVERNMENT FRIGATE WAS A MERCHANTMAN—THE
“NEST” BEHIND CAPE HATTERAS.

From a blockade of the ports of the Southern States it was a short and
natural step for the navy to land and effectually close some port to
Confederate commerce by occupying it. But before telling the story of the
first expedition organized for this purpose the story of the Confederate
privateers—real privateers, as distinguished from Confederate cruisers like
the Alabama—will be told, for the reason that it was the work of these
privateers that in good part led the government to decide on the first
expedition for occupying a Southern port.
As a matter of fact, the idea of blockading the Southern ports was born
of the determination of the Confederates to commission privateers. The
sequence of events was as follows: The Confederates captured Fort Sumter
on April 13, 1861. On the 15th President Lincoln called for 75,000 troops to
protect the government property and enforce the laws of the nation in the
seceding States. On the 17th Jefferson Davis “published a counter
proclamation inviting applications for letters of marque and reprisal to be
granted under the seal of the Confederate States against ships and property
of the United States and their citizens.” The quotation is from Scharf’s

“Confederate States Navy.” It was on receipt of this that Mr. Lincoln, on the
19th, ordered the blockade of the Southern ports.
However, Mr. Davis did not issue any commissions to privateers until
after the Confederate Congress had passed, on May 6, 1861, an act
authorizing him to do so. This act provided such safeguards as had ruled
American privateers in the War of 1812. On May 14th another act
supplemented the first by regulating the sale of prizes and the distribution
of the proceeds.
Sufficient time has passed since that war to enable at least the younger
generation of Northern-born men to view its events judicially, and it is
therefore likely that no student of history will now be found to deny that the
letters of marque subsequently issued under these acts of the Confederate
Congress were entirely legal. The Confederates were entitled to the rights of
belligerents—they at least became entitled to them the moment that
President Lincoln issued his proclamation blockading the Southern ports.
There is no point of international law more firmly established now than that
a proclamation of a blockade carries with it a concession that war exists
between the blockaders and the blockaded. And this is worth remembering,
because Secretary of State Seward was unwilling to admit it for a very long
time after a state of war did actually exist. At the same time it was entirely
natural that Northern shipping men should have called these privateers
pirates. Business operations tend to concentrate one’s nerves in his pocket
and to render them so sensitive that any diminution of weight in the pocket
causes excruciating agony. Naturally these would not hesitate to ignore the
belligerent rights of an enemy, nor to use harsh and unjust language when
they felt this pain.
Availing themselves of the invitation to do so, a number of citizens of
Charleston equipped the pilot boat Savannah with an eighteen-pounder,
mounted on a pivot; procured a crew of thirty men, all told, under Capt.
Thomas H. Baker; supplied them with small arms and ammunition, and sent
them out under a commission which, because it was the first issued, shall be
given in full, as follows:

“Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, To all who shall see
these Presents, Greeting:

“Know ye, That by virtue of the power vested in me by law, I have
commissioned, and do hereby commission, have authorized, and do
hereby authorize, the schooner or vessel called the Savannah (more
particularly described in the schedule hereunto annexed), whereof T.
Harrison Baker is commander, to act as a private armed vessel in the
service of the Confederate States, on the high seas, against the United
States of America, their ships, vessels, goods, and effects, and those of
their citizens, during the pendency of the war now existing between the
said Confederate States and the said United States.
“This commission to continue in force until revoked by the
President of the Confederate States for the time being.
“Given under my hand and the seal of the Confederate States, at
Montgomery, this eighteenth day of May, A.D., 1861.
“(Signed) Jefferson Davis.
“By the President. R. Toombs, Secretary of State.
“schedule of description of the vessel.
“Name—Schooner Savannah. Tonnage—Fifty-three 41/95th tons.
Armament—One large pivot gun and small arms. No. of crew—thirty.”

THE SAVANNAH

THE CONFEDERATE STATES PRIVATEER savannah, LETTER OF MARQUE
No. 1, CAPTURED OFF CHARLESTON, BY THE U.S. BRIG PERRY, LIEUT.
PARROTT.
Entered according to act of Congress in the Year 1861 by E K KIMMEL 59 NASSAU
ST. N.Y. in the Clerks Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The Savannah sailed out of Charleston on the night of Sunday, June 2,
1861, and, eluding the Federal frigate Minnesota, went cruising for
Northern merchantmen. The schooner was small, and the weather hot. The
crew slept on deck that night, and, as was testified in court later on, they
were not feeling very well next morning. In fact, “being on a flare-up the
night before, not much was said,” even when a sail was seen, and it became
certain that the sail “was a Yankee vessel.” Eventually the sail was
overhauled. It proved to be the brig Joseph, of Rockland, Maine, Capt.
Thies N. Meyer, bound, sugar laden, from Cardenas, Cuba, to Philadelphia.
The brig had a crew of six, all told. She was easily taken, and with a prize

crew of six men was sent to Georgetown, South Carolina, where she was
condemned and sold in the usual form.
Nevertheless, the cruise was not a paying venture, for soon after
sending the prize away the Savannah chased the government man-o’-war
brig Perry, thinking her another merchantman, and was, in consequence,
captured. The Perry turned her over to the Minnesota; the Minnesota towed
her into Charleston harbor near enough to let her owners learn of their loss,
and then sent her North. At New York the Savannah’s crew was thrown into
prison as pirates, and on July 16, 1861, they were indicted for piracy. The
printed report of the trial that followed makes an interesting book of 385
pages. The accused as a whole claimed the rights of prisoners of war, but in
spite of the plain evidence that they were entitled to such rights, the jury
disagreed. Perhaps when one considers the state of the public mind in the
North at that time, the wonder is that they were not convicted and hanged.
Having been remanded in irons to prison, the Confederate authorities
took up their case. The victory the Confederates had obtained at Manassas
enabled them to put a number of Federal prisoners into irons to abide the
fate of the Savannah’s crew. The Federal officers so confined included five
colonels, two lieutenant-colonels, three majors, and three captains. Mr.
Davis sent an envoy with a protest to Washington. Nothing was done about
the matter just then.
Meantime, on October 25, 1861, a member of the crew of the privateer
Jefferson Davis was convicted on a charge of piracy, and on the 29th three
others of the crew were convicted. Nevertheless, on February 3, 1862, all of
the alleged pirates, with thirty-four men from the privateer Petrel, were sent
to Fort Lafayette as prisoners of war, and the date is of some importance
because the change of policy, even though it were compelled by a threat of
retaliation, was another official acknowledgment that the government had a
very great war upon its hands instead of a local insurrection of no concern
to the rest of the world.
Much more interesting than that of the Savannah are the stories of
some of the other privateers. The Jefferson Davis, for instance, had a career
that approached that of some of the American privateers in 1812. She was
built by Northern capitalists in 1854 for a slaver, and was captured on the
coast of Africa with many slaves on board, and sent to Charleston. A fine

Baltimore clipper she was, and when the war came she was seized and
armed with three eighteen-pounders and two twelves. She got out to sea on
June 28th, having seventy men before the mast. On July 6th, off Hatteras,
she got the brig John Welsh, loaded with sugar. On the same day the
schooner Enchantress was captured, and the next day, being but 150 miles
from Sandy Hook, she took the schooner S. J. Waring, that was bound to
Montevideo with a valuable cargo. The first-named prizes were sent to
Southern ports; but William Tillman, a colored man, recaptured the Waring,
and one fact connected with the adventure makes the story worth telling.
The Davis placed a prize crew of five men on the Waring, Mr.
Montague Amiel, a Charleston pilot, being the prize master. William
Tillman, who was the Waring’s cook; Brice Mackinnon, a passenger, and
two of the Waring’s seamen were left on board of her, and she was headed
toward the South. The Northern men at once made friends with their
captors. The negro continued to cook perforce, but he made no objection to
the work, and the two Northern seamen volunteered to make the best of a
bad streak of luck by helping to work the ship.
But because Tillman knew that he would become a slave as soon as he
was carried into a Southern port, he determined that he would never go
there, and on the night of July 16, 1861, when fifty miles south of
Charleston, he found opportunity to become master of the schooner.
It was at about midnight. Prize Master Amiel was asleep in the cabin,
with the prize mate in a nearby berth. The second mate was on deck, but
about half-asleep, while one of the Waring’s original crew was at the wheel,
and two of the prize seamen were on duty near the bow. Taking the hatchet
which he used in splitting wood for the galley stove, the negro killed the
prize captain and the two mates, when the Confederate seamen surrendered
and agreed to help work the ship back to New York. There was no one on
board who understood navigation, but the negro knew enough to lay a
course that would bring “the broadside of America in sight,” and after that
he followed the coast until he reached New York.
Meantime the Davis had captured the Mary Goodell, from New York to
Buenos Ayres; but she was allowed to go after the prisoners were put on
board, and five of her crew had shipped in the Davis. On the same day (July

9th) the Mary E. Thompson, of Searsport, was captured and sent in, after
which the Davis went to the West Indies.
In all, nearly a dozen merchantmen were captured by the energetic
captain, Louis M. Coxetter, of the Davis. He then returned, and while trying
to enter St. Augustine, Florida, grounded, and the vessel was lost. Not all of
his prizes ever reached home, and it was from the recaptured vessels that
the men convicted of piracy were taken. It is said that the prizes sent in,
however, netted over $200,000 in gold for the crew. Coxetter himself, like
most of his class, became a blockade-runner after the blockade, and
England’s refusal to permit the sale of Confederate prizes in her ports made
privateering unprofitable—that is, say, after January 1, 1862.
Between July 19 and August 27, 1861, the privateer Dixie sent in three
prizes. The Freely, another Charleston privateer, was also a successful boat.
So was the York. The revenue cutter Aiken, which was converted into the
privateer Petrel, at Charleston, was about the most unlucky of the fleet. She
went chasing the frigate St. Lawrence soon after getting safely to sea,
thinking the big man-o’-war was a merchantman. Certainly no men worse
fitted for their task than the Petrel’s crew were ever sent to sea, for even
when within short range they failed to recognize the warship. They fired
three guns—the first two across the bows of the St. Lawrence to heave her
to, and the last one at her. Then the St. Lawrence opened her ports and fired
three guns at the privateer. An eight-inch shell and a thirty-two-pound solid
shot struck her below the water-line, the shell bursting while right in the
planks. The hole made was so large that the Petrel rolled to the swell and
sank instantly, leaving her crew afloat in the water. Four men were
drowned, and the rest were picked up by the St. Lawrence.
There were a number of other privateers from Charleston, but they
neither accomplished nor suffered anything worth especial mention. In
addition, there was a fleet of small schooners that had their headquarters in
the Pamlico Sound. It is worth the reader’s time to take a look at the map of
the enclosed waters along the coast south of the Chesapeake Bay; it is worth
any traveller’s time to visit the region. A series of long, narrow islands, built
of the débris of New England rocks, lie along there, enclosing the waters of
Currituck, Albemarle, and Pamlico sounds. They are but narrow, and, for
the most part, but barren stretches of sand. Here and there a shoal inlet cuts
across this sand-bar—an inlet that is shifted to and fro, and deepened and

shoaled by the wind-driven water of the sea, but always kept open
somewhere by the outflow of the waters from the slope of land east of the
Alleghany ridge. There are a few inlets that are never closed wholly, no
matter how the set of the tide piles the sand into them, and of these the most
important are known as Hatteras and Ocracoke inlets.

Destruction of the Privateer Petrel by the St. Lawrence.
From an engraving by Hinshelwood of the painting by Manzoni.

The Hatteras Inlet, which lies thirteen miles southwest of Cape
Hatteras, is the most important. Here the water over the bar is, at high tide,
usually fourteen feet deep; within is a safe anchorage for any ship that can
pass in. But a mile inside the bar lies another, where the water is ordinarily
but seven feet deep. Once across that, plenty of deep water is found, both
north and south, and away inland to the ports whence came, in those days,
the bounties of nature called naval stores. Hatteras is of small importance in
these days, since railroads have been stretched along the coast, but the time
was when not a small fleet of coasters used it regularly.

It was from among these vessels and their crews that the “Hatteras
pirates” came in the first four or five months of the Civil War. They were, of
course, lawfully commissioned private cruisers, but the records of their
deeds have been lost, save, as it is known, that one bark, seven brigs, and
eight schooners had been carried in there as prizes previous to August 28,
1861, and condemned and sold. The Transit, of New London; the Wm. S.
Robins, and the J. W. Hewes were lying at Newbern alone, on the first of
July, awaiting adjudication.
Then, too, it speedily became a haunt of blockade-runners seeking
cotton as well as naval stores, and to dispose of manufactured goods from
England.
To the Northern merchant Pamlico Sound was a “pirates’ nest” that
needed immediate attention, and the next chapter shall tell what was done.

CHAPTER V

THE FORT AT HATTERAS INLET TAKEN
AN EXPEDITION PLANNED BY THE NAVY DEPARTMENT
THAT RESULTED IN THE FIRST FEDERAL VICTORY OF
THE CIVIL WAR—AN AWKWARD LANDING FOLLOWED
BY INEFFECTUAL FIRE FROM SHIPS UNDER WAY—ONE
FORT TAKEN AND ABANDONED—ANCHORED BEYOND
RANGE OF THE FORT AND COMPELLED SURRENDER BY
MEANS OF THE BIG PIVOT GUNS—A WEARISOME RACE
FROM CHICAMICOMICO TO HATTERAS LIGHTHOUSE
WON BY THE FEDERALS—CAPTURE OF ROANOKE
ISLAND—ORIGIN OF THE AMERICAN MEDAL OF HONOR.

For the work that was to be done in restoring the Federal authority over
Hatteras Island and adjacent inland waters a large force was prepared,
because no accurate estimate of the Confederate force there was obtainable.
To Flag Officer Silas H. Stringham was assigned the command of the
expedition. His squadron consisted of the frigate Minnesota, Capt. G. I. Van
Brunt; the frigate Wabash, Capt. Samuel Mercer; the Monticello, Capt. John
P. Gillis; the Pawnee, Capt. S. C. Rowan, and the Harriet Lane (revenue
cutter), Capt. John Faunce. The tug Fanny, under Lieut. Pierce Crosby,
went along as a tender, while the transports Adelaide, Capt. H. S.
Stellwagen, and Peabody, Capt. R. R. Lowry, carried 860 soldiers under
Gen. B. F. Butler. The troops under Butler had orders to return to Fort
Monroe as soon as the object of the expedition was attained.

S. H. Stringham
From an engraving by Buttre.

On the afternoon of August 26, 1861, the squadron rounded Cape
Hatteras and anchored about three miles above the inlet, where it was
proposed to make a landing. Two schooners, with their decks loaded with
“heavy iron surf-boats,” had been brought along, and these surf-boats were
floated before dark. The next morning the debarkation of General Butler’s
force began, and Captain Shuttleworth, of the marines, with enough of his
men to raise the whole landing force to 915 men, went along. The Pawnee,
the Monticello, and the Harriet Lane steamed close in and opened the attack
on the beach by shelling the live-oak and other trees that grew in profusion
just beyond the reach of the waves.
When the surf-boats started ashore at 8.45 o’clock in the morning, the
other ships of the squadron made a swoop at the forts that could be plainly
seen guarding the inlet. The sailing frigate Cumberland had joined the force
during the night, and the Wabash took her in tow and followed in the wake

of the flagship Minnesota. Meantime the frigate Susquehanna had happened
along, and she joined in the procession, the plan of attack being to steam in
until within range, fire as the forts were passed, and then steam out to sea
and back again over an elliptical route. It was a plan that was followed in
several attacks of the kind; but it is condemned by Admiral Porter as “not
the best calculated to bring an engagement to a speedy conclusion.” The
plan “bothers the enemy’s gunners”—it is safer for the ships—but it also
“detracts from the accuracy of the fire on board the vessels.”

B. F. Butler.
From a photograph.

A small earthwork called Fort Clark was the first one met. It had no
bomb-proof, and it mounted five guns. The ships opened fire on this fort
long before they were within range, and the fort replied. Both sides sowed
the water with shot and shells; but the Confederates soon ceased to waste
their ammunition, and when the ships got within range, their fire proved so
hot that the fort was abandoned.
Meantime the troops had reached the surf in their boats, and for a
pleasant day they found it a right vigorous surf. There was very little
difficulty in getting the boats to the sand; they were so large that a gale
would scarcely have swamped them; but the moment they touched bottom

forward, the waves caught them under the floating stern, slewed them
around broadside on, and hove them up hard and fast. In vain the soldiers
and sailors and marines tugged and pried and swore. In all 420 men, with
two howitzers, were placed on the beach, and not another armed man could
they land. And what made matters worse was the fact that they had neither
provisions nor supplies of any kind, and their ammunition (it was the day of
paper cartridges) was in great part wet by the surf. It was a fortunate thing
that the Confederates were kept busy in Fort Hatteras about that time.

Bombardment and Capture of the Forts at Hatteras Inlet, N. C.
From a lithograph published by Currier & Ives.

However, the Confederates having abandoned Fort Clark, the Federal
troops were marched to it, and at 2 o’clock in the afternoon the Union flag
was hoisted above it.
Meantime the fire of Fort Hatteras had been “smothered by the fire of
the frigates,” and the Confederate flag had disappeared. Seeing this, the
frigates ceased firing at 12.30 o’clock, on the supposition that the
Confederates were willing to surrender. But when, at 4 o’clock in the
afternoon, the Monticello was ordered to go in through the inlet and take a

look at the small fleet of Confederate vessels inside the inner bar, the
Confederate fort opened fire on her. The Wabash was at this time towing the
Cumberland to a safe anchorage off shore, but the Minnesota,
Susquehanna, Pawnee, and Harriet Lane returned the fire with vigor until
sunset. But the fire was, “for the most part, ineffective, from too great a
distance,” as Ammen says. The fact is, there was nothing reckless in the
attack.
At sundown the Union troops abandoned Fort Clark and camped up the
beach, where the smaller steamers could protect them. They had had a
hungry day of it, but food was sent ashore at night. Then, as the night wore
away, the troops threw up a sand battery facing the sound, and from this
threw some shells at the Confederate vessels, “which seems to have
materially disconcerted the enemy,” and prevented the landing of
reinforcements for the fort.
The next morning the Susquehanna led the way in to attack Fort
Hatteras, and the Minnesota, the Wabash, and the Cumberland followed,
and all came to anchor “in excellent position and commenced firing with
effect.” That is to say, the position was excellent because the ships were
entirely beyond the range of the fort, while their pivot guns, fifteen in
number, were throwing every shell fired into the Confederate works. The
fire began at 8 o’clock in the morning. The bomb-proof in the fort was
seriously damaged, and at 11 o’clock it was set on fire by a shell that
dropped through a ventilator. The magazine being in great peril, the
Confederates hoisted a white flag at 11.10 o’clock. This was on August 28,
1861; and that was not only the first victory that the navy of the nation had
gained, but it was the first victory that any Union force had gained in this
war for the defence of the nation’s life. The Union force did not lose a man.
The Confederates lost two killed and thirteen wounded of which we are
certain. It is asserted that the losses were greater.
Flag Officer Samuel Barron, of the Confederate navy, who had charge
of a small fleet of armed boats on the sound; Major W. S. G. Andrews,
commanding the forts, and 615 men and officers were captured. The two
forts contained together twenty-five guns, every one of which came from
the Norfolk Navy Yard, as did also 1,000 muskets and a quantity of
ordnance stores found in the fort.

Eight-inch Mortar Captured at Hatteras.
This point was thereafter held by the Union forces throughout the war.
To show the value of this victory, we may quote the report of General
Butler. He said:
“From there the whole coast of Virginia and North Carolina, from
Norfolk to Cape Lookout, is within our reach by light draught vessels,
which cannot possibly live at sea during the winter months. From it
offensive operations may be made upon the whole coast of North Carolina
to Bogue Inlet, extending many miles inland to Washington, Newbern, and
Beaufort. In the language of the chief-engineer of the rebels, Colonel
Thompson, in an official report, ‘it is the key of Albemarle.’ In my
judgment, it is a station second in importance only to Fortress Monroe on
this coast. As a depot for coaling and supplies for the blockading squadron
it is invaluable. As a harbor for our coasting trade, or inlet from the winter
storms or from pirates, it is of the first importance.”
A fort at Ocracoke Inlet was abandoned by the Confederates when
those at Hatteras fell.

L. M. Goldsborough
From an engraving by Buttre.

Meantime the Twentieth Regiment of Indiana Volunteers, under
Colonel Brown, of the Hatteras Island garrison, got into serious trouble. The
regiment had gone to a small settlement at the north end of the island—
Chicamicomico by name—twenty-five miles north of Cape Hatteras
lighthouse. Just what purpose they were to serve there is not now apparent;
but the Confederates, who had fortified Roanoke Island, came with a
superior force to cut them off from communication with the forces at the
inlet, and there was a most fatiguing race down the beach. The Union force
won, the Confederates being driven off by the Union steamer Monticello,
Capt. D. L. Braine.
Following this, in 1862, came the expedition under Flag Officer L. M.
Goldsborough and Gen. A. E. Burnside against Roanoke Island. The force
left Hampton Roads on January 11th. There was a long delay at Hatteras
Inlet bar, but on Friday morning, February 7th, they were facing the
Confederate forts on the north end of Roanoke Island, and a squadron of

Confederate ships, which their commander, Commodore W. F. Lynch,
described as “two old side-wheel steamers, and six propellers—the former
possessing some speed; the latter slow in their movements, and one of them
frequently disabling its shaft.”

Stephen C. Rowan.
From a photograph.

The Union steamers were, in fact, no better. Both fleets were wholly
unarmored, but the guns on both sides were good for that day, and therein
lies the one point worth noting. The Union fleet on one side and the
Confederate forts and fleet on the other fought for six hours at one stretch at
easy range. One Union ship reports firing 181 shells, and probably those
that made no report of the matter (there were nineteen in all) did as well,
but only one ship—a Confederate—was sunk, and she was able to run away
to a fort before going down. After two days the Confederate forts
surrendered, and the Confederate ships fled to Elizabeth City.
Commander S. C. Rowan, with a part of the Union fleet, pursued and
destroyed or captured them all save one that passed through the canal to
Norfolk. The conflict at Elizabeth City is especially notable, because the

deed of a heroic gunner led Congress to pass an act creating a Union naval
medal. Says Lossing:
“An extraordinary example of heroism was exhibited during this
engagement by John Davis, a Finlander, who was a gunner’s mate on board
the Valley City. A shell entered that vessel, and, exploding in the magazine,
set fire to some wood-work. Davis was there, and, seeing the imminent
danger to the vessel and all on board, because of an open barrel of
gunpowder from which he had been serving, he seated himself upon it, and
so remained until the flames were extinguished. For this brave act the
Secretary of the Navy rewarded him with the appointment of acting-gunner
in the navy (March 11, 1862), by which his salary was raised from $300 to
$1,000 a year. Admiring citizens of New York raised and presented to him
$1,100. The Secretary of the Navy, by authority of an act of Congress,
approved December 21, 1861, presented him with a Medal of Honor, on
which are inscribed the following words: ‘Personal Valor, John Davis,
Gunner’s Mate, U.S.S. Valley City, Albemarle Sound, February 10, 1862.’
Such medals were afterward presented to a considerable number of gallant
men in subordinate stations, for acts of special bravery ‘before the enemy.’
Davis was the first recipient.”

Attack on Roanoke Island—Landing of the Troops.
From an engraving of the painting by Chappel.

Landing of Troops on Roanoke Island.
From an engraving by Perine of a drawing by Momberger.

CHAPTER VI

ALONG SHORE IN THE GULF OF MEXICO
THE SHAMEFUL STORY OF PENSACOLA AND FORT PICKENS
—WHEN LIEUTENANT RUSSELL BURNED THE JUDAH—A
BRITISH CONSUL’S ACTIONS WHEN CONFEDERATE
FORTS WERE ATTACKED AT GALVESTON—
EXTRAORDINARY PANIC AT THE HEAD OF THE PASSES IN
THE MISSISSIPPI WHEN FOUR GREAT WARSHIPS,
CARRYING FORTY-FIVE OF THE BEST GUNS AFLOAT,
FLED FROM A DISABLED TUGBOAT THAT WAS REALLY
UNARMED—ONCE MORE IN GALVESTON—LIEUTENANT
JOUETT’S FIERCE FIGHT WHEN HE DESTROYED THE
ROYAL YACHT.

There were stirring events in and around the Gulf of Mexico during the
year 1861—some of them stirring the naval sailors in one way and some in
another. The trouble began there very early in the year—on January 12th, in
fact, when Colonel Lomax and Major W. H. Chase, with some Florida and
Alabama troops, surrounded the navy yard at Pensacola and compelled
Commodore James Armstrong to surrender it to the Confederates. It was
very well known that an attack impended a long time before it actually
happened, but no effort was made by any one in the yard to preserve any of
the government property for government use. Armstrong was not, indeed,
disloyal, but he was very properly suspended from the navy for five years
for his failure at Pensacola. The executive officer under him, Commander
Ebenezer Farrand, and Lieut. Francis B. Renshaw had already decided to
join the Confederate forces, and it should not be forgotten that they were
among the men willing to serve the Confederates while still wearing the
uniform of the government. Renshaw himself, while in national uniform,
had the old flag hauled down and the Confederate flag sent up in its place.

Farrand did still worse. He refused to allow the powder to be removed from
the magazine when a loyal officer, Commander Henry Walke, proposed
removing it. He kept it in the magazine unguarded in order that the
Confederates might get it. When he could do no more for the Confederates
by remaining in the pay of the government, he sent in his resignation.

Surrender of the Navy Yard at Pensacola.
From a painting by Admiral Walke.

Meantime the soldiers in charge of the three forts that guarded the
harbor had been concentrated at Fort Pickens on the 10th by Lieut. Adam J.
Slemmer, U. S. A. At that time Commander Henry Walke was in Pensacola,
in command of the transport Supply. She was en route to Vera Cruz with
stores for the government ships lying there. On January 9th, Walke was
ordered by Commodore Armstrong to assist Slemmer in concentrating the
troops and army supplies at Fort Pickens. Walke at once started to obey this
order; but when about to engage in doing so, another order came under
which he was to merely give some food to the men already in Fort Pickens
and then return to the navy yard, leaving the army forces scattered among
the three forts about the harbor. Walke, in his “Reminiscences,” says
Farrand “hood-winked” the commodore into issuing that order. Walke

showed it to Slemmer, and Slemmer, in despair, said if that order was
obeyed, no further effort to hold the forts should be made. But Walke at
once determined to disobey the order in so far as he must in order to
concentrate the army forces at Fort Pickens.
Walke’s act was one of the most remarkable of that day. It was almost
without precedent that a naval officer should be independent-minded
enough to do what was right in the interests of the government without first
receiving an unmistakable order to do it. But that a man should save a fort
for the government by actually disobeying the order of a superior—that was
then unheard of, though an officer of a higher grade saved three fine ships
from the Merrimac in like fashion some time later. By concentrating the
army forces at Pickens, contrary to Armstrong’s orders, Walke saved the
fort. Then, when the yard had been surrendered to the Confederates, he took
the paroled officers and men, with their families, from the yard and carried
them to New York. This, although done in the interest of the government,
and as an act of humanity, was also contrary to his original order which
contemplated a passage to Vera Cruz. So Walke was court-martialled, found
guilty, and sentenced to be censured! This is perhaps the only case on
record where the legal censure of an American naval officer was as a badge
of honor.

Henry Walke.
From a photograph.

Meantime the Buchanan administration was in some way moved, after
the navy yard was captured, to send the Brooklyn down there with eighty-
six artillery men and 115 marines. But before these could be landed the
administration repented, and the Brooklyn was ordered to lie off the harbor.
And there she lay when Mr. Lincoln came into office. On March 12th an
order was sent to Capt. J. Vodges, commanding the artillery company on the
Brooklyn, to land. This order was received by Vodges on March 31st, and
on April 1st he called on Capt. H. A. Adams, of the Brooklyn, for boats,
etc., for the landing. Instead of giving them, Adams declined, and wrote a
letter to the Navy Department, saying that the order to Vodges “may have
been given without a full knowledge of the condition of affairs here.” He
was sure that reinforcing the fort “would be viewed as a hostile act, and
would be resisted to the utmost.” The department was warned that “it would
be a serious thing to bring on, by precipitation, a collision.” In short, this
officer, who was a Union man, had been cajoled into a state of mind where
he ignored the fact that the Confederates were working day and night to
place their defences in the best possible order and were adding to their
forces daily. He had, in truth, been instructed by Buchanan’s Secretary of
the Navy “not to land the company unless said fort shall be attacked or

preparations be made for its attack.” The italics are not in the original
document, of course, but they are inserted to make plain the way in which
Adams ignored the Confederate work of preparing to capture Fort Pickens
by increasing the effectiveness of Fort McRae and Fort Barrancas. To land a
man in Fort Pickens would be “viewed as a hostile act,” and would “bring
on, by precipitation, a collision.” To improve the Confederate Fort McRae
was not to be considered! Certainly the contempt which the Southern
people of that day felt for men of the North was not without some
justification.
These facts seem worth giving because they show the difference
between the state of mind on the Union side and that on the Confederate.
The Confederates knew what they wanted and were reaching after it
ceaselessly: The Union forces at this time were not much short of mental
demoralization, anywhere, and the quick-witted Confederates took
advantage of it.
This letter was carried to Washington by Lieut. Washington Gwathmey,
who afterwards joined the Confederates. It took him five days to cover the
distance, and the reinforcement of Fort Pickens was delayed by that much.
The department could hardly tell whom to trust, but Lieut. John L.
Worden was chosen to carry an order to Adams for the landing of the
troops; and no mistake was made in his case, for he was the Worden who
afterward commanded the Monitor. He reached Pensacola on April 11th,
and on telling Gen. Braxton Bragg, of the Confederate forces, that he had
an oral order for the captain of the Brooklyn, was allowed to go off to her on
the 12th. He had committed the order to memory and destroyed the
document. That night, April 12, 1861, Fort Pickens was reinforced. Bragg
had planned an attack on Fort Pickens for the night of the 13th—an attack
that must have succeeded, because the Union force had been only eighty-
three men, all told; but when the artillerymen and the marines were landed
the face of matters was changed and the attack postponed indefinitely. The
flag has never ceased to float over Fort Pickens. The Confederates were
greatly exasperated, and Worden was arrested in Montgomery and held a
prisoner for seven months.
In September the general dulness of affairs about Pensacola was
relieved by a brilliant dash which a force from the blockader Colorado

made into the harbor. The Confederates had been strengthening their works
along shore gradually, and had at last started fitting out a schooner called
the Judah at the navy yard for use as a privateer. This schooner was guarded
by a ten-inch columbiad (a columbiad being a gun half-way between a
carronade and a long gun) and a field-piece, both being placed to sweep her
deck. There was also a large force of men camped in the yard—some
accounts say 1,000—while the schooner had a full crew on board, with a
long pivot gun and two broadside guns in place. It is a remarkable fact that
the yard where she was fitted and the schooner herself were within easy
range and plain sight of Fort Pickens, and the fact that she intended to sail
out after American merchant ships was obvious. But not a shot was fired
from the fort to disturb her owners or the workmen.

John G. Sproston.
(Who commanded one of the boats
in the attack on the Judah.)
From a photograph at the Naval
Academy, Annapolis.

So Commodore William Marvine, commanding the Gulf squadron, sent
100 men in boats under Lieut. J. H. Russell, on the night of September 13,
1861, to destroy her. In spite of the vigilance of the Confederates, they
arrived near the schooner undiscovered, and were entirely successful in
firing her, in spite of a determined opposition.
Meantime a wave of trouble had rolled over Galveston, Texas—a wave
that stirred the foreign consuls living there into an astonishing state of
anger, and through their efforts it was used with some effect to misrepresent
and prejudice the case of the government throughout Europe. The affair
occurred on August 3, 1861. Galveston was first blockaded by the South
Carolina, Capt. James Alden, in the latter part of June. Captain Alden
“never had any intention of troubling” the people of the city further than
interrupting their ocean trade, and this determination was stated to them in
an official communication. Nevertheless, the Confederates erected a
number of batteries in a place where any attack on them by the blockading
squadron would necessarily result in throwing projectiles into the city. A
glance at the map will show that Galveston is built on the northerly point of
an island that forms the harbor. The city faces the bay, and there is a wide
stretch of sand behind the city—that is, between the city and the sea. It was
between the city and the sea that the batteries were placed.
On the morning of August 3d a tender of the blockading ship was
returning north from a cruise to the south end of Galveston Island. She
passed within range of the batteries, and they opened fire on her. She
returned the fire and reported it to Captain Alden, who “waited all day for
some explanation or disavowal on the part of the authorities.” He could
scarcely realize that people “could be so insane as to initiate hostilities
when their town was so completely at our mercy.” At 4 o’clock no
disavowal having come, he took the South Carolina within a mile of the
works. The Confederates opened fire on her and Alden replied with fifteen
shots, after which, finding that he could not prevent the shot going into the
city as well as the works, he withdrew.

Galveston Harbor.
From “The Navy in the Civil War.”

The next day Mr. Arthur Lynn, the British consul, gathered together the
Hanoverian and Oldenburg consul, the Swiss consul, the Mexican consul;
the deputy consul for Bremen, Saxony, Belgium, and Holland; the consul
pro tem. for Electoral Hesse, and the consul for Nassau, besides
representatives of some other countries, and wrote and signed the
following:
“The undersigned, consuls and vice-consuls at Galveston, consider it
their duty to enter their solemn protest against your bombardment of this
city on the evening of the 3d instant, without having given any notice, so
that the women and children might have been removed, and also against
your firing a shell in the midst of a large crowd of unarmed citizens,
amongst whom were many women and children, causing thereby the death
of an unoffending Portuguese and wounding boys and peaceably disposed
persons, as acts of inhumanity, unrecognized in modern warfare, and
meriting the condemnation of Christian and civilized nations.”

A copy of the protest was sent to Alden, another to the reporters, of
course, and then each official sent one under seal to his government in such
fashion that it would appear in the papers there also.
It was a small affair in itself. The Confederate authorities made no
protest about it. So far as the attack on the blockading squadron and the
return of the fire were of interest from a historical point of view, the matter
was not worth mention. But because this was the first case in which a
British consul, acting in his official capacity, undertook the work of
misrepresenting the deeds of the government officers, it may not be
omitted. For the official attitude of the European governments has a very
important part in the naval history of the Civil War.
The next event of interest that occurred in the Gulf region might very
well be termed the battle of Bull Run afloat, because a squadron of
American naval ships became involved in a panic and fled precipitately
before a force so utterly insignificant that the shame of it was felt by every
man who wore the uniform.
The mouths of the Mississippi were at first blockaded by the Brooklyn,
Captain Poor, and the Powhatan, Capt. D. D. Porter, but when the
Powhatan was away, one day, the Brooklyn went chasing a strange sail, and
the watchful Semmes carried the Sumter, the first of the noted Confederate
cruisers, out to sea. As the Confederates had before this carried fifteen
ships, two barks, and three schooners from the Gulf to New Orleans as
prizes, the government was moved to place a sufficient force in the river to
close it absolutely.
This force included the flagship Richmond, a screw steamer of 2,000
tons, carrying twenty large guns, Capt. John Pope; the sailing sloop-of-war
Vincennes, ten guns, Capt. Robert Handy; the sailing sloop-of-war Preble,
eleven guns, Capt. H. French, and the little screw steamer Water Witch, of
four guns (howitzers). In all, there were forty-five guns in the squadron, of
which twenty were nine-inch Dahlgrens.
As the reader will remember, a chart of the mouth of the Mississippi is
marvellously like a picture of the roots of a crooked tree. The waters divide
into three main channels, with a host of offshoots. To effectually close all
the entrances to the river it was necessary only to anchor the squadron in
the river itself above the point where it was split up, and this was done.

There were no Confederate forts near the anchorage, and the officers and
men, so far as is known, possessed their souls in peace until the month of
October.
Meantime the Confederates had been working against very great
difficulties to prepare a squadron fit to clear the river. They had incidentally
striven to get a steamer called the McRae in commission for a cruiser, but
had failed in making her machinery work well, and she was relegated to the
work of harbor defence.

Passes of the Mississippi.
From “The Navy in the Civil War.”

The work of shipbuilding was done under the eyes of a commission
that included Capt. L. Rousseau, Commander E. Farrand, and Lieut. Robert
J. Chapman, of the Confederate navy, all of whom had been reared in the
government navy. Capt. George N. Hollins, formerly of the American navy,
was assigned to command the fleet when built.
By the first of October, four river steamers had been converted into the
semblance of gunboats by adding timbers so that they could carry eight or
nine guns. They were called the Polk, the Ivy, the Livingston, and the
Maurepas. A merchant steamer with a bark rig became the McRae. To this
was added a most remarkable vessel—the first of her class, the ironclad ram
Manassas.

The Manassas was originally the double-screw tug Enoch Train, of
Boston. She was 128 feet long, twenty-six wide, and when loaded she drew
thirteen feet of water. She was, in short, a tug of the first class in size. Capt.
John A. Stevenson, of New Orleans, undertook the contract of making a
ram of this vessel for a company of capitalists who determined to use her,
privateer-fashion, against the government blockaders immediately after the
Confederate Congress enacted a law on May 21, 1861, binding the
Confederate treasury to pay to the destroyers twenty per cent. of the value
of any government ships that might be destroyed by volunteers.
The tug was cut down almost to the water, first of all, and then her bow
was filled in solid with timbers for a space of twenty feet abaft the stem. A
deck in the shape of half of a long, sharp egg was built over her, twelve-
inch oak timbers being used for the purpose. Of course, all the woodwork
was thoroughly bolted. Then the bow and the rounded deck were
everywhere plated with flat bar-iron one and a half inches thick. There was
one gun-port forward, where a sixty-eight-pounder was mounted, but for
some fault of construction they were not able to use it at first.
For motive power she had one compound engine and two screws, the
high-pressure cylinder working one shaft and the low-pressure the other.
There was but one hatch, a small one, at that, and through this everything—
coal, supplies, men—must pass. A ship like that, no matter what her power,
could never be popular in any navy in time of peace, but she was built for
an emergency, and there was no trouble in finding a crew. Lieut. Alexander
F. Warley, formerly in the government service, took command of her for her
owners.
From time to time the government officers on the blockaders down at
the head of the passes heard about the work in the New Orleans ship-yards.
They learned some of the details of the ram that was building, as well as of
the gunboat, but they not only did not make any preparations for meeting or
guarding against an attack: they did not even consider what might be done
if the Confederates should come.
At 3.30 o’clock on the morning of October 13, 1861, the government
fleet lay quietly at anchor, save that the schooner Joseph H. Toone was
alongside the Richmond, and the Richmond’s watch on deck were taking
coal out of her. The Preble was in advance—that is, was further up the river

than any. Below her lay the flagship Richmond, and below her the
Vincennes, while the Water Witch lay between the Richmond and the east
shore, with a little prize schooner, the Frolic, near by. It was a moonlight
night, with some clouds flying, the worst kind of a night, as all seamen
know, for seeing anything clearly, but there had been no especial care in
posting or warning lookouts. It was with the squadron literally “the careless
end of night.” Within ten minutes after the bell struck the hour of 3.30, a
lookout on the Preble saw a dark object driving down the river, but without
any smoke or steam or other appearance of motive power. At nearly the
same moment the lookout on the prize schooner saw it, and as the alarm
was raised on the Preble the schooner lookout bawled to Richmond: “A
rebel steamer is coming down the river.”
In a minute the whole squadron awoke, and with rattle and shout the
crews ran to quarters, but before they could get a gun cast loose, the dark
object afloat, the ram Manassas, driving with the aid of the current at about
nine miles an hour, glanced across the coal schooner’s bow, crashed through
a cutter, and struck the Richmond “abreast of the port forechannels, tearing
the schooner from her fasts.” “Three planks on the ship’s side were stove in,
about two feet below the water-line, making a hole about five inches in
circumference.” These quotations are from Pope’s official report, but the
report did not use italics.
Immediately “a red light was shown as a signal of danger,” and then the
whole squadron except the Water Witch slipped their cables and fled. “I
ordered the Preble and Vincennes to proceed down the Southwest Pass,”
says Pope, and “they did.” Meantime, “after the first blow given to this ship
by the ram,” it “remained under our port quarter, apparently endeavoring to
fix herself in a position to give us a second blow, but the slipping of our
chain and the ship ranging ahead under steam frustrated the object.” That
was Pope’s idea. The fact was that the ram’s machinery had not been
properly stayed to sustain a shock, and the blow had entirely crippled the
low-pressure engine, and left her with barely enough power to stem the
current. She lay there making repairs, with her crew in a state of alarm lest
she be disabled altogether. However, they got the high-pressure engine
working independently, and then, to the great relief of her crew, she went
creeping and coughing up the river, hugging the shoal water lest the
Richmond or Water Witch pursue her after she had passed them. Both the

Richmond and the Preble fired broadsides at her; the Richmond fired three,
“with what effect it was impossible to discover owing to the darkness,” but
“some officers are of opinion they heard shot strike the ram.” As the ram
disappeared up the river, the Richmond’s “helm was put up, and the ship
rapidly fell off, presenting her broadside up and down the river.” In that
position they let her drift with the current to “cover the retreat” of the
squadron.
A squadron of four great ships, armed with forty-five first-class guns,
had been driven into a shameful panic by one crippled tug carrying a gun
that couldn’t be fired.
At about this time a rocket was thrown up from the ram, and at once
three lights were seen—“three large fire rafts, stretching across the river,
were rapidly nearing us, while several large steamers and a bark-rigged
propeller were seen astern of them.” In the minds of the flying officers the
peril was frightful. Nevertheless, as the Richmond “drifted near the Passes
ineffectual attempts were made to get her head upstream.” The attempts did
not include the dropping of an anchor, because that would have stopped her
in her flight for the sea. Pope was willing to head upstream provided he
could keep travelling away from the fearsome ram and fire-rafts “stretching
across the river.” When the “ineffectual attempts” were stopped “I found
myself a mile and a half down the Southwest Pass.” “I then put the helm up,
and continued down the river, hoping to be able to get her head around off
Pilot Town. In doing this she drifted some distance below, grounding
broadside on.”
Meantime the Vincennes and the Preble had been “drifting” also, and
without making any attempts to get their bows pointed upstream. They were
under sail, and the wind was in the north. The Preble outran the Richmond,
even. Captain French says that as he passed the Richmond Captain Pope
told him to “proceed down the pass.” He obeyed, and after bumping on the
bar two or three times, crossed over into water unfretted by rams and fire-
rafts. So he “anchored near the coal ships Kuhn and Nightingale to protect
them if necessary.”
Meantime the Vincennes, like the Richmond, had grounded in the pass,
and a little later along came the Water Witch. She had found, as she steamed
down the pass, “that the fire rafts were drifting with the wind steadily over

toward the western shore,” so the “Water Witch was now steered to the
northward and eastward (upstream) and easily cleared them.” The river at
this “time in the vicinity of the passes was entirely clear of the enemy.”
Nevertheless, a “general signal, ‘cross the bar,’” was displayed on the
Richmond.
The effect of this signal on Captain Handy of the Vincennes is well-
nigh past belief. He read it “abandon the ship,” he says, but he was not quite
sure about the reading, and so sent a boat to the Water Witch to ask how
Captain Winslow read it. Captain Winslow replied “that it was impossible”
an order to abandon the ship had been given. Captain Handy was of his
original opinion still, and at once ordered the boats away. A slow match was
set to the magazine, and then, as the crew started over the side of the ship,
Captain Handy wrapped the ship’s flag about him in broad folds and
climbed down the ladder to his gig.
Fortunately, a quarter-gunner (whose name has not been preserved,
alas!) slipped down below, and cutting off the burning end of the slow
match, tossed it overboard. Two of the boats went to the Water Witch, but
the others, including the gig, to the Richmond. Here Handy’s theatrical air
left him. The utter disgust of his crew became manifest after it was told that
the slow match had been cut, and Handy was sent back crestfallen to his
ship. But, though crestfallen, he was as nerveless as ever.
Of course daylight had come long before the time the two ships had
grounded, and the Confederates, who had followed their fire-rafts with the
bark-rigged McRae and the four converted gunboats and a river tug, found,
to their astonishment, the whole river clear. They had hoped, at first, to
make some disturbance—possibly to sink the Richmond with the ram—and,
at any rate, get the McRae to sea. But the McRae’s engines had failed, and
so had the ram’s, while the fire-rafts had drifted ashore harmless. And yet
there were the government ships out at sea, or aground inside and sorry they
couldn’t get away. Very naturally the Confederates came down where their
long-range Whitworth rifles would take effect, and opened fire on the
grounded ships. The only damage done was when a shell lodged in the
locker where Captain Pope kept his linen. Fortunately, the shell did not
explode, and the linen was not wholly destroyed. The Richmond replied
with a nine-inch gun on her forecastle, and the Confederates, having boats
so frail that one shell could have sunk any one of them, were obliged to

keep at long range. The Water Witch was sent in great haste to bring the
South Carolina from Barrataria, and after she came to the rescue the
transport McClellan also arrived with rifles for the Richmond. “My mind
was very much relieved, knowing that the armament of four rifled guns on
board the McClellan, together with the long gun of the South Carolina,
would keep the enemy at bay,” says Pope in his report. Imagine the state of
mind of this officer! “Four rifled guns on board the McClellan, together
with the long gun of the South Carolina, would keep the enemy at bay!”
But before the relief ships arrived, Captain Handy, of the Vincennes,
had once more become so nervous he couldn’t stand the strain without
doing something. The Confederates were firing at the Richmond; but they
might fire at him and he might get hurt. So he wrote a note to the already
overwrought Pope. Because no other case of the kind is known to the annals
of the American navy, because the exhibit forms an interesting study in
mental phenomena, and because the shame of it, when spread in history,
must serve to make a repetition of the story impossible, the note shall be
given in full:

“Sir: We are aground. We have only two guns that will bear in the
direction of the enemy. Shall I remain on board after the moon goes
down, with my crippled ship and worn-out men? Will you send me
word what countersign my boats shall use if we pass near your ship?
While we have moonlight, would it not be better to leave the ship?
Shall I burn her when I leave her?
“Respectfully,
Robert Handy.”

He was not allowed to abandon his ship again, but it is a fact, incredible
as it may seem, that even after the South Carolina had come—the South
Carolina that, single-handed, was of a force to have destroyed, with one
watch in their hammocks, the whole Confederate squadron—even after she
had come, Handy, in his haste to get clear, threw overboard all of his guns,
and it was done by permission of Pope. So the Vincennes got away in tow of
the steamers.

On the 14th they were all at anchor outside, but even here, according to
Captain Pope’s report, Captain French, of the Preble, did not feel safe. He
was ordered to blockade Pass à Loutre, but, after starting, came back and
asked permission to go to Ship Island for wood for the galley fire. Pope told
him there was wood a-plenty at the Northeast Pass, but he “earnestly
requested to go to Ship Island,” and Pope “reluctantly consented.” At Ship
Island the Preble would be safe, but there was no telling what might happen
if she were caught all alone by a Confederate gunboat off Pass à Loutre.
And then, in his report, written on the 17th, Pope makes this statement:
“My retreat down the pass, although painful to me, was to save the ships by
preventing them being sunk and falling into the hands of the enemy; and it
was evident to me they had us in their power.”
This one other quotation will complete the story: “It having been
rumored there was a panic on board this ship at the time she was engaged
with the enemy, I state it to be false; both officers and men exhibited the
utmost coolness and determination to do their duty.”
This chapter shall conclude with the brief story of brave men at
Galveston.
It was in November. The frigate Santee was blockading Galveston, and
a Confederate steamer, the General Rusk, was inside, together with a
privateer schooner called the Royal Yacht. The Confederates were fitting the
Rusk for a cruiser, but she could not be shelled without throwing shot into
the city. So Lieut. James E. Jouett volunteered to go in and cut her out.
One has to look at the chart of the harbor to appreciate the danger of
the service, for the boats would have to pull around the north end of the
island, on which the city stands, and then along the water front of the city
itself, to reach the ship. Nevertheless, Jouett, with forty men in two boats,
started at 11.40 o’clock on the night of November 7, 1861. Everything went
well while passing the sentinels on the point, and those on the Royal Yacht
that lay near the point, also. But in keeping well to the off side of the
channel when approaching the city the leading boat grounded, and the
second crashed into her. The noise of the collision and the efforts to get
afloat betrayed them, and fire was opened from the land and the Rusk.
There was nothing for it but to retreat. The forty men could do nothing
against the forces of the Confederates, now that they were alarmed. But

Jouett was not to be balked altogether, and turning about, he dashed at the
Royal Yacht. The first boat to reach her had a twelve-pound howitzer in its
bow, with Gunner William W. Carter in charge. Aiming at her water-line
Carter fired just as the boat’s bow was within jumping distance of the
schooner, and as the shell crashed through the schooner’s side he leaped to
her deck. Unfortunately, the recoil of the howitzer drove the boat away from
the schooner, leaving Carter, with cutlass in hand, alone to face the enemy.
But Carter was the man for the place, and at them he went, slash and parry
and thrust, while Jouett slewed the boat up once more to the schooner’s rail
and leaped on board. But the moment he landed there a Confederate thrust a
bayonet through his arm and into his lung. It was a dangerous wound, but
Jouett cut the man down and hewed his way to Carter’s side.
Even then the fight was not won. Twice the Confederates rallied and
drove the Federals back, but Jouett led on again, gained the victory at last,
and destroyed the schooner. The Federals lost three killed and six wounded.
They carried off thirteen prisoners, but the Confederate loss in killed and
wounded is not recorded. And it is worth adding that Jouett is to be heard
from further on.

CHAPTER VII

STORY OF THE TRENT AFFAIR
CAPT. CHARLES WILKES, OF THE AMERICAN NAVY, TOOK
FOUR CONFEDERATE DIPLOMATIC AGENTS FROM A
BRITISH SHIP BOUND ON A REGULAR VOYAGE BETWEEN
NEUTRAL PARTS, AND WITHOUT ANY JUDICIAL
PROCEEDING CAST THEM INTO A MILITARY PRISON—A
CASE THAT CREATED GREAT EXCITEMENT
THROUGHOUT THE CIVILIZED WORLD—A SWIFT
DEMAND, WITH A THREAT OF WAR ADDED, MADE BY
THE BRITISH—COMPARING THIS CASE WITH ANOTHER
OF LIKE NATURE—THE UNITED STATES ONCE WENT TO
WAR TO ESTABLISH THE PRINCIPLE WHICH CAPTAIN
WILKES IGNORED—THE BRITISH OFFICIALLY
ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THE AMERICANS WERE JUSTIFIED
IN DECLARING WAR IN 1812.

This is to tell the story of what is known, in the history of the Civil War,
as the Trent affair. And it is worth saying in advance that few, if any, events
that have occurred on the high seas are of more interest to the American
patriot than this. For not only did it involve the capture and subsequent
release of two very important enemies of the American government in time
of war; it settled forever in our favor the troublesome question that drove
the American people into the War of 1812. There was, indeed, what may
rightly be called an official declaration, on the part of the Prime Minister of
Great Britain, that the United States was entirely justified in that war.

James Murray Mason. John Slidell.
The two captured commissioners.

On the 12th of October, 1861, Mr. James Mason, of Virginia, and Mr.
John Slidell, of Louisiana, with two other gentlemen, acting as their
secretaries, sailed from Charleston in the blockade-runner Theodora, and,
“unimpeded by the blockading ships,” arrived at Cardenas, Cuba, whence
they proceeded to Havana. Mr. Mason had, in former years, been chairman
of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and American Minister in Paris.
Mr. Slidell had represented the United States at the capital of Mexico. These
two gentlemen had been chosen by the Confederates to go to Europe as
special representatives—Mr. Mason to England and Mr. Slidell to Paris—to
secure, if possible, the recognition of the Confederate States as a nation. It
is important to note that these special envoys were sent because three others
previously sent had failed. “Lord Russell had received them (the three) on
the footing of private gentlemen and listened to what they had to say, but
had avoided correspondence, and remained immovable in his refusal to
enter into any official communication. At the French court they had been
equally unsuccessful,” and the Confederates hoped that Messrs. Mason and
Slidell would do better.
On the day that these Confederate envoys arrived in Havana the United
States cruiser San Jacinto, Capt. Charles Wilkes, was at Cienfuegos, on the
south side of Cuba, looking for the Confederate cruiser Sumter—Wilkes, by

the way, being the officer who conducted the celebrated Wilkes expedition
to the southern seas, of which mention is made elsewhere.

Charles Wilkes.
From an engraving by Dodson of the portrait by Sully.

While at Cienfuegos, Wilkes heard of the arrival of the Theodora on
the north coast, and made haste ineffectually to reach Havana to intercept
her. But while he failed to catch the Theodora he learned at Havana that the
Confederate envoys were to sail in the Royal mail line steamer Trent for the
island of St. Thomas, where, in the regular course of the line’s business,

they would be transferred to a steamer bound to England. Having failed to
learn when the Trent would sail—failed because of “the notorious action of
her British Majesty’s subjects in doing everything to aid and abet the escape
of these four persons”—Wilkes went to “where the old Bahama Channel
contracts to the width of fifteen miles, some 240 miles from Havana, and in
sight of the Paredon del Grande lighthouse.” The Trent must pass through
that neck of water, and “at 11.40 on the 8th her smoke was seen.” “We were
all prepared for her, beat to quarters, and orders were given to Lieut. D. M.
Fairfax to have two boats manned and armed to board her and make
Messrs. Slidell, Mason, Eustis, and McFarland prisoners, and send them on
board.” Eustis and McFarland were the secretaries. “The steamer
approached and hoisted English colors, our ensign was hoisted, and a shot
was fired across her bow; she maintained her speed and showed no
disposition to heave to; then a shell was fired across her bow, which
brought her to. I hailed that I intended to send a boat on board, and
Lieutenant Fairfax, with the second cutter of this ship, was despatched.”
The quotations are from official reports.
On arriving beside the Trent, Fairfax went on board alone, “leaving two
officers in the boat with orders to wait until it became necessary to show
some force.” He met the captain on the quarter-deck and asked “to see the
passenger list,” but “he declined letting me see it.” Fairfax then said he had
learned that the Confederate envoys were on board, and should satisfy
himself “whether they were on board before allowing the steamer to
proceed.”
“Mr. Slidell, evidently hearing his name mentioned, came up to me and
asked if I wanted to see him. Mr. Mason soon joined us, and then Mr. Eustis
and Mr. McFarland, when I made known the object of my visit. The captain
of the Trent opposed anything like the search of his vessel, nor would he
consent to show papers or passenger list.” This is from the report of
Lieutenant Fairfax, and it adds that “there was considerable noise among
the passengers just about this time.” The fact is the passengers were, to a
man, in ardent sympathy with the Confederates. “The passengers and ship’s
officers were making all kinds of disagreeable and contemptuous noises and
remarks.” “Did you ever hear of such an outrage?” and “Did you ever hear
of such a piratical act?” were two of the expressions that were heard by the
officers waiting in the boat. “Mr. Fairfax appeared to be having an

altercation with some one,” and at last one waiting officer “heard some one
call out, ‘Shoot him!’”
At this some armed marines were sent on board, and when they
“advanced the passengers fell back.” The most insolent of all on board was
a retired commander of the British navy, who was in charge of the mails.
According to Lieut. James A. Greer, “the mail agent, (a man in the uniform
of a commander in the royal navy, I think,) was very indignant and
talkative, and tried several times to get me into discussion of the matter. I
told him I was not there for that purpose. He was very bitter; he told me that
the English squadron would raise the blockade in twenty days after his
report of this outrage (I think he said outrage) got home; that the
northerners might as well give up now,” etc., etc. The Confederate envoys,
in their letter to Captain Wilkes, say that “it must be added here, omitted in
the course of the narration, that before the party left the upper deck an
officer of the Trent, named Williams, in the naval uniform of Great Britain,
and known to the passengers as having charge of the mails and
accompanying them to England, said to the lieutenant that, as the only
person present directly representing his government, he felt called upon, in
language as strong and as emphatic as he could express, to denounce the
whole proceeding as a piratical act.”
Further than that, “nearly all the officers of the vessel showed an
undisguised hatred for the northern people, and a sympathy for the
Confederates. I will do the captain of the vessel the justice to say that he
acted differently from the rest, being, when I saw him, very reserved and
dignified. The officers and men of our party took no apparent notice of the
remarks that were made, and acted with the greatest forbearance.”
However, in spite of the bluster and the determination of the envoys to
go only when compelled to do so by force, the four were taken on board the
American warship. The force used was not violence, of course. “Three
officers laid their hands on an envoy, after which the envoy walked down a
ladder to the boat.” It is conceded on all hands that Lieutenant Fairfax and
his men acted in a manner entirely becoming to gentlemen of the navy.
Having taken the Confederate envoys, Captain Wilkes permitted the
Trent to proceed on her voyage. He says:

“It was my determination to have taken possession of the Trent, and
sent her to Key West as a prize, for resisting the search and carrying these
passengers, whose character and objects were well known to the captain;
but the reduced number of my officers and crew, and the large number of
passengers on board, bound to Europe, who would be put to great
inconvenience, decided me to allow them to proceed.”
It is worth noting, as illustrating the character of Wilkes and his
officers, that they were absolutely certain that if they took the ship to Key
West she would be sold as a good prize for a sum that would have given
many thousand dollars to the San Jacinto’s crew. But for the sake of the
convenience of the passengers, they allowed her to go on.
After the Trent started on her way to St. Thomas, the San Jacinto
headed for Boston. “Why he did not go into New York or Hampton Roads,
where he could have communicated with the Government, is unexplained,
but the information of the capture was kept from the Department four days
longer than it should have been.”
But when at last he did reach port, and the news of the capture was
given to the reporters, the whole North went wild with joy, and the rest of
the civilized world, and especially Great Britain, was stirred as rarely, if
ever before, by the capture of an envoy. Even Secretary of the Navy Welles
lost his head and officially wrote to Wilkes: “Your conduct in seizing these
public enemies was marked by intelligence, ability, decision, and firmness,
and has the emphatic approval of this department.” As for the people of
Boston, it may be said that not in all the years since the War of 1812 had
they made such demonstrations over a naval officer. Even Hull, with the
Guerrière crew on board the Constitution, did not receive so much
banqueting; and Congress passed enthusiastically a resolution requesting
the President to give Wilkes a gold medal.
To the writer hereof it seems that the story of all this excitement is
worth careful consideration, not so much because it was incited by the
capture of two enemies of the flag, but because it was an expression of
feeling against the British. For the capture of Mason and Slidell could not
harm the Confederates greatly. There were other statesmen in the South to
take their place. But they had been taken from a British ship, and the people
at the North then believed that the British government, while publicly

professing friendship for their cause, was secretly doing everything possible
to aid the South. The enthusiasm over Wilkes appears to have been in good
part a protest against what was then called British hypocrisy and enmity for
the North. So great was this enthusiasm, that for a man to openly express
the opinion that a grave mistake had been made was to incur the most rabid
denunciations—to be called a “copperhead” and a “traitor” and a “toady.”
Meantime the British were, as said, but little less excited than the
Americans, though for quite a different reason. A British packet ship had
been assaulted on the high seas while making her usual voyage between
neutral ports, and the people—especially the seafaring people—wanted to
know what their government was going to do about it. As a matter of fact,
they did not have to wait long to learn.
“Richard Williams, Commander R.N., and Admiralty agent in charge of
mails” on the Trent, made his report under date of November 9th, and this
in due time reached Lord Russell, the British Prime Minister. A Cabinet
meeting was called to consider the matter, and on November 30, 1861,
Russell sent a despatch to Lord Lyons, the British Minister at Washington,
of which the following are the important paragraphs:
“It thus appears that certain individuals have been forcibly taken from
on board a British vessel, the ship of a neutral Power, while such vessel was
pursuing a lawful and innocent voyage, an act of violence which was an
affront to the British flag, and a violation of international law.
“Her Majesty’s Government, bearing in mind the friendly relations
which have long subsisted between Great Britain and the United States, are
willing to believe that the United States’ naval officer who committed this
aggression was not acting in compliance with any authority from his
Government, or that, if he conceived himself to be so authorized, he greatly
misunderstood the instructions which he had received.
“For the Government of the United States must be fully aware that the
British Government could not allow such an affront to the national honour
to pass without full reparation, and Her Majesty’s Government are
unwilling to believe that it could be the deliberate intention of the
Government of the United States unnecessarily to force into discussion
between the two Governments a question of so grave a character, and with

regard to which the whole British nation would be sure to entertain such
unanimity of feeling.”
In another letter of the same date Lord Russell added the following,
setting a time limit with instructions in case the British demand was not
allowed:
“In my previous despatch of this date I have instructed you, by
command of Her Majesty, to make certain demands of the Government of
the United States.
“Should Mr. Seward ask for delay in order that this grave and painful
matter should be deliberately considered, you will consent to a delay not
exceeding seven days. If, at the end of that time, no answer is given, or if
any other answer is given except that of a compliance with the demands of
Her Majesty’s Government, your Lordship is instructed to leave
Washington with all the members of your Legation, bringing with you the
archives of the Legation, and to repair immediately to London.”
These were the public official orders to Lord Lyons; but in order to set
forth accurately the condition of affairs, it is necessary to quote from a letter
of private instructions in which, as it now appears, Lord Russell, while
determined to enforce the British demand for reparation, was anxious “to
mitigate the effect of their peremptory demand.” He said:
“The despatches which were agreed to at the Cabinet yesterday, and
which I have signed this morning, impose upon you a disagreeable task. My
wish would be that at your first interview with Mr. Seward you should not
take my despatch with you, but should prepare him for it, and ask him to
settle with the President and the Cabinet what course they would propose.
“The next time you should bring my despatch and read it to him fully.
“If he asks what will be the consequence of his refusing compliance, I
think you should say that you wish to leave him and the President quite free
to take their own course, and that you desire to abstain from anything like
menace.”
Although, as said, the patriotic Americans, as a whole, were greatly
excited and incensed, there were many of them who did not share in these
feelings, and among these were Secretary of State Seward. To set forth the
reasons for this opposition to the opinions of their countrymen more

forcibly, the following incident of the history of the Revolutionary War
shall be told:
It appears that when that war was at its height “the colonial government
despatched as ambassador to Holland, then a neutral power, Henry Laurens,
a former President in the Congress of the country, vested with power to
secure from that Government a recognition of the United Colonies as an
independent nation—to conclude a treaty, and to negotiate a loan. In 1780
he left Charleston, on board the brigantine Adriana, bound to Martinique.
From thence he took passage in a Dutch packet, the Mercury, for Holland,
and thus was on board a neutral vessel, sailing between neutral ports.
“When three days out from Martinique, the Mercury was overhauled by
the British frigate Vestal, Mr. Laurens, with his secretary, was forcibly
removed from on board the Mercury; his papers were seized; they were
taken in the Vestal to St. Johns, Newfoundland, and thence, by an order of
the British admiralty, he, with his secretary, was taken to England, and he
was committed, as a prisoner, to the Tower of London, on a charge of high
treason. The British reverse at Yorktown soon changed the character of his
confinement to that of a prisoner of war, and he was, not long thereafter,
released, in exchange for Lieutenant-general Lord Cornwallis.”
The quotation is from Upton’s “Maritime Warfare and Prize.” No one
familiar with this work will accuse Mr. Upton of lack of patriotism. The fact
is that the case of Laurens, from a legal point of view, was precisely the
case of Mason and Slidell. If the British were wrong in taking the American
from a Dutch ship and treating him as a criminal in 1780, the Americans
were wrong in taking the Confederate envoys from the British ship in 1861
and treating them as criminals.

William H. Seward.
From a photograph.

But that is by no means the end of the story of the Trent affair. The
demand of Great Britain was officially communicated to Secretary of State
Seward on December 19th. On December 26th Mr. Seward delivered to
Lord Lyons a reply reviewing the entire case. The important points of this
reply are as follows:
The American government did not authorize the act of Captain Wilkes
and knew nothing about it until Captain Wilkes arrived and reported it.
Captain Wilkes believed that what he had done was “a simple legal and
customary belligerent proceeding to arrest and capture a neutral vessel
engaged in carrying contraband of war for the use and benefit of the
insurgents.” The “four persons taken from the Trent by Captain Wilkes, and
their despatches, were contraband of war.” If the envoys were contraband,
Captain Wilkes had a right, under the law of nations, to capture the Trent,
but the contraband “has a right to a fair trial of the accusation against
him.” “The neutral state that has taken him under its flag is bound to protect

him, if he is not contraband, and is therefore entitled to be satisfied upon
that important question.” Both the accused and the neutral state have a right
to demand “a tribunal and a trial.” In the Trent case there was neither
tribunal nor trial. Captain Wilkes constituted himself captor, judge, and
executioner. A very great wrong had been done. For this wrong “the British
Government has a right to expect the same reparation that we, as an
independent State, should expect from Great Britain or any other friendly
nation in a similar case.” “The four persons in question are now held in
military custody at Fort Warren in the State of Massachusetts. They will be
cheerfully liberated.”
The comment of Commodore Joseph Smith on Seward’s letter sums it
up admirably. In a letter to Flag Officer Foote he says, “It is ingenious,
gassy, too long, but able.”
It is to be observed that the letter of Mr. Seward did not contain the
word regret nor any form of apology. It stated the case and argued it, and
admitted that an error—“simply an inadvertency,” on the part of a naval
officer—had been made, and agreed to deliver up the prisoners. Whether
the Secretary should have expressed regret when he admitted the wrong, the
reader can judge for himself. What Lord Russell thought about this point is
not told in the documents, but what he said was that “Her Majesty’s
Government have arrived at the conclusion that they (the matters in Mr.
Seward’s letter) constitute the reparation which Her Majesty and the British
nation had a right to expect.”
Then, in another letter, he controverted Mr. Seward’s statements that
the Confederate envoys made the Trent a good prize that might have been
lawfully condemned. Of course no settlement of this question was reached,
but whether Lord Russell or Mr. Seward was right, may be, perhaps,
decided by the reader. At this writing there is trouble between Spain and the
people of Cuba. If a Cuban agent escaped from Cuba to the United States
and sailed from New York in an American liner for England, would the
government of the United States permit a Spanish warship to carry the
Yankee liner to Spain and there have her condemned as a prize? As this
question must be answered in the negative, it is impossible to resist saying
that in the Trent case the British government, instead of showing a spirit
hostile toward the American government, was, in spite of the time limit,
forbearing.

No direct reference to the British threat of war has been made so far,
nor has the policy of adding to one’s enemies, when one is already full of
trouble, been mentioned. It was a question of right and wrong. If, on sober
second thought, the whole American people had concluded that they were
right, or if it had been manifest that it was necessary for the life of the
nation to keep those Confederates, no threat of war and no attack from any
nation would have taken them from Fort Warren. It is an idle speculation;
but most writers on this subject are sure that if Mason and Slidell had not
been liberated the British would have declared war against us and so have
set up the Confederate States as an independent government. But if the
writer hereof may be allowed to express an opinion, he must say that, in
spite of the seven days’ limit, England was not quite ready to declare war.
And it is by no means certain that if she had done so, the combination
would have resulted as predicted. For the people of the United States were
not in their last ditch, nor were they friendless in the world.
If one other point in this controversy be considered, the patriotic
American can look upon the Trent case with unmixed pleasure. From 1783
until 1861—for seventy-eight weary years the American government had
vainly striven with all the arts of diplomacy, and even with the argument of
open war, to get from Great Britain a disavowal of her assumed right to
search a neutral ship in time of war and take from it any persons whom one
of her naval officers might decide to be British subjects—a renunciation of
what the Prince Regent (afterward George IV) proclaimed at the palace of
Westminster, in 1813, as the “undoubted and hitherto undisputed right of
searching merchant vessels in time of war, and the impressment of British
seamen when found therein.”
It was, indeed, not a very lively strife in the later years of this period,
for Great Britain had abstained from exercising her “undoubted and hitherto
undisputed right” as against American ships. But on November 8, 1861, an
American captain, being not well informed in the causes of America’s fights
for life and liberty, undertook the very act that, when done by Great Britain,
led to the War of 1812. He stopped a neutral ship on the high seas and took
from her men whom he declared to be American citizens, and without any
form of trial haled them away to a condition that was in law, if not in fact,
exactly the condition of the impressed American seamen before the War of
1812. Great Britain had often taken advantage of such an act; she had in

more than 6,000 cases, of which we have official knowledge, benefited by
such doings on the part of her naval officers. But she had never suffered
from such an aggression as that until November 8, 1861. There is no
recorded act nor official utterance of the government of Great Britain
during the first seventy-eight years of the existence of the United States that
can be construed as a renunciation of the right of taking British subjects
from neutral ships in time of war; but when an American naval captain took
an American subject from a British ship the British Prime Minister, with
swift indignation, declared it “an act of violence which was an affront to the
British flag and a violation of international law.” And that was not all. “The
British Government could not allow such an affront to the national honour
to pass without full reparation.” Indeed, the affront was so great that the
British Minister was to consent, for the purpose of consideration and
negotiation, “to a delay not exceeding seven days.”
The outrages perpetrated on American seamen in the old days have
never been avenged; but because the British were at last willing to
acknowledge in the most emphatic of official documents that the United
States waged a just war in 1812, they may be forgiven.

CHAPTER VIII

THE CAPTURE OF PORT ROYAL
A FLEET OF SEVENTEEN SHIPS, CARRYING 155 GUNS, SENT
TO TAKE A HARBOR THAT WOULD MAKE A CONVENIENT
NAVAL STATION FOR THE ATLANTIC BLOCKADERS—
THERE WERE TWO “EXCEEDINGLY WELL-BUILT
EARTHWORKS” “RATHER HEAVILY ARMED” DEFENDING
THE CHANNEL, BUT ONE PART OF THE SQUADRON
ATTACKED THEM IN FRONT, ANOTHER ENFILADED
THEM, AND IN LESS THAN FIVE HOURS THE
CONFEDERATES FLED FOR LIFE—A HEAVY GALE
WEATHERED WITH SMALL LOSS—INTERESTING
INCIDENTS OF THE BATTLE.

Within a month after the chief Confederate ports on the Atlantic coast
had been blockaded, the imperative need of a nearby naval station, where
ships could lie in a harbor and make repairs and take on coal, was manifest.
To run away north from Charleston and Savannah to Hampton Roads, every
time coal was needed, was something that could not be tolerated. For, as the
reader will remember, the majority of the steamers of those days could carry
no more coal than would last them for a week or ten days under steam. And
what was worse, the machinery was always going wrong, even though
steam-pressures were so low that steam-chests were known to burst inward
on the creation of a sudden vacuum. The capture of Hatteras Inlet, in a
small measure supplied this want. Vessels drawing no more than thirteen
feet of water could make a harbor there in any but the worst weather. But
because the majority of the blockading ships drew much more than this, the
government was compelled to provide a deeper port. Fortunately, “a harbor
sufficient to contain the largest fleet in the world” lay right where it was
needed. It was a little-known harbor, in those days, even among shipping

merchants, for no great town overlooked its waters, and it was visited only
by coasters. It lay within the State of South Carolina, about one-third of the
distance from Savannah harbor to Charleston, and it was called very
properly Port Royal. Although neglected entirely by commerce, it was
really the best harbor on the Southern coast. The bar that guarded it lay well
out at sea and had an ample depth of water over it. The channel between
Hilton Head on the south and Bay Point on the north was a mile wide.
Although “the land hereabouts is generally low, the trees are high,” and “a
small grove of trees, which tower above all the other trees like a high-
crowned hat,” marked the entrance to the harbor unmistakably, so that even
a stranger could easily work his way in unless a gale prevailed.

S. F. Dupont.
From a photograph.

Accordingly, the government decided to take possession of Port Royal,
and in October, 1861, began to gather a fleet of warships and transports at
Hampton Roads for that purpose. On October 10th Flag Officer Samuel
Francis Dupont hoisted his flag on the steam frigate Wabash, of which Capt.
C. R. P. Rodgers was commander. The squadron under him included the
Susquehanna, Capt. J. L. Lardner; Mohican, Capt. S. W. Godon; Seminole,
Capt. John P. Gillis; Pocahontas, Capt. Percival Drayton; Pawnee, Capt.

R. W. Wyman; Unadilla, Capt. N. Collins; Ottawa, Capt. T. H. Stevens;
Pembina, Capt. J. P. Bankhead; Seneca, Capt. Daniel Ammen, and the
Vandalia, Capt. F. L. Haggerty. All of these were regular warships, and the
Vandalia was the only sailing ship in the squadron. In addition to these,
there were six merchant steamers that had been purchased and armed for
use as warships. The warships proper carried 125 guns, all told, of which
seven were eleven-inch Dahlgrens, and seventy-nine were eight-inch or
better—most of them being nine-inch. The converted merchantmen carried
from two to eight thirty-two-pounders each, save one, the Isaac Smith,
which carried a rifled thirty-pounder. A force of soldiers, 12,000 strong,
under Gen. Thomas W. Sherman, was detailed to coöperate with the
squadron, and transports were provided to carry them, while coal-laden
schooners were gathered in order to keep the steamers in fuel.

C. R. P. Rodgers.
From a photograph.

The older readers of this will remember very well the excitement
occasioned throughout the nation by the gathering of this vast fleet at
Hampton Roads. For the administration had determined to keep the
destination of the expedition a secret, and it succeeded so well that the
mystery remained until after the fleet was gone.

S. W. Godon.
From a painting at the Naval Academy,
Annapolis.

On October 28th the Vandalia sailed away from Hampton Roads at the
head of the coal fleet of twenty-five schooners, the schooner captains
having been ordered to go to Tybee Bar, Savannah, in case they parted
company. The next day, October 29, 1861, the squadron, the most powerful
aggregation of fighting ships the United States had ever brought together,
steamed slowly out of the Chesapeake and headed away to the South “after
considerable delay in forming a double echelon line outside.” All that night
and all the next day the squadron was easily kept in hand, but during the
next night the easterly breeze hardened and the seas began to grow. As the
squadron passed Cape Hatteras, on the 31st of October, two of the
transports touched on the Diamond Reef. No damage was done, but as the
squadron continued down the coast the wind canted to the southeast, and

before nightfall of Friday, November 1st, a hurricane was upon them. The
flag officer gave orders for each captain to look out for himself, and at that
the fleet slowly scattered as the ships were headed into the gale.
That was a night never to be forgotten by any landsman afloat in the
fleet. As the seas rose the foam and spoondrift turned into tossing,
phosphorescent flames that swept across the black water, adding terrors by
their weird light to the fears already excited by the laboring of the ships.
The warships were well found and able, of course, but a sorrier fleet of
transports was never sent to sea, for it was composed in great part of inland
water steamers, lighters, and ferryboats, and here they were trying to live in
a Hatteras hurricane.
The first to suffer disaster was the transport Governor, a side-wheeler,
carrying a battalion of marines, 700 strong. As night came on, the big
arching timbers known as the hog-braces gave way one after another. The
marines and the crew worked together to repair the damage, with partial
success; but she rolled so heavily that her smoke-stack was pitched over the
rail, and it was then impossible to keep a full head of steam on, and the pilot
could no longer control her. In swinging off into the trough of the sea, she
was strained so badly that the seams were opened. The leak grew worse and
the rudder chains parted, and there she lay, absolutely helpless and steadily
filling with water, in spite of the labors of hundreds of willing men at the
pumps and with buckets.
At last daylight came, and with it help. The sailing ship Sabine, Captain
Ringgold, hove in sight. It was known that the ships were on soundings, and
the Sabine anchored, with the Governor astern of her also at anchor. Then
the Sabine paid out chain until she was near enough for a transfer of the
men. Seven were killed by being caught between the ships or tumbling into
the sea, but the rest were saved, with their arms. The Governor sank. The
transport Peerless was also lost, but her people, twenty-six in number, were
taken off by the Mohican, Captain Godon.

Josiah Tattnall.
From an engraving by Hall.

Off Charleston the squadron took the Susquehanna from the
blockaders, and on Monday morning, November 4th, the flagship, with
twenty-five other vessels of the fleet, came to anchor off the bar at Port
Royal, and here they were eventually joined by all the others that survived
the gale.
The storm was widespread, and the people at the North watched the
clouds with an anxiety that was equalled by the hope of the South.
Moreover, it was the first great expedition the nation had undertaken, and
the people were unused to war.
Meantime, some one in the confidence of the government had betrayed
the secret, and on November 1st, two days after the fleet sailed, the
Confederate Secretary of War telegraphed a warning to the forts at Port
Royal and the Confederate fleet at Savannah. The Confederate squadron
was under Commodore Josiah Tattnall, he who braved the fire of the
Mexican works at Vera Cruz. “His flagship consisted of an old passenger St.
John’s steamer, mounting one 32-pound gun forward and one 18-pound gun
aft. Then came two ancient, used-up tug-boats, each mounting one 32-
pound gun; the next, a rotten North River cattle-boat, mounting one 18-

pound gun; a dwarfish tug-boat from the James River, slightly armed,
bringing up the rear.”
It was a fleet in which machinery and men were wholly unprotected
and, for the purposes of war, was worthless. The Confederate forts were two
in number—one, on Hilton Head, on the south side of the channel, called
Fort Walker, and the other, on Bay Point, opposite, called Fort Beauregard.
These two forts were two and five-eighths miles apart. As described by
Scharf, “they were exceedingly well-built earthworks and were rather
heavily armed, Fort Walker mounting 23 guns and Fort Beauregard 18, a
total of 41; but 22 of these were only 32-pounders or lighter pieces, so that
there were in fact but 19 guns fit to cope with the at least 100 heavy rifles
and shell-guns of the Federal ships. Gen. Thomas F. Drayton was in
command of both posts, with his headquarters at Hilton Head, and Col. R.
M. Dunovant had immediate command at Fort Beauregard. The defences
were garrisoned by about 2,000 men, but this force was very deficient in
trained artillerists, and a small supply of shot and shell forbade much
practice with the larger guns.”

Plan of Fort Walker on Hilton Head.
From a drawing by R. Sturgis, Jr., in 1861.

John N. Maffitt, a better authority on the Confederate side, says that
“the construction of these works had been reprehensibly procrastinated until
the ninth hour, when, in haste and confusion, raw troops, strangers to any
ordnance above a 12-pound field piece, were hurried into the imperfectly-
constructed earthworks to battle without drill or target practice against a
masterly array of force.
“The excuse offered by the commanding general for neglecting to
exercise and familiarize his artillerists with target-drill was the scarcity of
ammunition. The commodore replied: ‘Half the allowance spent in practice
will more likely insure good results for the balance in fighting.’”

Within a few hours after the flagship reached the bar at Port Royal, all
but two or three of the government force was safely anchored inside. They
found that the channel marks had all been removed or placed to deceive.
Capt. Charles H. Davis and Mr. Boutelle of the coast survey went in the
coast survey steamer Vixen to replace the buoys, being guarded by five of
the smaller warships. When this had been done four of the gunboats—the
Ottawa, the Seneca, the Pembia, and the Penguin—anchored within three
miles of Fort Walker.
Meantime Commodore Tattnall had brought his river-boat squadron
through the inland waters to help defend Port Royal, and seeing the
gunboats within reach, he made a dash at them, regardless of the character
of his own ships. It was like Tattnall to do that; but he was fighting his own
countrymen now, and not Mexicans or Chinese. Capt. T. H. Stevens, of the
Seneca, who was senior officer, without waiting for orders from the
flagship, got up anchor, and with the four gunboats headed in to meet the
Confederates. Of course the encounter could have but one result, for the
government force was much the greater, and after Lieut. Daniel Ammen had
fired an eleven-inch shell into Tattnall’s Savannah, Tattnall turned and ran.
And that was the end of the offensive warfare waged by that Confederate
squadron.
The plan of attack chosen by Flag Officer Dupont was to divide his
force into two squadrons. The first included the Wabash, the Susquehanna,
the Mohican, the Seminole, the Pawnee, the Unadilla, the Ottawa, the
Pembina, and the Vandalia in tow of the Isaac Smith, a steam gunboat that
had been obliged to throw overboard all but one of her guns in the gale, and
so was useless for any other purpose than that of a tug. The smaller
squadron included the Bienville, the Seneca, the Curlew, the Penguin, and
the Augusta, of which all but the Seneca were converted merchantmen
carrying thirty-two-pounders; the Seneca, being armed with one eleven-inch
Dahlgren and a twenty-pounder rifle, besides two howitzers, was the only
one of much consequence for attacking an earthwork.
The larger squadron was to steam in past the fort on Hilton Head (on
the south side of the channel), at a distance, when abreast, of 800 yards, and
bombard it while passing in; the small squadron was to keep at the north
side of the larger one and give such attention as it might at long range to
Fort Beauregard over on the north side of the channel. When the forts had

been passed, the larger squadron was to turn back and steam out past Hilton
Head, firing as before, while the little squadron remained in the harbor to
head off any attack from Commodore Tatnall, and, what was of more
importance as the event proved, to attack the forts from the rear.
For both forts had been planned to face the roadstead and open sea, and
very little had been done to protect the landward faces from an attack from
within the harbor.
An offshore gale of wind prevented an attack on the 6th, but the
morning of the 7th came with scarcely a ripple on the sea, and at 9 o’clock
the two squadrons of warships, in the order named, headed with a flood tide
in close order to attack the fort on Hilton Head. They steamed along at six
knots per hour, and at 9.26 o’clock precisely a puff of white smoke was
seen on the parapet of the fort at the south. Instantly an answering puff was
seen on Fort Beauregard at the north, and a round black ball from each
came bounding over the smooth water, to fall short and sink out of sight. In
a minute the Wabash replied with her two big ten-inch pivots, the
Susquehanna followed with an eight-inch pivot, and in ten minutes more
the whole fleet was engaged. A hundred huge shells were falling upon and
around the fort, burying themselves for a moment in its walls, and then
bursting and throwing great masses of sand in the air—masses of sand that
fell upon the gunners and the guns there.
But, though inexperienced in war, and but slightly trained in the
handling of great guns, the men within the forts were a sturdy host, and
fought back in a way that must excite the admiration of all who read the
story. The ships were drawing nearer steadily, and there was need for rapid
work. To bring one cartridge from the magazine every time a gun was to be
loaded required too much time, and the gun’s crews in the forts, regardless
of the bursting shells that fell thickly around them, brought cartridges by the
armful, and piled them beside the guns.
Nevertheless, they labored in vain. Fire as swiftly as they might and as
accurately as they could, the majestic column of steamers passed in with the
tide, unimpeded, until well within the harbor, when the longer column
turned slowly around and came back, heading to pass this time within 600
yards instead of 800 as before. Sweeping out to sea, they came back again,
passing once more at the shorter and more deadly range, and then a number

of them came to anchor at a distance of 1,200 yards from the fort, and
began a steady fire at a sure range, while “the Vandalia, in tow of the Isaac
Smith by a long hawser, swept in long, graceful, but inconvenient curves
past and among these vessels. The Unadilla, whose machinery was
disabled, pursued her eccentric orbit, her commanding officer hailing and
requesting other vessels to get out of the way, as he ‘could not stop.’ As he
swept by, again and again the droll song of the man with the cork leg that
would not let him tarry was brought to mind.” So says Ammen. But while
the Unadilla amused the government forces she was not amusing the
Confederates, for she kept her batteries working as relentlessly as her
machinery worked.

Fort Walker.
Susquehanna.
Wabash.
Bienville.
Ottawa.
Curlew.
Seneca.
Fort Beauregard.

Bombardment of Port Royal, S. C.
From an engraving by Ridgeway of a drawing by Parsons.

And then came the steamer Pocahontas, under Capt. Percival Drayton,
a Southern-born naval officer whose regard for his oath had prevented his
deserting the flag. The Pocahontas had been delayed at sea by the great
gale, but although she arrived too late to join in the procession, she ran in
close to the beach southeast of the fort, and, stopping there, opened an
enfilading fire. There was a single thirty-two-pounder on this flank of the
fort, and Gen. Thomas Drayton, commanding the fort, had it trained on the

Pocahontas. General Drayton on shore and Captain Drayton afloat,
brothers, were firing on each other. But the gun ashore was knocked to
pieces by a shot from the ship, and thereafter the fire of the Pocahontas
began to drive the Confederates from their guns, for there were no traverses
between the guns to protect the men from an enfilading fire.
Meantime the smaller squadron left within opened an enfilading fire on
both the Hilton Head fort and Fort Beauregard on the north side of the
channel. “This enfilading fire on so still a sea annoyed and damaged us
excessively,” says General Drayton in his report. It became more annoying
still as time passed, for the ebb tide began to run, and the gunboats were
swept down until within 400 yards of the forts, and shots from even the
howitzers began to tell with deadly effect. It was a storm that no force of
men could stand. By 1.15 p.m., according to one account, and by 2 o’clock
at the latest, “all but three of the guns on the water front had been disabled,
and only 500 pounds of powder [remained] in the magazine” of the Hilton
Head fort. The work of the fleet was done. The Confederates began to
evacuate the fort on Hilton Head. Lookouts on the Ottawa were the first to
see the men leaving the fort, and signals were soon flying to announce the
fact. In a moment the Pembina was signalling the same story, while men
who ran aloft on the Wabash hailed the deck to confirm the news.

Fort Walker.
Vandalia.
Susquehanna.
Seminole.
Wabash.
Bienville.
Fort Beauregard.

Bombardment and Capture of Forts Walker and Beauregard,
November 7, 1861.
From an engraving by Perine.

At this the order to cease firing fluttered in the air. The Wabash and the
Susquehanna steamed close in where their huge broadsides would bear
directly on the fort, and Capt. C. R. P. Rodgers was sent in a boat to make
an examination.
“The entire fleet, now resting on its guns, watched the whaleboat pull
out from the wing of the huge frigate and make its way like a cockleshell

toward the grim and silent fort. Thousands of eyes centered on the little boat
with increasing interest as she drew nearer the shore. Her keel soon grated
on the beach, and the officers were seen to jump out, approach the fort and
enter, and for a time they were lost to view. Then Commander Rodgers was
seen scrambling up the highest part of the ramparts, carrying the American
colors with him; and at the first glimpse of the beautiful ensign the long
suspense gave place to tremendous cheers from every craft in the fleet.” So
says Maclay.
Although the main attack had been made on the Hilton Head fort, the
one at the north had received attention at long range from the larger
squadron, and the gunboats within the harbor had enfiladed it. It had
suffered so much, in fact, that the troops abandoned it as soon as they saw
that Hilton Head had surrendered. Vessels that were sent to reconnoitre
found the flag down, and the next morning Capt. Daniel Ammen of the
Seneca hoisted the American flag over the building that had been used as
headquarters there. Of his experience Ammen has written as follows:
“He went into the house without a suspicion of possible injury, and
found everything had been removed. The earthworks and magazines were
hastily examined, and the encampment under the pine trees half a mile
distant was then visited.
“Returning to the vicinity of the earthworks, where our flag had been
hoisted an hour before, a dull explosion was heard, a cloud of smoke went
up, and when it passed away there was no vestige of the small frame house
upon which our flag had been hoisted. A sailor walking near had fallen into
the snare by his foot striking a wire fastened to a peg, through which a ‘spur
tube’ had exploded a quantity of powder placed under the floor of the
house. The sailor was knocked down and stunned for a few minutes.”
The government loss in the fight was eight killed, and six seriously and
seventeen slightly wounded. The Confederates lost “eleven killed, forty-
eight wounded and four missing.”
Admiral Porter says that “the victory at Port Royal put new life into
Union hearts.” It “gave the powers of Europe notice that we could and
would win back the forts that had been filched from us.” It “showed
conclusively that the time-honored theory that one gun on shore was equal
to five on shipboard no longer held good.” And of Dupont he says that “all

the qualities of a great commander were possessed in an eminent degree”
by him.
The harbor of Port Royal remained under the flag. The adjoining waters
were patrolled by government gunboats, and Tybee Island and other
approaches to Savannah soon fell into government hands. Later on Port
Royal was used as a base for the operations against Charleston, which will
be described further on.

CHAPTER IX

THE MONITOR AND THE MERRIMAC
SUPERIOR ACTIVITY OF THE CONFEDERATES IN PREPARING
FOR IRONCLAD WARFARE AFLOAT—STORY OF THE
BUILDING AND ARMING OF THE MERRIMAC—SHE WAS A
FORMIDABLE SHIP IN SPITE OF DEFECTS IN DETAIL, BUT
HER DESIGN WAS NOT THE BEST CONCEIVABLE—ORIGIN
AND DESCRIPTION OF THE SHIP THAT REVOLUTIONIZED
THE NAVIES OF THE WORLD—A WONDROUS TRIAL TRIP
—FOR ONE DAY THE MERRIMAC WAS IRRESISTIBLY
TRIUMPHANT—TWO FINE SHIPS OF THE OLD STYLE
DESTROYED WHILE SHE HERSELF SUFFERED BUT
LITTLE—THE MAGNIFICENT FIGHT OF THE CUMBERLAND
—A DIFFERENCE IN OPINIONS.

The story of the most famous ship duel known to the history of the
world, the battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac, begins on June 10,
1861, when Lieut. John M. Brooke, C.S.N., formerly of the American navy,
was assigned to assist the Confederate Navy Department in designing an
ironclad that should be able to gain control of the navigable waters in and
about the Chesapeake Bay. Brooke “entered upon this duty at once, and a
few days thereafter submitted to the department, as the results of his
investigations, rough drawings of a casemated vessel, with submerged ends
and inclined iron-plated sides. The ends of the vessel and the eaves of the
casemate, according to his plan, were to be submerged two feet; and a light
bulwark or false bow was designed to divide the water and prevent it from
banking up on the forward part of the shield with the vessel in motion, and
also to serve as a tank to regulate the ship’s draft. His design was approved
by the department,” and Constructor J. L. Porter was brought up from
Norfolk to Richmond to assist in making the working drawings. Porter had

already been considering this subject, and brought with him a model of a
light-draft, screw-driven scow, that was to support a “casemated battery,
with inclined iron-covered sides and ends.” In the opinion of Brooke this
would have been, “for ordinary purposes, a good boat for harbor defence,”
but a blunt-ended hull was, naturally, not to the liking of a naval man, and
he proposed to have the ends of the hull “prolonged and shaped like those
of any fast vessel, and submerged two feet under water, so that nothing was
to be seen afloat but the shield itself.”
Plans were drawn for such a ship, and, with Chief Engineer W. P.
Williamson, Brooke went looking for engines to drive the proposed
ironclad, but failed to find any. It was in this emergency that Williamson
thought of the hulk of the Merrimac, that had been partly burned and sunk
at Norfolk. Her engines were old and in bad order when she arrived at
Norfolk before the trouble began, and new ones were to have been
provided. Moreover, the fire and the soaking in sea-water had injured them;
but Williamson knew that they could be made to work. Both Porter and
Brooke “thought the draft too great, but were nevertheless of the opinion
that it was the best thing that could be done,” and the order to transform the
old frigate into a floating fort was issued. Williamson “thoroughly
overhauled her engines, supplied deficiencies, and repaired defects, and
improved greatly the motive power of the vessel.” Porter “cut the ship
down, submerged her ends, performed all the duties of constructor, and
originated all the interior arrangements.” The casemate was built according
to the plans of his model.
“Mr. Brooke attended daily to the iron armor, constructed targets,
ascertained by actual tests the resistance offered by inclined planes of iron
to heavy ordnance, and determined interesting and important facts in
connection therewith, and which were of great importance in the
construction of the ship; devised and prepared the models and drawings of
the ship’s heavy ordnance, being guns of a class never before made, and of
extraordinary power and strength.”
Porter having got the hull in the dry dock, cut it down to where the
berth deck had been. Then he laid a heavy timber deck over the entire hull,
and on this, amidships, he erected a casemate, with its walls inclined in at
an angle of “about thirty-six degrees,” according to one of her officers, and
forty-five according to another. This casemate was two feet thick, and was

made of twelve-inch timbers standing on end, covered with eight-inch
timbers laid horizontally, which were in turn covered with oak plank four
inches thick. On these were laid iron plates two inches thick and eight
inches wide, placed horizontally, with another layer of the same dimensions
over them placed vertically. The side-walls of this casemate projected down
and out over the sides of the hulk, like the eaves of a country house, to
protect the water-line, and the hull itself was plated with one-inch iron for
two feet below the deck, although the design called for three-inch iron. The
inclined sides were carried up high enough to give seven feet head room
inside, and then a heavy flat deck twenty feet wide, with hatches in it, was
laid across. On the bow, two feet below the water-line, was bolted a cast-
iron wedge that projected two feet from the stem, and was for use as a ram.

Franklin Buchanan.

The battery of the Merrimac contained six of the nine-inch Dahlgrens
found in the Norfolk Navy Yard, and four rifles designed by Brooke. Two of
these rifles were mounted as pivots at bow and stern, and two smaller ones
were in the broadside. The pivots were cast-iron muzzle-loading rifles of
seven-inch calibre, and they weighed 14,500 pounds each. The reader will
appreciate the weight of the gun when it is told that the best gun in the

British navy at that time was the 68-pounder, having a calibre of eight
inches and weighing 9,500 pounds. Moreover, Brooke’s heavy casting was
reinforced by wrought-iron bands shrunk on. The broadside guns were of
the same construction, but weighed 9,000 pounds and were of four-inch
calibre. Brooke’s guns were far and away the best then afloat.
When ready for a trial trip, with all weights on board, the Merrimac
drew twenty-two feet six inches of water. Her crew numbered 320. She was
commanded by Flag Officer Franklin Buchanan, and Lieut. Catesby Ap R.
Jones was chief officer. Another lieutenant was John Taylor Wood, and both
of these lieutenants have written accounts of the ship. They agree in saying
that the engines were in wretched order, and that the great draft of the ship
was a serious disadvantage in the waters where she was to be used is
manifest. Nevertheless, for smooth water she was the most powerful ship
afloat. She was named the Virginia, and should have been called so in
history, for she was a rebuilt ship; but it is too late to change history now.
Of course, the government heard about the building of a floating
battery on the Merrimac hull. The spy service of the government was never
as good as that of the Confederates, and the news obtained was not always
appreciated. Porter tells of seeing a mechanic who had fled from the
Norfolk Navy Yard ill-treated when taken on board the government flagship
to tell what he knew. This matter is referred to, not to make an ill-natured
criticism of a government officer, but to show how important it is in time of
war to make a full and just estimate of the power of the enemy.

The New Ironsides in Action.
From a photograph, of a drawing, owned by Mr. C. B. Hall.

The Confederates began the work of converting the Merrimac in June,
1861. There were several frigates in the Union navy that might have been
converted, with Northern resources, into more powerful ironclad batteries
than the Merrimac was, but nothing was done until Congress met, and on
August 3d made an appropriation for ironclads. Then designs were called
for, and three were selected for acceptance after long consideration. One of
these proved a failure as an ironclad. One proved a great success a year or
so later (she was called the New Ironsides), and, fortunately, the third was
of a design that might be built quickly and yet prove efficient. This ship was
from the brain of John Ericsson, who had already revolutionized the navies
of the world by introducing the submerged screw propeller; and the name
which he gave to the marvel he produced, at once became generic.
Although Congress appropriated the money for ironclads on August 3d,
the board appointed to consider plans did not convene until the 8th. It took
them until September 8th to make up their minds, and it was not until
October 4, 1861, that the final contract with Ericsson was signed. This was
a needless delay, and this fact is worth emphasizing because it is not
unlikely that similar delays will be experienced whenever the nation is
again unexpectedly plunged into war.

The Giant and the Dwarfs; or John E. and the Little
Mariners.
[From a Swedish caricature, February 10, 1867.]

John.—Come here, little boys, and I will show you.
What do you say to this model of a gunboat for our
coast defence?
The Little Boys.—Won’t do ... too small ... too heavy draught ... too large
guns ... too light draught ... too large ... too small guns ... won’t do,—
that’s what I say ... and I also,—because it isn’t our invention.
John.—Well, little boys, that is at least some reason.

But if the authorities were dilatory, the mechanics were not. The keel
was stretched in that part of the Brooklyn water front called Greenpoint,
before the end of the month, although working plans had to be laid in the
mould loft and contracts for materials made. Three gangs of men were
employed, working eight hours each in succession; the iron was kept hot

from the day the work began until January 30, 1862, when the hull was sent
afloat in the waters of the East River, under the name of Monitor.

The Monitor.
The hull of the Monitor, as it stood on the land, was in a way
something like that of the common ferryboat. There was a smooth, rounded
hull, 124 feet long, thirty-four wide, and about six feet deep, with a
superstructure laid flat across the top of this hull and projecting out like a
guard-rail on all sides.
It projected three feet and eight inches on each side, and twenty-five
feet at each end. But this overhanging part was really a super-added hull; it
was a flat-bottomed hull, 172 feet long, forty-one wide, and five feet deep,
laid on top of the lower hull, and secured to it by a single row of rivets. As a
whole, the Monitor was unlike any other hull ever built. And it is no
disparagement of the genius of Ericsson to say that no sailorman could ever
have dreamed of such a thing even when in a delirium from drink.
This hull was made of boiler-iron riveted to suitable frames, and the
vertical sides of the overhang were protected by five one-inch iron plates
bolted on and backed by heavy oak timbers. A heavy timber deck,
supported on big wooden beams, was protected from a plunging fire by two
layers of half-inch iron plates. On the centre of this hull rose a round turret,
twenty feet in diameter inside and nine feet high, made of eight one-inch
iron plates. It was supported on a pivot, to which an engine was geared so
that it could be readily turned in either direction. Her deck was one foot
above the water-line. She carried two eleven-inch smooth-bore guns, firing
solid shot weighing from 170 to 180 pounds. Her speed was between four

and five knots. A novel feature was the absence of smoke-stacks in action;
they were taken apart and laid flat on deck, which gave an all-round fire
abaft. The draught to the furnaces was maintained by powerful blowers.
Forward of the turret stood a pilot-house made of iron logs, nine inches
square, built up log-cabin fashion by notching and bolting the ends together.
Her anchor was suspended in a well under the bow, the cable passing
through a pipe beneath the deck to a winch further aft. The propeller was, of
course, concealed under the overhang aft. In short, her machinery was
altogether below the water-line, while her guns were placed as near the
centre of gravity as could well be imagined, and were well protected. It is
perhaps as well to say here as elsewhere that with such modifications as
experience has suggested, the Monitor type is, in the opinion of many of the
American captains who have commanded them, not only the best protected,
but the most efficient and the safest style of coast-defence ships.
As the month of January, 1862, came on, the Confederates learned from
their spies that the Monitor was rapidly nearing completion, and the number
of men at work on the Merrimac was doubled. They had already been
pushing the work as fast as daywork could do it, but with the added force,
the Merrimac rapidly assumed the form where she might be placed in
commission. The collecting of a crew proved a matter of some trouble, for
the people of the South were all soldiers rather than seamen; but by visiting
the various armies, Captain Buchanan was able to select a thoroughly good
crew for the work—men who could fix the boilers, steer the ship, and work
the guns to the best advantage. The fact that many of them did not know a
royal halliard from futtock shroud was of no importance, for, like the latest
of warships, the Merrimac had neither halliards nor shrouds. With the
arrival of the crew the eagerness of the officers to try their ship increased.
She had never steamed a mile in her new form—she had never steamed at
all save only to turn her shaft at the dock to see whether the engines would
work or not; but this did not matter. The men were fore and fit, and on
Saturday, March 8th, they would show what the ship was good for.
A glance at the map shows that the waters of the James River come
down from the northwest, those of the Nansemond come from the
southwest, and those of the Elizabeth come up from the south to unite in
Hampton Roads, and flow out to the northeast to empty into Chesapeake
Bay. Old Point Comfort, with Fortress Monroe, guarded the north side of

the mouth of Hampton Roads, but away south, on the route to Norfolk, was
Sewell’s Point, where the Confederates had erected strong batteries that
completely commanded the channel running south from Hampton Roads to
Norfolk. Over on the northwest corner, so to speak, of Hampton Roads lay
Newport News Point, which was held by the government; so the
government ships were in the habit of anchoring along the northerly side of
Hampton Roads all the way from Fortress Monroe to Newport News, a
distance of seven miles. They were in plain sight of the Confederate
batteries on Sewell’s Point, but far out of range, for it is a wide stretch of
water.

Hampton Roads.
From “The Navy in the Civil War.”

On the morning of March 8, 1862, the steam frigates St. Lawrence,
Roanoke, and Minnesota were anchored at wide intervals, in the order
named, in a line southwest from Fortress Monroe toward Newport News
Point, while the sailing frigate Congress lay just east of Newport News
Point, and the sailing sloop-of-war Cumberland lay just a little to the west
of the point. It was a lovely day of the early spring. The ships swung easily
to their cables; the small boats wabbled over the tiny waves as they tugged
at the painters that held them fast to the wide-spread booms. The wash-
clothes, on well-filled lines stretched in the rigging, fluttered in the gentle
breeze. There was nothing to indicate that any officer had any care or
thought of the ironclad ship that for months past the Confederates had been
building at Norfolk. And as a matter of fact they did not give the ironclad a
serious thought, for they were conservatives. What could a newfangled
notion like this ironclad do, any way? Hadn’t Lord Howard Douglas and
other good English authorities proved to the satisfaction of the experienced
men of the world that a ship plated with iron would really prove more
dangerous to her crew than to an enemy in the oft-approved frigates of the
day? He had.
The morning wore away in peace, but at noon exactly, the crew of the
Cumberland saw the long trail of smoke from steamers that were boldly
coming up the channel from Norfolk. A careful lookout kept watch of that
smoke until it was seen that the steamers were three in number, of which
one, although it made more smoke than both the others, did not look at all
like a ship, but like a low black box instead. There was no mistaking her
character, however. She looked as the escaped colored people had said the
new ironclad looked, and the drums beat the long call to quarters.
Over on the Congress, lying east of Newport News Point, there was a
similar stir while signal flags fluttered aloft to warn the big steam frigates
lying up to the northeast toward Fortress Monroe.

(with highlighted numbers)

Fortress Monroe and its Vicinity.
1. Old Point Comfort, 2. Fortress Monroe. 3. Water battery. 4. Hampton Roads. 5. Rip Raps.
6. Chesapeake Bay. 7. Sewell’s Point. 8. Craney Island. 9. Elizabeth River. 10. Norfolk. 11.
Portsmouth. 12. Dismal Swamp. 13. Atlantic Ocean. 14. Cape Hatteras, N. C. 15.
Nansemond River. 16 James River. 17. Newport News. 18. Hampton. 19. Mill Creek. 20.
Land approach to Fortress.

Capt. John Marston, who was senior officer and commanded the
Roanoke, reports that he had already seen the enemy coming. At 12.45
o’clock they passed Sewell’s Point, over on the south shore, and on getting
out into deep water they headed away to the west toward Newport News.
The Merrimac had left Norfolk for a trial trip, but the crew had slushed
her walls to make the Yankee shells slip off, and their enthusiasm made
them determine to give her such a trial as no new-idea ship ever had either
before or since. Running across to Newport News, the Merrimac headed for
the Cumberland, that lay beyond the point. The government crews were at
their quarters, and while yet the Merrimac was three-quarters of a mile
away, the Cumberland’s ten-inch pivot began to talk. Then the frigate
Congress opened fire. The Merrimac passed her broadside to broadside, for
the Congress swung head to the east with the young flood-tide. It was an

experienced crew on the Congress, and her shot rattled and burst against the
Merrimac’s side—rattled and burst “like peas from a pea-shooter.” They
made the slush there sizzle and smoke, but they did no damage whatever.
As the Merrimac passed the Congress, however, and opened fire with her
broadside, the shot struck home, carrying death on every side.
One broadside only, and then she was gone. She was going to begin on
the Cumberland. Lieut. George U. Morris was in command of the
Cumberland, for Capt. William Radford was away on other duty. But
Morris was equal to the emergency. As the Merrimac drew near, the
Cumberland’s guns were loaded with solid shot and the heaviest service
charge of powder. The broadside guns were carefully aimed, and almost
every shot struck the moving target—struck it and bounded clear or burst
into harmless fragments. There was nothing they could do to impede the
coming monster. And then, when the Merrimac was within a few yards, her
long bow rifle blazed forth. It was aimed by Lieut. Charles Simms, and it
killed and wounded “most of the crew of the after pivot gun of the
Cumberland.”
The Cumberland returned the shot with a broadside, but the Merrimac
was now upon her; the long bow, that was just awash, slid through the water
and into the side of the old sloop just under the fore rigging. The crash of
the timbers was heard above the roar of the guns. The Cumberland shivered
and heeled slightly to the blow, while the Merrimac hung for a moment in
the wound she had made, and then backed off, firing every gun that would
bear, while the water went roaring into the Cumberland through the hole
where the ram had struck.
Heading to the west, the Merrimac steamed slowly away astern of the
wounded ship, and then turned to come back again. While the Merrimac
turned she raked the Cumberland first with the big stern pivot and then with
the broadside guns, killing and wounding many, and then ranging up beside
her, hailed and demanded that she surrender.

The Sinking of the Cumberland by the Ironclad Merrimac.
From a lithograph published by Currier & Ives.

The Cumberland was now settling down forward under the weight of
water there; it was plain that she must sink. It was certain that her shot
could not pierce the side of the ironclad. But Lieutenant Morris replied:
“Never! I’ll sink alongside.” And then the Cumberland’s “gun’s crews
kicked off their shoes, and stripped to the waist. Tanks of cartridges were
hoisted on the gun-deck and opened, and round after round was fired at the
ironclad. A shell passing through the hatch burst in the sick-bay, killing four
of the wounded. On the berth-deck, the wounded men were lifted upon
racks and mess-chests, to keep them from drowning; and as the water rose,
those who fell on the upper decks were carried amidships and left there.
Already, the boats had been lowered and made fast in a line on the shore
side. At half-past three, the forward magazine was drowned, and five
minutes later the order was given to the men to leave quarters and save
themselves.”
The water had risen at this time to the gun-deck, and the ship was
heeling swiftly to port. There was need of haste if the crew were to save
themselves even by swimming, but with their feet in the rising flood one
crew lingered to fire a last shot. And as its smoke rolled from the ship’s side
she sank out of sight with her flag flying.

“Never did a crew fight a ship with more spirit and hardihood than
these brave fellows of the Cumberland while the vessel was going down.
Nor was it a mere idle display of gallantry, this holding on to the last; for in
these days, in naval battles,” “c’est le dernier coup qui peut-être nous
rendra victorieux” (the last shot may give us the victory). “Tirez, tirez
toujours!”
Flag and all disappeared as the ship went down, but the water was only
fifty-four feet deep, and when she struck bottom she righted, and the peaks
of her masts appeared once more to flutter the old flag in the sunlight.
And let it be told to the honor of the Cumberland’s crew, who fought
till their feet were wet by the water above the deck of the sinking ship, that
their shot did more damage than any others fired at the Merrimac, not
excepting the Monitor’s; for they shot off the muzzles of two of the
Confederate guns and burst a shell in a port where its fragments killed two
and wounded several others.
There were 376 souls on board the Cumberland when she went into
action. Of these, 117 were lost and twenty-three were missing.

The Merrimac Ramming the Cumberland.
From a drawing by M. J. Burns.

“The gallantry of her officers and crew was the theme of great praise,
and painting and poetry celebrated their heroism. Lieutenant Morris, who
was commanding in the absence of Captain Radford, was the recipient of
special commendations from the Secretary of the Navy in a letter to him on
the 21st March. Just a week later, twelve citizens of Philadelphia, all
personal strangers to him, presented to Lieutenant Morris, at the house of
R. W. Leaming, an elegant sword, saying in a letter to him, that it could
have ‘no worthier recipient than the brave sailor who fought his ship while
a plank floated, fired his last broadside in sinking, and went down with his
flag flying at the peak.’ On the sword was the motto in Latin, ‘I sink, but
never surrender.’”

George U. Morris.
From a photograph owned by Mr. C. B.
Hall.

From the Cumberland the Merrimac turned to the government batteries
on shore, which were silenced for brief intervals, and then she began on the
Congress. Lieut. Joseph B. Smith was in command that day. Seeing the fate
of the Cumberland, he made sail to fly toward Fortress Monroe, but

unfortunately grounded. Two Confederate gunboats that had come with the
Merrimac got under the stern of the Congress and opened a hot fire where
only two guns would bear on them, and then finally came the Merrimac to
take a raking position at a distance of 150 yards. She could not use the ram
because the water was shoal, but her powerful battery knocked the guns of
the Congress to pieces and “searched the ship.” Just before the last stern
gun was disabled the powder cartridges ceased coming to it. The division
lieutenant went to learn why. “After my eyes became a little accustomed to
the darkness and the sharp smoke from burning oak,” he wrote, “I saw that
the line of cooks and wardroom servants stationed to pass full boxes had
been raked by a shell, and every one of them either killed or wounded.” For
an hour the crew of the Congress stood to their guns, and then, Lieutenant
Smith having been killed, and the ship being on fire in several places, Lieut.
Austin Pendergrast hoisted a white flag.
Meantime the flagship Roanoke had sent the Minnesota over toward
Newport News to attack the Merrimac, and had herself followed with the
St. Lawrence. But only the Minnesota got near enough to fight. The other
two “very prudently ran aground not far from Fortress Monroe.”
“As soon as the Congress surrendered, Commander Buchanan ordered
the gun-boats Beaufort and Raleigh to steam alongside, take off her crew,
and set fire to the ship. Lieutenant Pendergrast surrendered to Lieutenant
Parker, of the Beaufort. Delivering his sword and colors, he was directed by
Lieutenant Parker to return to his ship and have the wounded transferred as
rapidly as possible. All this time the shore batteries and small-arm men
were keeping up an incessant fire on our vessels. Two of the officers of the
Raleigh, Lieutenant Taylor and Midshipman Hutter, were killed while
assisting the Union wounded out of the Congress. A number of the enemy’s
men were killed by the same fire. Finally it became so hot that the gun-
boats were obliged to haul off with only thirty prisoners, leaving Lieutenant
Pendergrast and most of his crew on board, and they all afterward escaped
on shore by swimming or in small boats. While this was going on, the white
flag was flying at her mainmast-head. Not being able to take possession of
his prize, the commodore ordered hot shot to be used, and in a short time
she was in flames fore and aft. While directing this, both himself and his
flag-lieutenant, Minor, were severely wounded. The command then
devolved upon Lieut. Catesby Jones.

“Our loss in killed and wounded was twenty-one. The armor was
hardly damaged, though at one time our ship was the focus on which were
directed at least one hundred heavy guns afloat and ashore. But nothing
outside escaped. Two guns were disabled by having their muzzles shot off.
The ram was left in the side of the Cumberland. One anchor, the smoke-
stack, and the steam-pipes were shot away. Railings, stanchions, boat-
davits, everything was swept clean. The flag-staff was repeatedly knocked
over, and finally a boarding-pike was used. Commodore Buchanan and the
other wounded were sent to the Naval Hospital, and after making
preparations for the next day’s fight, we slept at our guns, dreaming of other
victories in the morning.”
The quotations above are from John Taylor Wood’s story of the action,
as printed in the Century Magazine, and Wood was a lieutenant on the
Merrimac. There is no dispute as to the facts which he there relates. The
points especially worth observing in this account are these: The government
batteries on shore continued their fire at the Confederates after the Congress
showed the white flag, and this fire killed friend and foe alike. The
commanding officer of the Congress “was directed by Lieutenant Parker to
return to his ship and have the wounded transferred,” and the Confederate
“gunboats were obliged to haul off with only thirty prisoners, leaving
Lieutenant Pendergrast” on the Congress. Captain Buchanan’s report of the
fight says that the firing on the Confederate gunboats was “vile treachery”;
and Scharf’s history says that “very great indignation was felt and
expressed by the Confederates,” because the officers of the Congress who
had surrendered did not hasten on board the last Confederate gunboat
leaving the side of the surrendered ship. It says their remaining on the
Congress was “to the discredit of the honor of American sailors.” Admiral
Porter says, regarding Buchanan’s firing red-hot shot at the Congress when
the white flag was flying and many wounded as well as the unhurt were on
board, “this was certainly most inhuman, since the crew of the Congress
were not responsible for the act of the troops on shore.”
It was a right fierce battle, and the things done were inevitable under
the circumstances—inevitable because of the passions excited by actual
conflict. If another battle of the kind be conceivable, then just such doings
must follow in its wake.

In after years Secretary of the Navy Welles wrote an account of the
effect this first raid of the Merrimac had upon a Cabinet meeting at
Washington. Because it showed a lamentable ignorance of the real power of
the ship, and because the losses of the day were wholly due to needless
delays in preparing to meet the new style of warship, it is worth while
quoting one paragraph from his article:
“‘The Merrimac,’ said Stanton, ‘will change the whole character of the
war; she will destroy, seriatim, every naval vessel; she will lay all the cities
on the seaboard under contribution. I shall immediately recall Burnside;
Port Royal must be abandoned. I will notify the governors and municipal
authorities in the North to take instant measures to protect their harbors.’ He
had no doubt, he said, that the monster was at this moment on her way to
Washington; and, looking out of the window, which commanded a view of
the Potomac for many miles, ‘Not unlikely, we shall have a shell or cannon-
ball from one of her guns in the White House before we leave this room.’
Mr. Seward, usually buoyant and self-reliant, overwhelmed with the
intelligence, listened in responsive sympathy to Stanton, and was greatly
depressed, as, indeed, were all the members.”
But that was not all nor the worst of the panic. Assistant Secretary of
War John Tucker wrote to Commodore Vanderbilt of New York to ask “for
what sum you will contract to destroy the Merrimac ... answer by telegraph,
as there is no time to be lost.” Humiliating as such panics are, they must not
be forgotten; they must be remembered because they are humiliating, in
order that they may be avoided in future.
By the time the Congress was ablaze beyond remedy, five o’clock had
come, and the ebb-tide had run so far that the Merrimac could not go to
look after the Minnesota, which was grounded some distance off toward
Fortress Monroe. Moreover, another day was coming, and to the mind of
Lieutenant Jones, who now commanded, he would much better return to
Sewell’s Point for the night and take the others on the first of the flood-tide
next day. That he would have destroyed them at leisure next day, had no
new element come into the conflict, is now unquestioned. But a new and a
remarkable element—the Monitor—was at hand.

CHAPTER X

FIRST BATTLE BETWEEN IRONCLADS
A COMPARISON BETWEEN THE MONITOR AND THE
MERRIMAC BY THE ENGLISH STANDARD OF 1812—IT
ASTONISHED THE SPECTATORS TO SEE THE TINY
MONITOR’S TEMERITY—AFTER HALF A DAY’S FIRING IT
WAS PLAIN THAT THE GUNS COULD NOT PENETRATE
THE ARMOR—ATTEMPTS TO RAM THAT FAILED—THE
MERRIMAC A-LEAK—CAPTAIN WORDEN OF THE
MONITOR DISABLED WHEN THE MERRIMAC’S FIRE WAS
CONCENTRATED ON THE PILOT-HOUSE—WHERE THE
MONITOR’S GUNNERS FAILED—FAIR STATEMENT OF THE
RESULT OF THE BATTLE—WORDEN’S FAITHFUL CREW—
THE MERRIMAC DEFIED THE MONITOR IN MAY, BUT
WHEN NORFOLK WAS EVACUATED SHE HAD TO BE
ABANDONED AND WAS BURNED AT CRANEY ISLAND—
LOSS OF THE MONITOR.

As it happened, the gunners on the Merrimac, when firing red-hot shot
at the Congress, aimed high, and the shot were lodged in the upper part of
the hull. The flames quickly spread over the bulwarks and up the rigging,
but were slow in eating down toward the magazine. For hours the flames
illuminated the whole region, while now and again a gun that had been left
loaded was fired by the growing heat. It was a scene that attracted
thousands of eyes ashore and afloat until, soon after midnight, the fire
arrived at the magazine, and the exploding powder hurled the huge mass of
blazing timbers high in air. A thunderous roar shook all the region round
about, and then “the stillness of death” followed.
But while the men on the Merrimac watched the fruition of their day’s
work, one of them, a pilot, saw “a strange-looking craft brought out in bold

relief by the brilliant light of the burning ship, which he at once proclaimed
to be the Ericsson.” The pilot was right. The Monitor had arrived after a
fearsome passage, during which the water had poured in through the hawse-
pipe where the anchor chain led, and even down the smoke-stack, until the
fires were all but extinguished. The belts on the fans got wet, so that it was
not possible to keep up the draft, and the engineers and firemen were all but
suffocated. The water dashed through the lookout slats of the pilot-house
with such force as to knock the pilot over the wheel. The water gained in
the hold until there was imminent danger of sinking. Nevertheless, it was an
offshore wind, and the tug that went with her got her inshore, where the
water was quiet, and at 4 o’clock on the afternoon of Saturday, March 8th,
she passed in at Cape Henry and headed north for Hampton Roads. She was
commanded by Capt. J. L. Worden, with Lieut. S. D. Greene as executive
officer, and A. C. Stivers and Isaac Newton as chief and first assistant
engineers. The roar of the guns of the Merrimac as she fired hot shot into
the Congress twenty miles away, fell upon the ears of the Monitor’s crew,
and the ship was at once cleared for action. After a little they “could see the
fine old Congress burning brightly, and soon a pilot came on board to tell
the direful news.” The Monitor was then driven at full speed to the
Roanoke, where Flag Officer Marston directed her to go to the assistance of
the Minnesota, then aground not far from the scene of the day’s conflict. In
doing this Marston disobeyed orders he had received from Washington to
the effect that the Monitor was to be sent there, presumably to protect the
capital; and this is to be remembered because it shows that the authorities at
Washington were as loath to trust in aggressive warfare in 1862 as they
were in 1812 when they ordered Hull to keep the Constitution in Boston
harbor.

J. L. Worden.
From a photograph.

Steaming over to where the Minnesota lay, the Monitor came to anchor,
an officer reported on board the big frigate, “and then all on board [the
Minnesota] felt that we had a friend that would stand by us in our hour of
trial.” So wrote Captain Van Brunt of the Minnesota.
How far this confidence was justified was proved by the event of the
next day; but when one contrasts the apparent power of the two ships as
they lay that night, the one at Sewell’s Point and the other at Newport
News, the chance of the Monitor’s accomplishing anything seems very
remote. Consider her guns. They were eleven inches in bore, but ten-inch
shot had been fired at the Merrimac for hours that day without effect. The
Minnesota fired seventy-eight solid ten-inch shot and 169 solid nine-inch
shot, with full service charges of powder, at the Merrimac during the two
days’ fighting. Only a few of these were fired on Saturday, but the Congress
and the Cumberland had fired shot a-plenty of that size at her, and none had
hurt her massive walls. The eleven-inch shot of the Monitor was not so
much heavier that her crew could be confident of piercing the armor where
the ten-inch had failed utterly. The eleven-inch solid shot used weighed
from 170 to 180 pounds, the ten-inch about forty pounds less. Moreover,
the Monitor had but two guns to the ten of the Merrimac. The weight of the
Merrimac’s broadside of five guns is not given in any of the authorities

known to the writer, but her three Dahlgrens fired 270 pounds, her small
rifle at least forty-five more, and, with one pivot counted in, the whole
discharge was 465 pounds, or more than double that of the Monitor. The
Monitor’s crew numbered fifty-eight, all told, while the Merrimac carried
320. Certainly if one may judge by the standards set up in English literature
on the War of 1812, these differences in numbers of crews and weights of
broadsides would make the result a foregone conclusion. Nor is that all to
be said about the crews, for the men on the Merrimac had had their usual
rest and food, while the crew of the Monitor had had scarcely a wink of
sleep since leaving New York, and it had been impossible to make a fire in
the galley and cook their food. They were served with food that night, but
no one slept. “The dreary night dragged slowly on; the officers and crew
were up and alert, to be ready for any emergency.” At daylight the
Confederate ships were seen at anchor off Sewell’s Point, and at 7.30
o’clock they left their anchorage and headed across toward Newport News
to begin anew their destruction of the Government ships.

Deck View of the Monitor and her Crew.
From a photograph.

“At the same time the Monitor got under way, and her officers and
crew took their stations for battle,” Captain Worden going into the pilot-

house with Quartermaster Peter Williams, who was to handle the wheel, and
Pilot Howard to tell the route. These three filled the little coop, that rose just
four feet above the deck. Lieutenant Greene went to the turret with “sixteen
brawny men, eight to each gun.” Engineer Stivers also entered the turret to
assist in handling the machinery turning it, and Acting Master L. N. Stodder
was there as second in command. Newton had charge of the engines. The
most important man in the ship that day was Greene, for it was his duty to
aim and fire the guns.
Something like an hour passed, after the Merrimac left her anchorage,
before she arrived in range of the government ships, but when yet a mile
away she opened with her big bow rifle on the Minnesota. The Monitor had
waited for her, and now, as the first shot was fired, headed straight at her. It
astonished the hosts of spectators to see the tiny steamer taken directly
alongside her huge antagonist. As she ranged up in place, her engine was
stopped, and Worden, stooping over a speaking-tube that led to the turret,
shouted the order:
“Commence firing!”
The crew in the turret triced up the shutter that covered the port, ran the
gun out as far as it would go, and then Lieutenant Greene, taking deliberate
aim at the broad but sloping wall, pulled the lock-string. The shot struck its
target with a resounding crash, split and broke the iron plates in its path and
bounded clear. The Merrimac replied with a broadside, and every shot
struck the revolving turret, but all without exception bounded away
harmless. “A look of confidence passed over the men’s faces in the turret,”
and with good will they fell to the work of reloading the gun, while Greene
ran out the other one and fired as before.
The most important naval battle in the history of the world was fairly
on. “Never before was anything like it dreamed of by the greatest enthusiast
in maritime war.”

The Fight between the Merrimac and the Monitor.
From a lithograph published by Currier & Ives.

With deliberation the crews on both sides worked their guns. The
Monitor fired a gun in seven or eight minutes, and the Merrimac for a time
made an average of a gun once in less than three minutes. But the Monitor,
having a revolving turret, could easily direct her guns at the Merrimac,
while the latter, huge and unwieldy and with narrow ports, had to trust to
the fortunes of the battle for a chance to get a good aim at her tiny
opponent.
Standing in the little pilot-house, Captain Worden peered through the
chinks left for eye-holes between the iron logs of which it was built. He saw
that the shot first fired against the broad wall of the Merrimac bounded
away without doing material harm, so he lessened the range—laid the
Monitor so close beside her that an active man might have leaped from ship
to ship. Still the Monitor’s shot failed to penetrate, and he then went
cruising to and fro, seeking a vulnerable point, but finding none, although a
single well-directed shot would have sunk the Merrimac out of sight.
Failing in this, Worden made a dash at the stern of the Merrimac, hoping to
disable her rudder or screw. He missed the mark, it is said, by the narrow
margin of two feet. Then the speaking-tube leading to the turret broke, and
the purser and the surgeon were stationed to pass the orders of the captain.
The interior of the turret became filled with smoke, and the walls and deck

were covered with the grime of battle. A painted mark which had been laid
to enable the turret’s crew to tell which side was starboard and which port,
was obliterated. The turret’s crew were shut in and unable to learn, save
with great difficulty, the bearing of the enemy. The machinery that turned
the turret was not quite equal to the work; “it was hard to start and harder to
stop when once agoing.” Greene was obliged to fire from a moving turret,
and the intervals between shots were lengthened.

In the Monitors Turret.
But over on the Merrimac matters were in quite as bad a condition. The
“ship was working worse and worse. The smoke-stack was carried away,
and the steam went down. Twice she grounded, while the Monitor, having
but a little more than half her draft, played around her.” And even the shot
from the big rifles made no impression on the turret of the Monitor.
Lieutenant Jones, on going to one part of the gun-deck, found the men
standing idle.
“‘Why are you not firing?’ he said to the lieutenant in charge.

“‘Why, our powder is very precious,’ replied the lieutenant, ‘and after
two hours I find that I can do her about as much damage by snapping my
thumb at her every two and a half minutes.’” So says Wood, already quoted.
At this, Jones determined to ram the Monitor, and for an hour
manœuvred for a position before he was able to order, “Go ahead full
speed!” Even then he failed because the watchful Worden gave the handy
little Monitor a turn, and the Merrimac struck a glancing blow that did not
hurt the Monitor, but it opened up her own bow, making an “alarming
leak.” The leak was temporarily plugged, but it had its effect on the fortunes
of the day, later on.
As the Merrimac sheered past the Monitor when trying to ram her, the
Monitor fired while the ships’ sides were touching. The shot struck at right
angles, and not only broke the armor-plates, but bulged in the wood backing
from two to three inches. The concussion made the men in the immediate
vicinity bleed at the nose and ears. It happened on the Monitor that a shot
which struck the turret about that time disabled Mr. Stodder, but he was
thoughtlessly leaning against the turret wall. These were the most effective
shots fired on either side during about six hours of steady fighting. The
crew of the Merrimac were ordered to board the Monitor at this time, but
the ships drifted apart before it could be tried.
Meantime the Merrimac had been making occasional efforts to get at
the vulnerable Minnesota. She had fired not a few shots at her from the off-
side battery. One shot exploded the boiler of the tug Dragon alongside, and
others made havoc on board the big ship. The Minnesota replied as well as
her situation permitted, but without effect.
And then the end came when the commander of the Merrimac so far
appreciated the condition of affairs as to order his gunners to concentrate
their fire on the Monitor’s pilot-house. The result was paralyzing. A shell
fired at a range of ten yards struck and burst against a lookout slot through
which Captain Worden was gazing. Flaming grains of powder and shreds of
iron were driven into his face and eyes. It knocked him across the pilot-
house, and blinded and wholly disabled him.
The force of the explosion lifted a loose plate that lay on top of the
pilot-house, and let in a flood of light. This “caused Worden, blind as he
was, to believe that the pilot-house was seriously injured, if not destroyed;

he therefore gave orders to put the helm to starboard and sheer off.” “The
Monitor retired temporarily from the action in order to ascertain the extent
of the injuries she had received.” Worden was helped down from the pilot-
house, and Greene was sent for. He found Worden, “a ghastly sight, with his
eyes closed and the blood apparently pouring from every pore in the upper
part of his face.” Greene helped him to a sofa, where the doctor took charge
of him. He believed himself dangerously hurt, but did not lose his fortitude.
Greene then went to the pilot-house and took command.

The Action between the Monitor and the Merrimac.
From an engraving of the picture by Chappel.

During the time that was needed by this change of commanders the
Monitor was heading toward Fortress Monroe. Captain Van Brunt “thought
it probable she had exhausted her supply of ammunition, or sustained some
injury.” Lieutenant Jones and his officers on the Merrimac very naturally
supposed that the Monitor had given up the contest. Jones says:
“We for some time awaited the return of the Monitor to the Roads.
After consultation it was decided that we should proceed to the navy-yard
in order that the vessel should be brought down in the water and completed.
The pilots said if we did not then leave that we could not pass the bar until

noon of the next day. We therefore at 12 m. quit the Roads and stood for
Norfolk. Had there been any sign of the Monitor’s willingness to renew the
contest we would have remained to fight her.”
Lieutenant Greene, of the Monitor, says of this matter:
“Exactly how much time elapsed from the moment that Worden was
wounded until I had reached the pilot-house and completed the examination
of the injury at that point, and determined what course to pursue in the
damaged condition of the vessel, it is impossible to state; but it could hardly
have exceeded twenty minutes at the utmost. During this time the
Merrimac, which was leaking badly, had started in the direction of the
Elizabeth River; and, on taking my station in the pilot-house and turning the
vessel’s head in the direction of the Merrimac, I saw that she was already in
retreat. A few shots were fired at the retiring vessel, and she continued on to
Norfolk. I returned with the Monitor to the side of the Minnesota, where
preparations were being made to abandon the ship, which was still aground.
Shortly afterward Worden was transferred to a tug, and that night he was
carried to Washington.”
Undoubtedly fair is the statement made by Lieut. John Taylor Wood:
“Although there is no doubt that the Monitor first retired,—for Captain
Van Brunt, commanding the Minnesota, so states in his official report,—the
battle was a drawn one, so far as the two vessels engaged were concerned.
But in its general results the advantage was with the Monitor.”
The italics are not in Lieutenant Wood’s statement, but are inserted here
to emphasize the effect of what he says. Greene adds:
“It has never been denied that the object of the Merrimac on the 9th of
March was to complete the destruction of the Union fleet in Hampton
Roads, and that in this she was completely foiled and driven off by the
Monitor; nor has it been denied that at the close of the engagement the
Merrimac retreated to Norfolk, leaving the Monitor in possession of the
field.”
The reader is likely to think that “retreat” is a strong word to use under
the circumstances, especially as the ebb-tide and not the Monitor made the
Merrimac leave. Nevertheless, there was also the leak in the Merrimac’s

bow to be considered. That leak was “alarming,” according to Jones, and
the Merrimac got it in battle by ramming the Monitor.
But while the controversy over the result of the battle is interesting, it is
in no sense practical. It is certain that neither crew was whipped, whatever
happened to the ships. The bravery on both sides must excite the pride of
every American. But the one point of the battle that is of practical
consideration is the gunnery.
Says Lieutenant Wood: “The Monitor was well handled, and saved the
Minnesota and the remainder of the fleet at Fortress Monroe. But her
gunnery was poor. Not a single shot struck us at the water-line, where the
ship was utterly unprotected, and where one would have been fatal. Or had
the fire been concentrated on any one spot, the shield would have been
pierced; or had larger charges been used, the result would have been the
same.” Here are statements of fact that ought never to be forgotten. The
haymakers of the lost Wasp came back from the mists in which they
disappeared to mock at the gunnery displayed in the Civil War, and
especially in this battle, for they, in a battle at night, laid their guns by the
sissing line of foam cast off by the Avon’s bow, and so struck the water-line
and sank the ship in spite of the utmost efforts of three crews to save her.

Group of Officers on Deck of the Monitor.
From a photograph.

In her battle with the Monitor the Merrimac was floating with her
unarmed bow, seventy feet long, more than a foot out of water, instead of a-
wash, as was originally intended. Had one shot from the Monitor struck the
Merrimac at the water-line’s junction with the armor, she would have gone
down. And yet Greene elevated instead of depressing his guns. The gunnery
of the Merrimac was better than that of the Monitor, for it was concentrated
at the last on a vulnerable point—the pilot-house—and so Worden was
disabled (he was the only one badly hurt in this fight), and the Monitor, for
the time, was driven away. The battle between the Monitor and the
Merrimac did not result in a glorious victory, but it was an unparalleled
lesson in naval warfare.
As a part of the history of the two famous ironclads, and as a portrayal
of the heart of the typical naval seaman of that day, the following letter,
written to Captain Worden while he was under the surgeon’s care in
Washington, must be given:

“To Captain Worden.
“Hampton Roads, April 24th, 1862.
“U. S. Monitor.
“To our Dear and Honored Captain.
“Dear Sir: These few lines is from your own crew of the Monitor,
with their kindest Love to you their Honored Captain, hoping to God
that they will have the pleasure of welcoming you back to us again
soon, for we are all ready able and willing to meet Death or anything
else, only give us back our Captain again. Dear Captain we have got
your Pilot-house fixed and all ready for you when you get well again;
and we all sincerely hope that soon we will have the pleasure of
welcoming you back to it.... We are waiting very patiently to engage
our Antagonist if we could only get a chance to do so. The last time she
came out we all thought we would have the Pleasure of sinking her.
But we all got disappointed for we did not fire one shot and the
Norfolk papers says we are cowards in the Monitor—and all we want
is a chance to show them where it lies with you for our Captain We can
teach them who is cowards. But there is a great deal that we would like
to write to you but we think you will soon be with us again yourself.
But we all join in with our kindest love to you, hoping that God will
restore you to us again and hoping that your sufferings is at an end
now, and we are all so glad to hear that your eyesight will be spaired to
you again. We would wish to write more to you if we have your kind
Permission to do so but at present we all conclude by tendering to you
our kindest Love and affection, to our Dear and Honored Captain.
“We remain untill Death your Affectionate Crew
“The Monitor Boys.”

The stories of the Monitor and the Merrimac may soon be completed.
The Merrimac was overhauled at Norfolk. Commodore Josiah Tattnall
relieved Admiral Buchanan in command. On the 11th of April he took the
Virginia (Merrimac) down to Hampton Roads, expecting to have a
desperate encounter with the Monitor. “Greatly to our surprise, the Monitor
refused to fight us. She closely hugged the shore under the guns of the fort,
with her steam up. Hoping to provoke her to come out, the Jamestown was

sent in, and captured several prizes, but the Monitor would not budge.” That
is from a Confederate account, and it is truthful. The Monitor was under
strict orders from Washington not to engage the Merrimac unless forced to
do so. A great fleet, that included a number of vessels which were supposed
to be able to sink the Merrimac by ramming, had gathered at Hampton
Roads. Commodore Goldsborough was in command of the fleet. The prizes
mentioned, two brigs and a schooner, were taken from Newport News and
in plain sight of the fleet. Professor Soley’s history says very truly that this
incident was “humiliating.” For about a month after that nothing was done,
but “on the 8th of May a squadron, including the Monitor, bombarded our
batteries at Sewell’s Point. We immediately left the yard for the Roads. As
we drew near, the Monitor and her consorts ceased bombarding, and
retreated under the guns of the forts, keeping beyond the range of our guns.
Men-of-war from below the forts, and vessels expressly fitted for running
us down, joined the other vessels between the forts. It looked as if the fleet
was about to make a fierce onslaught upon us. But we were again to be
disappointed. The Monitor and the other vessels did not venture to meet us,
although we advanced until projectiles from the Rip Raps fell more than
half a mile beyond us. Our object, however, was accomplished; we had put
an end to the bombardment, and we returned to our buoy.”
As the reader observes, this is also a Confederate account. Commodore
Goldsborough’s report says, on the contrary, that “the Merrimac was more
cautious than ever”; and that the “Monitor was kept well in advance so that
the Merrimac could have engaged her without difficulty had she been so
disposed.” But the unprejudiced reader will say that a Farragut was needed
at the head of the Union force.
The Merrimac remained unmolested until government operations
ashore compelled the Confederates to evacuate Norfolk and the battery at
Sewell’s Point. Tattnall wished to retreat with the Merrimac up the James
River, but his pilots said it could not be done, and accordingly, on the night
of May 10, 1862, he ran her ashore “in the bight of Craney Island,” not far
from where he had, as a midshipman in his teens, led the sortie from the
little fort built there to keep the British from Norfolk—led the sortie that
drove the boastful Pechell’s men helter-skelter back to their ships. On
Craney Island he fired the Merrimac and retreated ashore, leaving her to
blow up on the morning of the 11th at 5 o’clock.

The Monitor lasted a few months longer. She was ordered to Beaufort,
North Carolina, in tow of the Rhode Island, and sailed from Hampton
Roads on the afternoon of December 29, 1862. The Passaic, in tow of the
State of Georgia, went along. On the morning of January 2d a long swell set
in with a wind that grew to a gale, and just before midnight she foundered,
although not until all but sixteen of her crew were saved.

Destruction of the Merrimac off Craney Island.
From a lithograph published by Currier & Ives.

If the reader would know the effect of this fight on the navies of the
world, let him compare the best ships afloat in 1860—the old-style ships
with lofty masts and swelling canvas—with the latest designs of battle-
ships. For the old frigates all disappeared, one may say, when the
Cumberland went, and the turreted floating fort has followed in the wake of
the Monitor.

CHAPTER XI

WITH THE MISSISSIPPI GUNBOATS
CREATING A FLEET FOR THE OPENING OF THE WATER
ROUTE ACROSS THE CONFEDERACY—IRONCLADS THAT
WERE NOT SHOT-PROOF, BUT FAIRLY EFFICIENT
NEVERTHELESS—GUNS THAT BURST AND BOILERS THAT
WERE SEARCHED BY SHOT FROM THE ENEMY—WHEN
GRANT RETREATED AND WAS COVERED BY A GUNBOAT
—FIRST VIEW OF TORPEDOES—CAPTURE OF FORT
HENRY—A DISASTROUS ATTACK ON FORT DONELSON—
WHEN WALKE BRAVED THE BATTERIES AT ISLAND NO. 10
—THE CONFEDERATE DEFENCE SQUADRON AT FORT
PILLOW—THE FIRST BATTLE OF STEAM RAMS—
FRIGHTFUL EFFECTS OF BURSTED BOILERS—IN THE
WHITE RIVER—FARRAGUT APPEARS.

In all the naval operations of the Civil War hitherto described in this
history, the object had in view by the government was to strangle and starve
the Confederates. The blockade and the occupation of points on the
Confederate coasts had but one object, and even the capture of the
Confederate agents on the Trent was intended as a part of the same work.
The battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac was fought on one side to
raise and on the other to maintain the blockade at Hampton Roads. The
Merrimac was not seaworthy and could not have been made so. The
Confederates had no thought of using her beyond the waters of the
Chesapeake. But while the naval forces were carrying on this alongshore
work with practically uninterrupted success, an aggressive movement that
was to have far-reaching consequences was planned and in time carried out
by the naval power. This was the opening of the Mississippi.

In the early days of the war the Confederates having erected a number
of forts along the principal streams of the lower Mississippi watershed, the
government army officers were of the opinion that no armed vessels would
be of any use there. They thought, curiously enough, that the forts must
effectually close navigation on the streams.
However, this hopeless view vanished as the importance of the
navigation of those streams grew upon the minds of all interested in the
conflict in that region. One has now but to glance at the map of the
Mississippi Valley to understand the situation as it was then. For the
Mississippi itself, below Cairo, wound its way through a course more than
1,000 miles of what was practically Confederate territory. And, then, there
were the Cumberland and the Tennessee Rivers, that were navigable almost
into the heart of the Confederate States, while other streams like the Red,
further south, were to be considered. In these streams were found the
cheapest and most comfortable highways for the conveyance of armed
forces; but more important still was the fact that if the government
controlled the Mississippi, it cut the Confederacy into two parts and shut off
the supplies grown in the western part from the hungry East. An inland
navy was an imperative necessity, and the War Department undertook the
task of providing one.
Commander John Rodgers was ordered to report for duty to Gen. John
C. Frémont, who was then in command in the Mississippi Valley, in order
that he might attend to this work. His first move, like the work of the Navy
Department in establishing the blockade, was to buy and arm some
merchant vessels. Three that were named Taylor, Lexington, and Conestoga
were obtained at Cincinnati, and converted into warships by shifting the
boilers and steam-pipes into the hold and building five-inch oak bulwarks
around the decks to protect the crews from musket-shots. These bulwarks
were pierced with portholes, and old guns were mounted in them, navy
fashion. The Taylor had seven, and the others five and three respectively,
nearly all the guns being medium-length sixty-four-pounder shell guns.
They had no iron armor of any kind.

Mississippi Valley—Cairo to Memphis.
From “The Navy in the Civil War.”

In those days James B. Eads, afterwards famous as an engineer, was a
river-boat builder, having his yard at Carondelet, Missouri. When in July,
1861, the quartermaster-general of the army advertised for bids for the
construction of seven ironclad gunboats for service in the Mississippi
Valley, Eads submitted plans, with estimates of cost and time, that were at
once accepted by the government. The contracts were signed on August 7th,
and it was agreed that the seven should be ready for crews and guns in
sixty-five days, although the birds were teaching their young to fly among
the branches of trees that were to be used in building the hulls of these
vessels, and the shops that were to supply the iron were and had been idle
ever since hostilities had stopped the business of the country.

The Cairo.
From a photograph.

As the event showed, Eads was for the Mississippi what Ericsson was
on the coast. He was a man of original ideas. And yet, as Porter says, “it is
strange how slowly even the cleverest of men receive new ideas.” He built
ironclads, it is true, but with the smooth water in which he was to send them
afloat they might have carried a thickness of armor fit to turn the heaviest
shot instead of the boiler plate that was used. As described by Eads himself,
these boats “were to draw six feet of water, carry thirteen heavy guns each,
be plated with two-and-a-half-inch iron, and have a speed of nine miles an
hour. The De Kalb (at first called the St. Louis) was the type of the other
six, named the Carondelet, Cincinnati, Louisville, Mound City, Cairo, and
Pittsburg. They were 175 feet long, 51½ feet beam; the flat sides sloped at
an angle of about thirty-five degrees, and the front and rear casemates
corresponded with the sides, the stern-wheel being entirely covered by the
rear casemate. Each gun-boat was pierced for three bow guns, eight
broadside guns (four on a side), and two stern guns. Before these seven
gun-boats were completed, I engaged to convert the snag-boat Benton into
an armored vessel of still larger dimensions.”

The Pittsburg.
After a photograph.

Each was propelled by a single paddle-wheel set into the stern, where it
was protected by the fork-shaped hull as well as a casemate. The boats were
expected to fight bow on, and the iron plate across the bow was backed by
two feet of oak. On the sides opposite the boilers the iron armor was not
backed save by a slender supporting frame, while the stern had neither
armor nor oak wall. The pilot-house was of good oak covered with two and
a half inches of iron in front and an inch less in the rear. The crews had
every incentive to keep the bow of the ship toward the enemy.
“The armament was determined by the exigencies of the time. The
army supplied thirty-five old forty-two-pounders, which were rifled and so
threw a seventy-pound shell. These having lost the metal cut away for
grooves, and not being banded, were called upon to endure the increased
strain of firing rifled projectiles with actually less strength than had been
allowed for the discharge of a round ball of about half the weight. Such
makeshifts are characteristic of nations that do not prepare for war, and will
doubtless occur again in the experience of our navy.” So says Mahan.

The Mississippi Fleet off Mound City, Illinois.
From a photograph owned by Mr. C. B. Hall.

The Benton had been a snag-boat—a craft with two hulls so joined and
strengthened that she could get the largest kind of a cottonwood tree
between the hulls, hoist it out of the mud, and drag it clear of the steamer
channel. She had had two wheels, but one between the hulls was
substituted, and the whole was built over into the semblance of an angular
turtle, and armored with plates of iron three and a half inches thick, well
backed with oak. She was a five-knot boat and of deep draft for the service
(nine feet), but she was at that date the most powerful warship afloat, and
“she went by the name of the Old War Horse.” She carried sixteen guns, of
which two were nine-inch Dahlgrens.
Another vessel, like the Benton, was called the Essex, because
commanded by Capt. William Porter, a son of the Porter of Essex fame.
“After bearing a creditable part in the battle of Fort Henry she became
separated by the batteries of Vicksburg from the upper squadron, and is less
identified with its history.” She carried one ten-inch and three nine-inch
guns besides several smaller ones.

Other vessels were added to this upper Mississippi squadron from time
to time, but “they bore no proportionate share in the fighting. The eight
(from the Eads’ yards) may be fairly called the ships of the line of battle on
the Western waters.”
Commander John Rodgers was relieved by Flag Officer Foote on
September 6, 1861. He brought a number of younger officers who were to
command the ships of the new fleet while taking orders from the
commanding general of that department. Among these was Commander
Henry Walke, who had saved Fort Pickens at Pensacola, as already told, by
disobeying orders. Walke was sent to the Taylor.
These salt-water fighters found strange materials awaiting them—ships
such as they had never dreamed of in connection with war, and men from
the river banks and the corn-fields who knew nothing of great guns and
less, were that possible, of the restraints of naval discipline. Nevertheless,
the effects of naval discipline made first-class tars out of the raw material,
and the gunboats proved good enough for the occasion.

A. H. Foote.
From a photograph.

The first actual conflict between the gun-boats and the Confederates
was on September 10, 1861, when Grant (who was then under Frémont)
determined to dislodge a body of Confederates stationed on the west side of
the Mississippi, eight miles below Cairo, and near Norfolk, Missouri. The
Conestoga, Captain Phelps, and the Lexington, Captain Stembel, were sent
down. They found the Confederates had sixteen field-pieces and a
considerable body of cavalry. There was a lively bit of cannonading for a
time, and two Confederate gunboats (converted river steamers) came up to
join in. The Confederates’ guns were silenced, and then the government
gunboats returned to Cairo.
A number of equally fruitless skirmishes followed. On November 7th
there was quite a battle at Belmont, on the Missouri side of the river,
opposite Columbus, Kentucky. Grant, with between 3,000 and 4,000 men,
went down the river in transports convoyed by the gunboats Taylor, Captain
Walke, and Lexington, Captain Phelps. They landed just out of range of the
Iron Bluff forts above Columbus, and attacked the Confederates at Belmont
with success, while gunboats under Walke shelled the works on the
Columbus side. Although each boat might have been penetrated and its
boiler exploded by a stray grapeshot, they were repeatedly carried by
Walke, who was senior officer afloat, under the Confederate batteries. The
reader should understand that taking a frail steamboat under the fire of
heavy guns is a much more dangerous affair than going under fire with an
old-fashioned ship with sails; for one shot could scarcely disable even a
thin-walled sailing ship, but one shot into a steamer’s boiler not only
disabled her, but slaughtered her crew with the steam. Walke and Phelps
showed great gallantry on this occasion.
The Confederate troops were driven to their transports at first, but they
rallied and were reinforced from the Columbus side of the river until they
numbered about 7,000. Grant then retreated, and his troops were in some
disorder, for they were yet undisciplined.
When Grant was compelled to retreat, Walke took the Taylor within a
few yards of the banks where the Union troops embarked and drove off the
victorious Confederates. It is not unlikely that Grant would have been
captured but for Walke’s timely aid, for he was the last man to board the
transports, and the Confederates were at hand in force with plenty of field-
guns to sink the Union transports.

The Battle of Belmont: First Attack by the Taylor and the Lexington.
From a painting by Admiral Walke.

The next operation of importance was the capture of Fort Henry on the
Tennessee River, just south of the Kentucky line. It was the first of the
advances into the Confederate territory by way of the rivers of the West. On
February 2, 1862, Flag Officer Foote assembled at Paducah, at the mouth of
the Tennessee, the ironclad gunboats Essex, Capt. William D. Porter;
Carondelet, Captain Walke; St. Louis, Captain Paulding; and Cincinnati,
Captain Stembel; besides the three wooden gunboats Conestoga, Taylor,
and Lexington to act as a reserve. Here the troops under Grant were
embarked on transports, and the expedition proceeded cautiously up the
river—cautiously because a boastful woman in a wayside house had told a
scouting party that the ships would be blown out of water by torpedoes
before passing an island just below the fort. On Tuesday, February 3d, the
expedition had arrived within a few miles of Fort Henry, and the troops
were landed, and a combined assault by the ironclads and the troops was
ordered. But before the movement could be made, a tremendous storm
came on; the river rose until the gunboats, with both anchors down, had to
keep their engines going at full speed to hold their own against the tide and
the flotsam.
To the impatient sailors this seemed a misfortune, but after a time they
saw they were enjoying the greatest good luck, for there were full-sized

trees in the flood, and these swept the torpedoes clear of their moorings and
brought them floating down. Small boats were sent out to gather them in,
and very ugly things they were—cylinders of sheet iron big enough to hold
seventy-five pounds of powder, with a lock and trigger that should catch on
a boat’s bottom and explode the powder.
However, on the 6th the water was low enough to permit an advance.
Flag Officer Foote went to the ships to inspect the crews, and told the
gunners that every shot cost the government eight dollars, so none must be
wasted. They were to aim at the guns of the fort—aim, and not merely point
in the direction.
Finally, the soldiers on shore waded away through the mud, and the
gunboats steamed slowly up the river.
The fort they were to attack was a well-planned earthwork mounting
twenty guns, but of these only eleven or twelve (accounts differ) could be
brought to bear on the approaching fleet. The best of these was a sixty-
pounder rifle, but a ten-inch medium-weight shell gun and two forty-two-
pounders supported it, and the rest were thirty-twos. As the gunboats were
to fight bows on, they could bring to bear twelve guns, of which two were
nine-inch Dahlgrens, and the rest sixty-four-pounders, or better. The weight
of metal afloat was superior, but until the days of armored ships one gun in
a fort was counted equal to from three to five afloat.

Battle of Belmont: U. S. Gunboats Repulsing the Enemy during the
Debarkation.
From a painting by Admiral Walke.

Interior of the Taylor during the Battle of Belmont.
From a painting by Admiral Walke.

By any reasonable standard here was as fair a fight as one could hope
to find between ships and forts at that day, and at 12.30 o’clock on Friday,
February 6, 1862, the Cincinnati (the flagship) fired her three bow guns
simultaneously at an estimated range of 1,700 yards. The wily gunners on
the other ships, remembering Flag Officer Foote’s warning about wasting
shot, waited to see the effect of these shots, and saw them all fall short. “So
there was $24 worth of ammunition wasted,” writes an officer of the Essex;
but the gunners had learned the range, and “Jack Mathews, an old tar who
had seen much service on men-o’-war, and was always restive under the
command of a volunteer officer,” was the first to get his gun elevated, and
the first to fire when the word came.
A fresh breeze athwart the bows drove the smoke away, and a shout
arose as the shell from Jack’s gun burst in the parapet under one of the
Confederate guns and covered it with the soft earth.
The squadron advanced slowly but steadily, reducing the elevation of
the guns from seven to six and then five degrees, and cutting the fuses of

the shells shorter and shorter. Every shot reached home in the parapet, and
some passed clear through to lodge in and fire the barracks of the
Confederates. The Confederates fought back stubbornly. “The fort seemed a
blaze of fire.” Their shells drove the officers of the boats down into the
casemates, but when the casemates were struck the projectiles bounded
clear, doing little or no harm until the battle had raged for nearly fifty
minutes. Then the gunner in charge of the Confederate rifle got the range of
the Essex and drove his sixty-pound shell right through her bow armor just
above a port. Continuing its flight, it took off the head of Master’s Mate
Brittain and plunged into the middle boiler located amidships.
In an instant the deck was deluged with steam and scalding water, and
the crew who could reach them went plunging through the ports, while the
ship herself began drifting with the current out of the fight.
When the steam had exhausted itself the men from aft hastened
forward. The deck was covered with men dead or writhing in their last
agony. “Marshall Ford, who was steering, was found at the wheel, standing
erect, his left hand holding the spoke and his right hand grasping the signal-
bell rope,” dead at his post.

Battle of Fort Henry.
From a painting by Admiral Walke.

The men who had been working the bow guns from the first had just
been relieved and sent aft to rest, but Jack Mathews had his blood up and
had obtained permission to stay at his gun. He was among those who
crawled through the port and was picked up by the boats, but he died that
night. In all, twenty-nine men were scalded, and more than half of them
died. Captain Porter was one of the severely scalded.
But while one ship was disabled by a well-directed shot, the other three
steadily advanced, and their shot told with increasing effect. The
Confederate rifle burst a few minutes later, and the ten-inch shell gun was
spiked with its own priming wire. Five other guns were disabled by the fire
of the gunboats, and this fire was rapidly becoming more deadly, for they
were soon less than 500 yards away. Gen. Lloyd Tilghman, the Confederate
commander, had “done all that could be done to defend his charge, and
saying, ‘It is vain to fight longer—our gunners are disabled, our guns
dismounted—we can’t hold out five minutes longer,’ he ordered a white
flag hoisted.”
As the firing ceased the Carondelet grounded, and the steam on the
flagship Cincinnati having been shut off, she began drifting with the
current. To Flag Officer Foote it seemed that the Carondelet was steaming
ahead of the flagship, and Foote ordered her to fall back. Of course she
could not do so. Foote became excited at the seeming insolence of Captain
Walke, and, running forward, he shouted himself hoarse, and then a junior
officer tried it also. Finally the Carondelet got free, and the matter was
explained; but it is apparent, from the published memoirs of the two men,
that ill-feeling prevailed between them thereafter.
Tilghman went on board the Cincinnati and surrendered to Foote, for
the army under Grant was detained by the muddy roads, and did not arrive
until an hour after the fort had been silenced. It was a victory for the
gunboats exclusively.
The importance of taking the fort appears when it is recalled that it was
a main point in the frontier chain of Confederate posts that extended from
Columbus, Kentucky, on the Mississippi, east to the Cumberland
Mountains. The way to the interior of Tennessee was open, and the
Confederate positions at Bowling Green and Columbus, Kentucky, were
becoming untenable because the Union forces were in their rear.

Foote returned to Cairo immediately with three ironclads, leaving the
Carondelet at Fort Henry, while the three unarmored gunboats were sent up
the river to destroy the bridge of the main line of railroad from Memphis to
the East, thus cutting off rail communication between the Confederate
capital and all the western parts of Kentucky and Tennessee. Lieutenant
Phelps was in charge of these boats, and after reaching the bridge, he left
the Taylor to destroy both bridge and trestle-work while he pushed on with
the other two. Three Confederate steamers, two of which were loaded with
military stores, were grounded and fired above the bridge when Phelps
appeared, and there was a tremendous explosion when they blew up.
Continuing on to Cerro Gordo, near the Mississippi State line, he
captured a river steamer called the Eastport, that was already partly
converted into a gunboat. Further up two more steamers were captured, and
three others were fired by the Confederates. The raid extended to Florence,
and was one of the notably brave deeds on Western waters.
The Eastport was taken into the government service, and Phelps
commanded her until she ran on a torpedo in the Red River two years later
and was destroyed.
From Fort Henry the gunboats turned to Fort Donelson on the
Cumberland River. This fort, although on another river, was but twelve
miles from Fort Henry. It was a much stronger position. As described by
Mahan, “the main work was on a bluff about a hundred feet high, at a bend
commanding the river below. On the slope of the ridge, looking down
stream, were two water batteries, with which alone the fleet had to do. The
lower and principal one mounted eight 32-pounders and a X-inch
columbiad; in the upper there were two 32-pounder carronades and one gun
of the size of a X-inch smooth-bore, but rifled with the bore of a 32-
pounder and said to throw a shot of one hundred and twenty-eight pounds.
Both batteries were excavated in the hillside, and the lower had traverses
between the guns to protect them from an enfilading fire, in case the boats
should pass their front and attack them from above. At the time of the fight
these batteries were thirty-two feet above the level of the river.”
Foote thought the position too strong for the gunboats because the forts
could deliver a plunging fire that would strike on top, where the gunboats
were not armored, but he consented to join the expedition. Meantime Grant

had sent the Carondelet, Captain Walke, around in advance of the others,
and she arrived within range of Fort Donelson at 11 o’clock a.m. on
February 12, 1862. Grant arrived overland an hour later.

Upper Battery.
Water Battery.
Grant’s army attacking, in distance.
U. S. Gunboats.

Battle of Fort Donelson.
From a painting by Admiral Walke.

To announce her arrival to General Grant the Carondelet threw a few
shells at the enemy and then dropped down out of range. Next day, by order
of Grant, the Carondelet took a partly sheltered position behind a point, and
at a range of a mile and a quarter fired 184 shells into the fort to divert the
attention of the Confederates as much as possible from General Grant. She
was twice hit by the return fire, and one shot penetrated, wounding a few
men with splinters.

On the night of the 13th Foote, with the St. Louis, Louisville, and
Pittsburg, arrived, and at 3 p.m. on the 14th the squadron advanced in line
abreast to the attack. Opening fire at a range of a mile, they steadily
lessened the range until at last within 400 yards of the lower Confederate
battery. The Confederates were rapidly abandoning their guns at this
moment (4.30 p.m.), when a shot passed through the pilot-house of the
flagship St. Louis, wounding Foote seriously, the pilot also, and smashing
the wheel; and at the same moment a shell cut the tiller ropes of the
Louisville. The preventer tackles that had been provided proved utterly
inadequate in both cases—a most serious fault that should have been
foreseen—and both vessels drifted helplessly out of the fight.
Seeing this, the Confederates rallied to their guns and renewed the
fight. The Carondelet and Pittsburg were soon seriously damaged, and
followed the disabled boats down stream.
Mahan says of this fight: “Notwithstanding its failure, the tenacity and
fighting qualities of the fleet were more markedly proved in this action than
in the victory at Henry. The vessels were struck more frequently (the
flagship fifty-nine times, and none less than twenty), and though the power
of the enemy’s guns was about the same in each case, the height and
character of the soil at Donelson placed the fleet at a great disadvantage.
The fire from above, reaching their sloping armor nearly at right angles,
searched every weak point. Upon the Carondelet a rifled gun burst. The
pilot-houses were beaten in, and three of the four pilots received mortal
wounds. Despite these injuries, and the loss of fifty-four killed and
wounded, the fleet was only shaken from its hold by accidents to the
steering apparatus, after which their batteries could not be brought to bear.
“Among the injured on this occasion was the flag-officer, who was
standing by the pilot when the latter was killed. Two splinters struck him in
the arm and foot, inflicting wounds apparently slight; but the latter, amid
the exposure and anxiety of the succeeding operations, did not heal, and
finally compelled him, three months later, to give up the command.”

Explosion on Board the Carondelet at the Battle of Fort Donelson.
From a painting by Admiral Walke.

The Confederates surrendered to Grant on the 16th. It was an army
victory. Nashville fell on the 25th, and on March 1st the Confederates
began to evacuate Columbus, on the Mississippi. No attempt was made by
the Confederates to hold Hickman, the next town down the Mississippi, but
they fortified Island No. 10, that lay in the river opposite the dividing line
between Kentucky and Tennessee, and both banks of the river. The position
there was particularly strong. The river, for some distance, flowed south
until the island was reached, and then turned to the northwest, and sweeping
around a horseshoe bend, came back again to its old line and continued on
south. The island lay right in the pocket of the sharp bend where the river
turned to the northwest. The current was strong and full of eddies, and the
channel lay right under the muzzles of the guns that were placed to defend
it. “On the island itself were four batteries mounting twenty-three guns, on
the Tennessee shore six batteries mounting thirty-two guns. There was also
a floating battery, which, at the beginning of operations, was moored
abreast the middle of the island, and is variously reported as carrying nine
or ten IX-inch guns.” So says Mahan.

Nevertheless, the Union forces were sweeping down, and this
stronghold had to yield, and the most interesting fact in connection with its
capture was the brave dash of an American sailor, Captain Walke of the
Carondelet.
Pope captured New Madrid, on the Missouri side of the river, on March
3d, and began fortifying the river below that town. A glance at the map will
show this necessarily cut off river communications between Island No. 10
and the Confederates down stream. But the Confederates could come to
Tiptonville, and from that place a good road led across the neck of land
three miles to the shore opposite Island No. 10, and that was but a small
overland journey for supplies. However, supplies could come by no other
route, because the region east of the island was one vast swamp.
Accordingly Pope determined to cross over to Tiptonville and so shut the
Confederates in.
Meantime Foote’s flotilla had arrived in the river just above Island No.
10, bringing along a number of mortar boats—mere floating platforms
carrying a thirteen-inch mortar each. Pope soon sent to Foote, asking that a
couple of the gunboats be sent down the river, on the first favorable night,
past the Confederate batteries to New Madrid to serve as ferryboats for the
troops and to cover the landing. To this request Foote sent a positive refusal,
although Capt. Henry Walke, of the Carondelet, was urgent in asking
permission to make the run. Foote said that the risk was too great, and he
could not afford to lose even one ship from his present command. But he
added that when “the object of running the blockade becomes adequate to
the risk,” he would consent.

Iron Bluffs.
Chalk Bluffs.

U. S. Flotilla Descending the Mississippi River.
From a painting by Admiral Walke.

Battle with Fort No. 1 above Island No. 10.
From a painting by Admiral Walke.

This unexpected attitude of Foote delayed the capture of the island
about two weeks. At the suggestion of Schuyler Hamilton, a channel was
cut through the trees of the swamp from the Mississippi to New Madrid.
There was water enough there to float shoal transports and barges, and
when this work was done and the transports for ferry use were lying in the
bayou behind New Madrid, Foote gave Captain Walke, of the Carondelet,
permission to try running the batteries.
Captain Walke got his orders on March 30th. To prepare his ship for the
iron deluge he put extra planking over her deck, and then ranged her chain
cables across it to serve as additional armor—a use of chain cables that
became famous in the one great naval duel of the Civil War, as will appear
further on. Lumber and cord wood were piled where they would protect the
boiler and engines, and the pilot-house was wrapped with ropes to a
thickness of eighteen inches, while the escape-pipes were changed so as to
exhaust in the wheel-box, that thus the puffing or coughing noise of the
high-pressure engines then in use should be drowned. To still further protect
her, a barge loaded with baled hay was lashed on the left side, which was

the one that must receive the Confederate fire. The resourcefulness of
Captain Walke was well shown in these preparations.
The night of April 10, 1862, was selected for the dash. The moon set at
10 o’clock that night and, as fortune favored, a heavy thunderstorm came
on. Lifting her anchors as the first breath of the squall arrived, the
Carondelet swung around and headed down the stream. The crew were at
quarters, and every man but two was under cover. One, a seaman, Charles
Wilson, stood at the rail heaving the lead, while Theodore Gilmore stood
half-way between him and the pilot-house to pass the whispered call of the
leadsman. By the time they were heading their course the rain began to fall
in sheets, and the monotonous words “no bottom” from the leadsman were
drowned, as was the puffing of the engine. Not a lamp was burning
anywhere about the ship. The pilot, William R. Hall, was a man who could
feel his way. But just before the batteries were reached, the boat met the one
contingency for which no provision was made. Wood was used as fuel in
the furnaces, and the soot in the chimney caught fire and went blazing up
from the top of the smoke-stack. The lightning, too, was streaming across
the sky, and “the gallant little ship floated like a phantom” before the eyes
of the Confederates, who ran to their guns, and in a moment set the batteries
flaming. The roar of the cannon echoed to the boom and rumble of the
thunder. But the lightning that revealed the “phantom ship” blinded the eyes
of the gunners, and they strove in vain to aim their guns with accuracy. The
Carondelet passed unharmed, and the fate of Island No. 10 was sealed.
The hardy spirit of the brave Walke has never been sufficiently
appreciated. This was because other batteries were run safely later on. But
Walke was not only the pioneer. He alone of all the captains in Foote’s
command favored the project from the first. The others “believed that it
would result in the almost certain destruction of the boat, passing six forts
under the fire of fifty guns.” He was willing to face the danger when all
previous experience made even the most daring of his associates believe the
task impossible. Nor was the danger from the batteries the only one, for it
must not be forgotten that the Confederates had a half dozen well-armed
gunboats at New Orleans, besides the ram Manassas, that created so great a
panic at the mouth of the Mississippi. The Carondelet, when below the
Confederate batteries, was for the time cut off from all support. The power
of the Confederate fleet was exaggerated at the time, as we now know, but

the officers of Foote’s flotilla had no means of learning the real facts.
Moreover, it would have been rank folly for them to underestimate the
power of the enemy.
It is worth telling that Island No. 10 has disappeared under the action of
the current, and the main channel lies where the Confederate batteries
stood.
On April 6th Pope crossed over to Tiptonville under cover of Walke’s
guns. On that day, also, Grant fought the Confederates at Pittsburg Landing
on the Tennessee. The Taylor, under Lieutenant Gwin, and the Lexington,
Lieutenant Shirk, had part in that battle. During the afternoon the
Confederates made a desperate attempt to turn Grant’s left and capture the
landing place and transports. Gwin opened fire and silenced their batteries.
At 4 o’clock the Lexington arrived, and the two gunboats silenced the
Confederate batteries three-quarters of a mile above the landing. Again at
5.30 the Confederates came in such force against Grant’s left that they
arrived within an eighth of a mile of the landing, but the boats then drove
them back in confusion. It is not unlikely that Grant would have been
entirely overwhelmed by the superior force of the Confederates but for the
support of the gunboats. They enabled him to hold out until reinforcements
came. And that night, to quote a Confederate account, “the enemy broke the
men’s rest by a discharge, at measured intervals, of heavy shells thrown
from the gunboats.” The Confederates could not sleep because a great shell
was dropped somewhere in their camp, bringing death and disaster every
fifteen minutes. Imagine those soldiers lying there all night counting the
time as they waited for the next shell.

The Carondelet Running the Gauntlet at Island No. 10.
From a painting by Admiral Walke.

The Carondelet Attacking the Forts below Island No. 10.
From a painting by Admiral Walke.

The next matter of interest in the story of the Mississippi flotilla was
what may be called an irregular squadron battle. Island No. 10 surrendered
on May 7, 1862, and the government fleet advanced until near Fort Pillow,
which the Confederates had erected on the First Chickasaw Bluffs, not far
above the Hatchie River. Here a stand was made awaiting the coöperation
of the army. Foote, suffering from his wound, had to be relieved. Capt.
Charles H. Davis took his place on May 9th. The fleet at this time numbered
seven gunboats, four of which were stationed on the Arkansas (westerly)
shore and three on the Tennessee side. They were the Mound City, Capt.
A. H. Kilty; Cincinnati, Capt. R. N. Stembel; St. Louis, Capt. Henry Erben;
Cairo, Capt. N. C. Bryant; Benton (flagship), Capt. S. L. Phelps;
Carondelet, Capt. Henry Walke; and Pittsburg, Capt. Egbert Thompson.
It was the custom while lying there to send one of the gunboats every
day to tow a mortar boat to a mooring under Craighead’s Point, where it
could throw shells into Fort Pillow, the gunboat lying handy by meantime to
protect the mortar boat from Confederate boats known to be in the river
below the fort.

The Confederate gunboats were the ordinary river boats converted into
warships by putting cotton bales and pine timber about the boilers, and by
casing the bows with iron, and in other ways adding to their strength
forward so that they became, after a fashion, rams. Each carried at least one
gun. This work was done by the pilots themselves at New Orleans, and the
old line navy officers there were not allowed to interfere. When ready, eight
of these boats had been sent up to Fort Pillow, nominally under Capt. J. E.
Montgomery, one of the pilots, but, as a matter of fact, each captain did as
he pleased, and the wonder is that anything worth mention should have
been accomplished.

Confederate Batteries.
Carondelet.
Pittsburg.

U. S. Gunboats Capturing the Confederate Forts below Island No.
10, April 7th.
From a painting by Admiral Walke.

Early on May 10th the government gunboat Cincinnati towed a mortar
boat to its post, and then tied herself to a snag near by. At 5 o’clock the
mortar hurled its first shell into Fort Pillow, and thereafter continued its
work until 6 o’clock, when a dense smoke was seen rising in the air below
Fort Pillow. The Confederate rams were leaving their landing for a dash at
the mortar boat and the Cincinnati. The Cincinnati quickly slipped her
moorings, and running out into the river, faced the Confederates—faced
them alone, although the whole Confederate flotilla was in plain sight of the
government flotilla long before they reached the Cincinnati. Apparently
Flag Officer Davis overslept that morning.
As the Confederates came in range the Cincinnati opened fire and
stood her ground. The Confederates scattered at once, but continued
advancing. The leading Confederate boat, the General Bragg, hugged the
Arkansas shore, passed above the Cincinnati, and then turning around,
drove her bow into the unprotected quarter of the lone government boat.
The two boats were alongside each other in a moment, and the Cincinnati
gave the Confederate boat a broadside that sent her skurrying down the
stream and out of the battle.
Behind the Bragg came two more Confederates, the Price and the
Sumter, firing with guns and muskets at the ports of the Cincinnati, while
one of them rammed her again in the place where the Bragg had struck her,
and at the same moment Captain Stembel fell with a ball through his throat
that well-nigh proved mortal, and the executive officer was mortally hurt.
Meantime Flag Officer Davis woke up, while Captain Kilty, of the
Mound City, without waiting for orders, started to the aid of the mobbed
Cincinnati. Captain Walke, with the Carondelet, was not far behind him,
but both were three miles away from the scene of conflict when they
started. The Carondelet was the first to open fire, and the first shot raked
the fleeing Bragg. Another shell struck the Price at the water-line, cutting a
water-supply pipe and causing her to leak so badly that she was thrown out
of the fight.

Mound City.
Carondelet.
Mortar.
Cincinnati.
Van Dorn.
General Price.
Bragg.
Sumter.
Little Rebel.

Battle of Fort Pillow.
From a painting by Admiral Walke.

But while aid was coming the Cincinnati was run into shoal water, and
there she sank. The Mound City had meantime been firing at the
Confederates, and the Van Dorn turned to ram her. She avoided the full
strength of the blow by a skilful use of the helm, but she was cut into,
nevertheless, and had to be run ashore on the Arkansas side to keep her
from sinking. The Pittsburg had been obliged to go to the assistance of the
Cincinnati to get her into shoal water, and the Cairo rendered the same

service to the Mound City. This left only the flagship Benton, the
Carondelet, and the St. Louis to continue the battle with the six remaining
Confederate gunboats, though it must be said that the guns of both the
Pittsburg and the Cairo were still firing at the Confederates. But the
Confederates retreated as soon as the belated Benton and St. Louis got fairly
into the fight. Flag Officer Montgomery said he retreated because the
government boats all went into water too shoal for his rams, while their
guns were far heavier as well as much more numerous than his. As to the
guns, he had only thirty-two-pounders, but it is certain that neither the
Benton, the Carondelet, or the St. Louis went into shoal water. In fact, the
Benton drew more water than any of the Confederate “River Defence
Squadron,” as it was called, and the other two government boats quite as
much as any.
The fact is, Montgomery’s force was a lot of militia afloat. They made
a most brilliant dash at the government forces, sank two gunboats, and then,
militia fashion, got out of it when they were really just ready to begin to
fight. Not one of their boats was seriously hurt. The Bragg had lost her tiller
ropes, and the Price was aleak, but both might have continued the fight
after a few minutes devoted to repairs. The whole force was, so far as hurts
were concerned, “ready for action at Memphis a month later.” As to the
government force, it may be said that Stembel, on the Cincinnati, made a
brilliant defence, and Walke and Kilty, of the Carondelet and Mound City,
seemed to fully appreciate what was required under the circumstances. The
unprotected mortar boat, Acting Master Gregory, kept up a steady fire on
the Confederates throughout the conflict, and Gregory was promoted for his
bravery.
Soon after this fight the government flotilla was reinforced by seven
river steamers that had been converted into rams along the Ohio River by
Col. Charles Ellet, Jr. Part of them were stern-wheelers and part side-
wheelers. They were strengthened with fore-and-aft bulkheads, and the
boilers were protected with two feet of oak. Ellet had independent charge of
them, with instructions to coöperate with the gunboats under Flag Officer
Davis.
Meantime the advance of the government army in Tennessee had made
it impossible for the Confederates to hold Fort Pillow, and it was evacuated
on June 4, 1862. On the evening of the 5th the government flotilla came to

anchor just above Memphis, that was yet in Confederate control. The
Confederate fleet was seen at the levee next morning, but they soon cast off
and took a position where the Union fleet could not fire on them without
danger of throwing shells into the city. It was to be the last battle between
the two flotillas, and a great throng of citizens gathered on the bluffs.

Lovell.
Bragg.
Sumter.
Carondelet.
Mound City.
Benton.
St. Louis.
Pittsburg.

The Battle of Fort Pillow.
From a painting by Admiral Walke.

The government gunboats started at 4.20 o’clock and dropped slowly
down, stern first, until the Confederates opened fire, when they turned
about and returned the fire with vigor. The Union rams under Ellet had,

until this time, kept in the rear, but when the firing began two of them—the
Queen of the West and the Monarch, swift vessels for their day—took
advantage of the smoke, dashed through the government line, and boldly
headed for the Confederate boats.
This attack was wholly unexpected, and the crowds of Memphis
citizens on the heights groaned aloud. The officers of the Confederate ships
were startled, too. Some of their vessels swerved about under the nervous
handling of their tiller wheels, and that gave the gallant Ellet the
opportunity he hoped for. With the Queen of the West he crashed fairly into
the broadside of the Confederate ship Lovell, and she sank out of sight
immediately. But as the Queen of the West hauled clear, the quick-witted
pilot of the Confederate ram Beauregard rammed her, and she was headed
for the Arkansas shore, where she grounded. The government ram Monarch
was close behind the Queen of the West, and the Confederate rams
Beauregard and Price made a dash at her from opposite sides. She cleverly
eluded them, and they crashed together, the Beauregard making a hole in
the Price that sent her to the Arkansas shore.
That mishap very naturally confused the pilot of the Beauregard, and
while he was recovering his wits the Monarch turned on him and rammed.
Just then a shot from the Benton pierced the Beauregard’s boiler, and with
the steam and scalding water pouring over her crew, she surrendered. The
Monarch took charge of her and towed her over toward the Arkansas shore,
where she sank and quelled the agonies of the dying by burying them under
the river.
And then, to add to the disasters of the Confederates, a shot pierced the
steam-chest of the Little Rebel, sending her also to the morgue on the
Arkansas shore.
The remainder of the Confederate squadron now turned and fled for
safety, but the shells from the government flotilla were too swift for them.
The Thompson was sunk, and the Bragg and Sumter surrendered. Only the
Van Dorn escaped.
On the whole, this was the most interesting day in the history of the
flotilla. The fight was soon over (Memphis was in the hands of the flotilla at
11 o’clock), but the Confederates fought with the greatest gallantry until
four of their ships were destroyed. The chief feature of the fight, from a

naval point of view, was the destructive work of the rams, for therein one
may find a foreshadowing of what shall come to pass if ever two modern
squadrons are arrayed in battle. Three ships were rammed out of the conflict
within fifteen or twenty minutes; the actual time does not appear. It was the
first fight of steam rams in the history of the world.

Carondelet.
Benton.
St. Louis.
Lovell.
Cairo.
Bragg.
Louisville.
Van Dorn.

The Battle of Memphis—First Position.
From a painting by Admiral Walke.

Sumter.
Beauregard.
Louisville.
Benton.
St. Louis.
Carondelet.
Cairo.

After the Battle of Memphis.
From a painting by Admiral Walke.

While the flagship remained at Memphis until June 29th, the river was
practically opened as far as Vicksburg by this fight. An expedition to
coöperate with the army was sent up the White River in Arkansas, where, at
Charles City, a combined attack was made by the gunboats and an Indiana
regiment under Colonel Fitch, on the Confederate works. The Mound City
was leading the gunboats, and had arrived within 600 yards of the
Confederate fort, when a shell entered her casemate, killing three men and
bursting her boiler. Of 175 officers and men on board, but three officers and

twenty-two men escaped unhurt from the frightful blast. Eighty-two died of
wounds and the scalding, and forty-three were drowned or shot in the water
when they jumped overboard to escape the steam, for the Confederates
continued firing at her crew when they were swimming away from her.
The other gunboats continued battle until Fitch was ready to make an
assault from the rear, when they ceased firing, and Fitch carried the works
by storm. The Confederate commander was Capt. Joseph Fry, who was
captured and executed by the Spaniards in the Virginius expedition, of
which he was the leader.
On June 29th Flag Officer Davis steamed down the river from
Memphis, and early on the morning of July 1, 1862, came upon a
government fleet lying just above Vicksburg, under the command of
Admiral Farragut.
The story of Farragut’s journey from the Gulf of Mexico to this point
will be told in the next chapter.

Van Dorn.
Jeff. Thompson.
Bragg.
Sumter.
Louisville.
Cairo.
Carondelet.

Battle of Memphis—The Confederates Retreating.
From a painting by Admiral Walke.

CHAPTER XII

FARRAGUT AT NEW ORLEANS
IT WAS HARD WORK GETTING THE SQUADRON INTO THE
MISSISSIPPI—PREPARING THE SHIPS TO RUN BY THE
FORTS GUARDING THE RIVER—MORTAR SCHOONERS
HIDDEN BY TREE BRANCHES—THE FORTS WERE WELL
PLANNED, BUT POORLY ARMED—A BARRIER CHAIN
THAT WAS NO BARRIER AT THE LAST—THE
HETEROGENEOUS CONFEDERATE SQUADRON—THE
FIRE-RAFTS—WORK OF THE COAST SURVEY—BRAVERY
OF CALDWELL—FOREIGNERS WHO INTERFERED—
WORK OF THE MORTAR FLEET—WHEN THE SQUADRON
DROVE PAST THE FORTS—SCATTERING THE
CONFEDERATE SQUADRON—NEVERTHELESS, AT LEAST
THREE GOOD CAPTAINS WERE FOUND AMONG THEM—
SINKING THE VARUNA—FATE OF THE RAM MANASSAS—
SURRENDER OF THE FORTS—END OF THE IRONCLAD
LOUISIANA—THE WORK OF THE MISSISSIPPI SQUADRON.

In the story of the capture of New Orleans, early in the year 1862, the
name of David Glasgow Farragut first appears in the annals of the Civil
War. When the war began Farragut was a captain, and was awaiting orders
at his home in Norfolk, Virginia. He was a Southern man by birth, and his
family were of the South. A most determined effort was made by the
Southern leaders to enlist him on their side; but Farragut was a man who
could not forget his oath to support the Constitution of the United States.
His only recorded reply to them was, “Mind what I tell you: You fellows
will catch the devil before you get through with this business.”

David Glasgow Farragut.
From a photograph.

Removing his family to a home on the Hudson River, he reported
himself “ready for duty,” and felt some relief when he was made a member
of the naval retiring board, created by a new law passed to get rid of
superannuated officers. This appointment was at least a show of confidence
in his loyalty. And there he was trying his official peers on a charge of old
age when the expedition against New Orleans was planned.

The idea of attacking New Orleans originated with Commander David
D. Porter, when in charge of the blockading steamer Powhatan, that, during
the summer of 1861, was lying off the Southwest Pass of the Mississippi.
Porter made it a point to collect all the information possible about the river
and the defences, and he found the fishermen from New Orleans very good
spies. Returning North, Porter went to the Secretary of the Navy. He had a
knack of getting the ears of the leaders in those days, as well as some luck,
as one may say, and the expedition was decided on. Of course, Porter’s rank
was too low for the command of such a force, but he was permitted to
suggest the name of a suitable captain, and Farragut was promptly named.
As the reader will remember, Farragut was reared in the old Essex under
Commodore David Porter, and David Porter was the father of David D.
Porter. It was, perhaps, what may be called log-rolling for one of the family,
but David D. Porter never did the nation a better service than when he
spoke for Farragut.
The offer of the leadership of this expedition was eagerly accepted, and
David Glasgow Farragut, whose form and features are more familiar to the
eyes of the American people than those of any other naval hero, had the first
opportunity of his life.
Making the Hartford his flagship, he sailed from Hampton Roads on
February 2, 1862, and on the 20th arrived at Ship Island, near the mouth of
the Mississippi. Here he gathered the following squadron:
Screw sloops: Hartford, twenty-four guns, Flag Officer David G.
Farragut, Fleet Captain Henry H. Bell, Commander Richard Wainwright;
Pensacola, twenty-three guns, Capt. Henry W. Morris; Brooklyn, twenty-
two guns, Capt. Thomas T. Craven; Richmond, twenty-four guns,
Commander James Alden.
Side-wheel steamer: Mississippi, seventeen guns, Commander
Melancthon Smith.
Screw corvettes: Oneida, nine guns, Commander S. Phillips Lee;
Varuna, ten guns, Commander Charles S. Boggs; Iroquois, seven guns,
Commander John De Camp.
Screw gunboats: Cayuga, two guns, Lieut. Napoleon B. Harrison;
Itasca, two guns, Lieut. C. H. B. Caldwell; Katahdin, two guns, Lieut.

George H. Preble; Kennebec, two guns, Lieut. John H. Russell; Kineo, two
guns, Lieut. George M. Ransom; Pinola, two guns, Lieut. Pierce Crosby;
Sciota, two guns, Lieut. Edward Donaldson; Winona, two guns, Lieut.
Edward T. Nichols; Wissahickon, two guns, Lieutenant Albert N. Smith.
Of the guns on this squadron ninety-three could be fired in broadside,
but none could be fired directly ahead; the pivots, however, could be fired
within a point or two of the line of the keel, and were practically bow guns.
More than half these guns were nine-inch smooth-bores or better.
In addition to these ships, there were twenty schooners carrying one
thirteen-inch mortar each, and six gunboats (among them three ferryboats),
carrying heavy guns, were assigned to handle and protect them. The mortar
flotilla was placed under Porter.
It was an easy matter to get the gunboats up the river, but the big ships
stuck on the bar. The Pensacola had to unload all of her guns as well as
other weights before she could pass, and even then her bottom cut the
channel a foot deeper when she was dragged through on April 7th, and the
Mississippi had a like experience. An attempt made to drag the Colorado
over failed altogether; but the attempt had to be made in order to please the
officials at Washington, even though two weeks of precious time were
wasted.
However, Capt. Theodorus Bailey and nearly all of the crew of the
Colorado were taken along if the ship was left behind, and on reaching the
head of the Passes the work of preparing the ships for the task before them
began.

Thirteen-inch Mortar from Farragut’s Fleet.
From a photograph made at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Howitzers were placed in the tops (i.e., on platforms at the tops of the
lower masts), and there protected by boiler iron from musket fire. Each ship
was made to draw more water forward than aft so that she would have a
better chance to get off in case of grounding. As the ships were to fight at
point-blank range care was taken to secure the guns so their elevation
should not increase under the shock of firing. The rigging was stripped
down to the topmasts, and the spars, etc., sent ashore, while some of the
gunboats took their masts out altogether. Chain cables were secured up and
down the sides of the ship to ward off shot, and “bags of coal or sand or
ashes, or whatever else came to hand,” were piled to keep the shot from the
boilers and engines. Nets were hung inside to stop the flying splinters in
case of shot piercing the wooden walls. Decks and gun carriages were
whitewashed to help the light for the night battle, and the outsides of the
ships were smeared with mud to make them less easily visible.
The mortar schooners were disguised by lashing tree limbs to the masts
in such fashion that they could not be distinguished from the trees along the
banks. In short, no precaution was omitted.

As for the Confederates, they rested in perfect confidence behind the
forts that had been erected to defend the river. As a glance at the map will
show, there was some reason in the location, if not in the armament of these
forts, for the confidence they felt. As will be seen, the river comes down in
a southerly direction until within twenty miles of the head of the Passes.
There it suddenly turns to the northeast for nearly two miles, when it makes
a sharp bend to the south once more. It was right on this sharp, knee-like
bend that the forts were built. Fort St. Philip stood on top of the knee-bend,
so to speak, and from its walls a fair view was had for a long way down the
river. On the under side of the knee lay Fort Jackson. By the compass it was
about due south of Fort St. Philip and but 800 yards away. Its guns pointed
all over the bend of the river and away to the south, the timber on the west
side of the river having been cut away to allow an unobstructed view of the
stream almost to the uttermost range of the guns.
But when the guns of these forts are considered, one must say they
were very poor. The Confederates made a mistake there. In all there were
109 cannon that might be used on passing ships at one point or another, but
of these, fifty-six were twenty-four-pounders—excellent guns in 1812, but
very small fifty years later. More than half of the others were thirty-twos
and forty-twos—in fact, but fifteen of them were really guns of the day, and
but two—the seven-inch rifles—could be called first-class.

New Orleans, La., and its Vicinity.
1. Mississippi River. 2. Levee. 3. St. Charles Hotel. 4. Lake Pontchartrain. 5. Fort Pike.
6. Rigolets. 7. Lake Borgne. 8. Mississippi Sound. 9. Ship Island. 10. Chandeleur
Islands. 11. Gulf of Mexico. 12. Proctorsville. 13. Fort Dupré. 14. Fort St. Philip. 15. Fort
Jackson. 16. Balize. 17. South Pass. 18. Southwest Pass. 19. McDonoughville. 20.
Algiers.

Doubtless the Confederates depended too much on what nature had
done for the defence, but they tried to add to the forces of nature by
stretching a barrier from Fort Jackson to the east across the river. Barriers
appeal to the unlearned mind, but they have never obstructed a fleet that
was commanded by a determined man. Rafts of big cypress logs were built
and anchored in line, and then chain cables taken from the Pensacola Navy
Yard were stretched from trees on the Fort Jackson side over these
supporting rafts to heavy anchors buried on the east side. Before Farragut
arrived the floods of spring and the accumulation of driftwood had broken
the barrier, but it was renewed by substituting schooners in place of the rafts
where the current was heaviest.

In addition to the forts and barrier chain, the Confederates had the
support of eleven steamers and a floating battery. This battery was built as
an ironclad steamer to carry sixteen heavy guns behind plenty of armor, but
there were so many strikes in the shipyard where she was built that she
barely got afloat, and she was towed to a place at the forts. Her engines
were never used. Had Farragut been delayed ten days more, she would have
been a formidable ship, and she would have had a still more formidable
consort in another and larger ship of her class that never got afloat. She was
called the Louisiana, and was commanded by Capt. John K. Mitchell.
Another of this squadron was the ram Manassas, that under Lieutenant
Warley had created a Manassas-like panic in the blockading squadron some
months before. Two of the squadron belonged to the State of Louisiana.
They were called the Moore, Capt. Beverly Kennon, and the McRae, Capt.
Thomas B. Huger. These were cotton-clads—ocean-going steamers
protected with cotton bales—very inferior as fighting ships, and yet the able
Kennon made a name for himself with the Moore. Of the remainder of the
squadron it may be said that six were of the “River Defence Squadron”—
the guerrillas afloat—and that one of the captains said just before the battle
that they were there “to show the naval officers how to fight.”
There were also a number of unarmed vessels present, whose duty it
was to handle the fireboats that had been prepared—huge coal barges
loaded with fat pine knots that might have made serious trouble had they all
been turned loose together at the right time. And one of these unarmed
boats was the Mosher, with a crew of six men under Captain Sherman—the
bravest man in the Confederate squadron; but because he was only a tug
captain no record was made of his first name, nor is anything said in history
of his antecedents. Of the armament of the Confederate squadron little need
be said. The Louisiana was well armed, and the rest poorly. The Moore,
under Beverly Kennon, had two thirty-two-pounders, and she was about as
well off as any.
While Farragut prepared his fleet a coast survey party under F. H.
Gerdes triangulated the river, under fire at times, and set flags on the banks
where the mortar schooners were to be moored. One division of these was
placed on the west bank, under shelter of forest trees, and at an average
distance of about 3,500 yards from the fort. The other division was on the
east bank. The exact range was given to each schooner captain, and at ten

o’clock in the morning on April 18, 1862, the bombardment of Fort Jackson
began. The mortars were fired once in ten minutes, and the fire was
continued for six days.

Mortar Boats.
From an engraving.

Meantime Lieut. C. H. B. Caldwell had requested permission to break
the chain barrier, and on the night of the 20th he was sent with his boat, the
Itasca, and the Pinola, Lieut. Pierce Crosby commanding, to do so. While
the mortar schooners dropped their shells in a shower on Fort Jackson to
keep down the fire as much as possible, two of the barrier hulks were
boarded, and on one of them it was found possible to slip her anchor chain.
This was done, and she drifted away, leaving the barrier chain to sag down
under water. Then Caldwell got above the barrier with his shoal-draft
Itasca, passing through a narrow space between the hulks and what
remained of the old raft barrier. Running up far enough for good headway,
he turned back at full speed with the current to aid him, and headed for the
place where the released hulk had been. As the Itasca struck the sagging
chain with her curved bow, she rose more than three feet out of water, and
then the chain snapped under her weight, and away she went. The barrier
was effectually broken, and the route to New Orleans was open. All this
was done under heavy fire, but there was no picket boat guarding the chain.

At this time the British frigate Mersey, Captain Preedy, and a
Frenchman were lying with Farragut’s fleet. These two foreigners steamed
up the river to examine the barrier, and on coming back were at great pains
to inform the Union forces that the forts were in perfect order and the
barrier absolutely impassable. The French were at that time planning to
establish an emperor on a throne in Mexico.
As said, for six days the mortar flotilla hurled shells high in air to drop
in and around Fort Jackson. By day each mortar threw a shell every ten
minutes—the flotilla of twenty threw 120 per hour—and at night they threw
one every half-hour each. On the 19th one of the schooners was sunk by a
shot from the fort, and another was thrown out of the fight later on; but on
an average about 1,900 shells were thrown each day. The effect of these
shells was to destroy all the buildings in the fort, and, by cutting the levee,
to flood the floors of the bomb-proofs. They kept the men under cover, and
rendered them so uncomfortable that in the end they became desperate.
What they did then will be told further on. The garrison lost fourteen killed
and thirty-nine wounded in the course of the fighting.
Having the way clear, Farragut, on the 23d of April, 1862, issued his
orders for an advance that night. The squadron was divided into two
divisions, and Capt. Theodorus Bailey had the honor of commanding the
first division. His division flag was hoisted on the Cayuga, that was to lead
the line in what was supposed to be the post of real danger. A ship’s cutter
under Caldwell rowed up to the break in the barrier and found it still open.
The Confederates had a big wood-fire burning, and the cutter crossed its
light, but was not attacked. It was a dark, still night—not the best for the
work—but at 2 o’clock in the morning of the 24th two red lanterns were
hoisted at the peak of the flagship Hartford, and a moment later the shrill
piping of the boatswain’s whistle was heard throughout the squadron with
the call “All hands up anchor!”
The merry click of the pawls as the men walked around the great
capstans soon rose on the still air—rose so high that it reached up to the
sentinels on Fort Jackson and roused the garrison to a knowledge that an
important action impended. It was a long task to get the anchors of the
largest ships, for they were breasting a three-knot current, but soon after 3
o’clock they all got under way, and Porter’s mortars, firing as fast as the
men could tong the shells into them, began drawing an almost unbroken

arch of fiery bombs from the schooners to Fort Jackson. The nation had
never seen such a display of fireworks as that. At 3.30 o’clock precisely the
division leader Cayuga passed in silence through the barrier, followed by
the huge Pensacola, and then a flaming storm broke loose from the forts.
Huge piles of wood were lighted on the shore to illuminate the river, and
away upstream the blaze of fire-rafts opened the murk of night to reveal the
Confederate ships, weird and indistinct of outline, scattered along the
shores. The Union gunboats dashed ahead at full speed, but the Pensacola
and Mississippi steamed slowly, their black hulls at regular intervals
sheeting the air with lurid fire as they replied to the forts. Abreast of St.
Philip, where the Confederate fire was hottest, they drew in so close that the
gunners afloat and those ashore heartily cursed each other as they worked.
With fierce energy the men ashore drove shot and shell into the wooden
ships, while those afloat dusted the rampart with hurtling showers of grape
and canister. And these were showers that no man could face, and the
garrison fled to cover for a moment, but they returned again as the blasts
ceased with the passing of each ship.
For the first division it was at first but a simple journey. They were
through the barrier and away before the Confederates fully realized what
was upon them. But for Farragut, at the head of the second division, it was
another matter. The clouds of smoke from the batteries settled low upon the
water to blind the pilots, and then came the blazing fire-rafts to add to the
confusion and the danger. As it happened, it was the Hartford that caught
the first of these rafts. She had grounded in the smoke and was trying to
back off, when the Confederate tug Mosher shoved the flaming barge
against her. In an instant the paint on the whole side of the ship was flaming
up almost to the lower yards.

Porter’s Mortar Fleet.
Farragut’s Fleet Passing the Forts.

Beginning of the Battle of New Orleans.
From a painting by Admiral Walke.

As the flames rose, the men at the guns on that side drew back, but they
faced the danger again as Farragut shouted:
“Don’t flinch from that fire, boys; there’s a hotter fire than that for
those who don’t do their duty.”
But in a moment the case seemed desperate even to Farragut’s
courageous soul, for he raised his hands above his head and exclaimed,
“My God, is it to end in this way?” Just then Master’s Mate Allen, in charge
of the ship’s fire-brigade, climbed into the mizzen rigging with the nozzle
of a hose in his hand, and a moment later the spurting water of the hose had
drowned the soaring flames.
Meantime the tug Mosher had held the raft faithfully against the
Hartford, although under the very muzzles of the ship’s big guns and in the

brilliant light of the blazing fire. But a half dozen shells were fired at her,
and drifting away, she sank in the black water, carrying down every one of
the heroic men upon her. And that was not the last case where men were
found to face certain death in this fashion.
The accounts of what was done by other vessels of the fleets are as
confused as were their movements as seen by the various spectators. It
appears, however, that while the last division of the squadron struggled
through the pass in the barrier the Cayuga, at the head of the first, suddenly
found herself among the Confederate gunboats and the guerrillas that were
going to show the naval officers how to fight. She had passed, perhaps
without seeing her, the dread ironclad Louisiana, moored above Fort St.
Philip, but the rest of the Confederate ships were lively enough. The
guerrillas were lively in their haste to escape, those that had steam up flying
for life, and the crews of those without steam setting them on fire and
scrambling ashore in haste, while the Cayuga fired right and left at
everything in sight. The Moore was close beside the Cayuga on one side,
and the McRae on the other. Both received a severe pounding as the Cayuga
passed on. The Oneida was not far in the wake, and she, too, gave
broadsides to the Confederates. The Varuna, swiftest of the government
squadron, ran past everything and continued up the river, followed by the
Confederate steamer Moore with the Union signals aloft. Captain Kennon,
seeing that the Confederates were being whelmed by the Union forces,
determined to escape up the river.

B. Brooklyn.
C. Cayuga.
D. River Defence Fleet.
F. Steamers or Mortar Flotilla.
G. Governor Moore.
H. Hartford.
H1. Hartford aground and on fire.
I. Iroquois.
L. Louisiana.
M. Mississippi.
Mc. McRae.
Ms. Manassas.
m. Mosher.
O. Oneida.
P. Pensacola.
Q. General Quitman.
R. Richmond.
S. Sciota.
U. Advance Vessels during bombardment.
V. Varuna.
W. Water Batteries

X. Head of Fleet daring bombardment.
Y. Bailey’s Division, April 23d.
Z. Second Division of Mortars, 1st day’s bombardment.
1. Katahdin.
2. Kineo.
3. Wissahickon.
4. Pinola.
5. Kennebec.
6. Itasca.
7. Winona.
Battle of New Orleans.
From “The Navy in the Civil War.”

As the Varuna and the Moore disappeared the McRae turned down
toward Fort St. Philip. On the way she ran aground, and then the Union
steamer Iroquois came along. The McRae fired a broadside of grape and
copper slugs at her, and the Iroquois returned it with grape and canister. The
slaughter was great on the McRae, her commander, Thomas B. Huger, being
among the mortally hurt. Huger, but a few months before, had been
executive officer of the Iroquois, and most of her crew were the men who
had served under him. The McRae afterward got under Fort St. Philip.
The Manassas during this time had not been idle. She had, indeed,
plunged into the thick of the Union force. The Brooklyn, in coming through
the barrier, almost ran down the Kineo. The collision changed her course,
and a minute later the Manassas butted her. Her chain cable saved her from
a fatal wound.
As the Manassas glanced clear, a man climbed out of her hatch and
stood by her smoke-stack a moment to see what damage she had done, and
then he suddenly tumbled over into the water and disappeared. An officer of
the Brooklyn afterwards asked the quartermaster, who was heaving the lead
in the chains of the Brooklyn on that side, if he saw the man fall off the
Manassas. “Why, yes, sir,” he replied; “I saw him fall overboard—in fact, I
helped him; for I hit him alongside the head with my hand-lead.”
As the Brooklyn passed on, the Manassas turned upstream after the
Union ships, watching for an opportunity to strike. She was seen, and the
Mississippi and Kineo turned back to crush her, but she eluded them and ran
ashore. At that her crew fled to the river bank, and the Mississippi gave her
a broadside that knocked her clear of the mud, and she floated down the
river. Opposite Fort St. Philip, Lieutenant Read, of the McRae, boarded her.

He reported that she was then sound save for a cut pipe, but he must have
been mistaken, for when she was passing Porter’s mortar flotilla she was
seen to be on fire, and she soon “exploded faintly” and sank.
About the time the Manassas was abandoned, the Moore, under
Beverly Kennon, was overtaking the Varuna not far from the quarantine
station. The Varuna’s captain was deceived by the Moore’s false lights. So
was one of the Confederate fleet—a swift vessel called the Jackson. The
Jackson fired with her one gun at both steamers, and then fled to New
Orleans, where her captain set her afire and abandoned her. Then one of the
guerrilla fleet, the Stonewall Jackson, came up near the two, and Kennon,
on seeing her, opened fire on the Varuna. He expected the Stonewall
Jackson to come to his help, for the Moore, with only two thirty-two-
pounders, was no match for the Varuna. Nevertheless, Kennon had to fight
it out alone until victory was won. He was now close on the Varuna’s
quarter, where her broadside would not bear on him, but because of the
height of his own ship’s bow he could not bring his gun to bear, so he
depressed the muzzle of his gun and shot a hole through his own bow to
make way for shot to be aimed at the Varuna. The next shot from the Moore
raked the Varuna, and to bring his broadside to bear, Captain Boggs, of the
Varuna, put her helm over, and turned her across the course of the Moore.
And that was a fatal error, for Kennon, instead of turning away, turned
toward the Varuna and drove the sharp bow of the Moore, crashing through
her side. The Varuna got in a raking broadside that was very destructive, but
was herself cut through. The Moore hauled off and kept on upstream, and
then came the Stonewall Jackson and rammed the Varuna on the other side.
The Varuna was then headed to the easterly bank, where she sank, leaving
her bow out of water.
But neither the Moore nor the Stonewall Jackson escaped, for the
Oneida and Cayuga came on and drove them both ashore. The Moore was
fired, but her crew surrendered when the Pensacola came along.

Forts.
Brooklyn.
Hartford.
Mississippi.
Richmond.
Forts.

The Battle of New Orleans.
From a painting by Admiral Walke.

Of the whole Confederate squadron only the Louisiana, the McRae, and
the guerrilla Defiance remained, and they were under the guns of Fort St.
Philip. The Defiance had been abandoned, but men from the McRae took
possession of her. The Louisiana, even as a floating battery, did nothing but
fire a broadside or two at the passing squadron.

Confederate Ironclad Ram Stonewall Jackson.
From a photograph.

The river was clear, save for two batteries of no account, as far as New
Orleans, and at 1 o’clock in the afternoon, on April 25, 1862, the triumphant
government squadron was before the Crescent City. It had lost only thirty-
five killed and 128 wounded.
But two or three incidents of the occupation of the city need be
mentioned. Captain Bailey and Lieut. George H. Perkins were sent ashore
to demand that the mayor haul down the Confederate flags. A howling mob
surrounded and insulted and even threw filth upon the two lone officers,
who were simply obeying orders. The letter of Farragut was delivered to
Mayor Monroe in the presence of Pierre Soulé, who had been a senator and
a minister to Spain. Primed by Soulé, the mayor wrote a letter filled with
such expressions as “you have a gallant people to administer”; “sensitive to
all that can affect its dignity and self-respect”; “order and peace may be
preserved without resort to measures which could not fail to wound their
susceptibilities and fire up their passions”; “you may trust their honor,
though you might not count on their submission to unmerited wrong.” As to
the Confederate flags, “nor could I find in my entire constituency so
wretched and desperate a renegade as would dare to profane with his hand
the sacred emblem of our aspirations.”
The flags came down, however, and the old flag was raised over the
Mint. A gambler named Mumford, with three associates, hauled it down,
dragged it in the streets, and tore it to pieces. It was a wild town until May

1st, and even for a few days later; but on May 1st came Benjamin F. Butler
with his troops from the transports that had accompanied the Union
warships, and Butler was the man for the place. If any reader wants to learn
how to tame a mob with superabundant “sensibilities” and “passions” and
“aspirations” and “honor” mixed in the jumble exhibited by Pierre Soulé
and Mayor Monroe, let him read “Butler’s Book.”
To return to Forts St. Philip and Jackson, it must be said that with the
government forces above and below them, they were in such a desperate
strait that when Porter threatened to renew the bombardment, more than
half the garrison mutinied. Most of them were foreigners, anyway. The forts
were surrendered to Porter on April 28, 1862. While Porter was opposite
Fort Jackson negotiating for the surrender, under a flag of truce hoisted on
the fort and on his flagship, Commander John K. Mitchell, of the ironclad
Louisiana, set her on fire, and she came drifting down upon the Union
squadron lying under the flag of truce. Fortunately, she blew up just before
she arrived where she could do any damage. Some Confederate writers like
Scharf assert that Mitchell had a perfect right to destroy her, because she
was not included in the surrender. This is correct. But when they say
Mitchell “took caution that no injury should fall to the enemy’s fleet while
under the flag of truce,” they assert somewhat more than the facts warrant,
for Mitchell left the ship moored by ropes that he knew would burn off
before the fire reached the magazine, and they admit that he did not draw
the charges from her heavy guns. They say that he tried to “drown the
magazine” and failed, and that he then sent an officer to warn Porter. The
officer was sent, but he was sent so long after the fire was started that she
blew up before he reached Porter’s ship. Moreover, before the passing of
the fleet the Louisiana was moored far up the stream, against the protest of
the military authorities, instead of down below, where she could have
driven off Porter’s mortars. The Confederate heroes of the fight were
Sherman, Kennon, and Huger. Every American thinks of their bravery and
skill with pleasure, but Mitchell was another kind of a man.
The capture of New Orleans was of the greatest moment, as the reader
will remember. Baton Rouge and Natchez surrendered to Captain Craven,
of the Brooklyn, a few days later. Pensacola was evacuated, and the Union
forces took possession on May 10th. And because of these gains the French

Emperor, who was looking on Texas as well as on Mexico as a good prize,
was led to change his mind.
It was Porter’s belief that had Farragut been sent to Mobile
immediately, it would have fallen with small resistance, if any, and the great
battle later on would have been saved. But the Administration wanted the
Mississippi opened immediately, and Farragut went up to try it. He
succeeded in passing all the fortifications, including those at Vicksburg,
where he met Flag Officer Davis. But at Vicksburg the forts were from 150
to 264 feet above the water, and the ships of that day could not successfully
attack such works. And even had Farragut captured the forts, there were not
enough soldiers at hand to hold the town.

The Essex after Running the Batteries at
Vicksburg and Port Hudson.
After a photograph.

In fact, Farragut’s bold cruise up the river was practically fruitless
because the Administration did not follow it up. This is not said to criticise
the Administration. It is the common belief of the American people that no
man in the nation could have done better than Abraham Lincoln. But after
the batteries were passed at Vicksburg, the Union forces made what Mahan
calls a recoil. Vicksburg was more strongly fortified than ever, and so was
Port Hudson, while Grand Gulf became a point of no small importance to
the Confederates.

The Carondelet after Passing Vicksburg.
From a photograph.

While the combined squadrons of Farragut and Davis lay above
Vicksburg a Confederate ram called the Arkansas, Capt. Isaac N. Brown,
was reported as about ready for action at a shipyard up the Yazoo River.
“Little apprehension was felt in the Union fleet,” but Captain Walke, with
the Carondelet, the Taylor, and Ellet’s ram, Queen of the West, went up for
a look at her on July 15, 1862. Very unexpectedly they met her coming
down for a look at the Union forces. The Taylor was in the lead, and she
immediately turned back for the support of the Carondelet. The Carondelet
turned back for the support of the ram, and the ram turned back for the
support of the squadron in the Mississippi. Being very swift, the ram ran
soon out of sight. The gunboats now had their unarmored sterns toward the
Confederate ship, and for an hour she spanked them soundly, as they richly
deserved. The Carondelet at this time actually threw 150 pounds of metal
from rifled guns in her bow ports to the 106 that the Arkansas threw from
her bow ports, while her broadside fire was 170 pounds to 165 on the
Arkansas. And yet, although supposably supported by the Taylor, she ran
away, hugging the left bank, where the Arkansas, of thirteen feet draft,
could not ram her, and there she eventually grounded, leaving the
triumphant Arkansas to chase the Taylor and surprise the government
squadrons.
Fortunate it was that the Confederates at the Yazoo shipyards were poor
mechanics. When the Arkansas reached the Union squadrons her machinery
was in such bad order that she was making barely one knot an hour. The
captured ram General Bragg had steam up, but her captain waited for

orders, and so missed the chance of a lifetime, as Farragut remarked at the
time.
Boldly steering through the unprepared squadron, the Arkansas fired
right and left and took a position under the Vicksburg batteries. Her crew
numbered forty-one. The two Union flag officers were greatly mortified
because they were caught napping, and Farragut, to retrieve himself, took
his squadron down past the batteries that night, hoping to destroy the
Arkansas as he passed, but he failed because she was safely moored. Two
days later Farragut and part of his ships went to New Orleans, and the
handful of Union troops that had been on the point opposite Vicksburg went
to Baton Rouge.
On October 5th Breckenridge attacked the Union forces at Baton
Rouge, and the Arkansas went there to help. The Union ironclad Essex,
Capt. William Porter, with four other gunboats, were below Vicksburg at the
time, three of the others being of Farragut’s fleet. The Katahdin and Kineo
were able to give the Union army a good support in a fight against superior
numbers. The Arkansas, while trying to come to the aid of Breckenridge,
broke down and ran ashore. While she lay in the mud the Essex came up
looking for her, and as she could not be moved her crew set her on fire and
escaped. She was of the usual form of the river ironclads, and was armored
with railroad iron. The design and the material were good for that day, but
she was doomed to defeat by her builders before she was launched.

Queen of the West.
Taylor.
Carondelet.
Arkansas.

Battle between the Carondelet and the Arkansas.
From a painting by Admiral Walke.

Arkansas.
Carondelet.

Battle between the Arkansas and the Carondelet.
From a painting by Admiral Walke.

On October 1, 1862, the Mississippi squadron was transferred to the
Navy Department, and David D. Porter was promoted and placed in charge.
A lot of light-draft steamers clad with half-inch or better iron were added to
the squadron and were armed with howitzers. They were called tin-clads,
and were of service in carrying transports, and for light work generally.

Destruction of the Arkansas near Baton Rouge,
August 4, 1862.
From a lithograph published by Currier & Ives.

Another addition to the squadron was a class of heavy boats with their
wheels well aft and rectangular casemates forward. They carried some
eleven-inch Dahlgrens, and were plated with two and three-inch iron, one
carrying as much as six inches on the casemate. But they were built in
actual war-time, so the builders took advantage of the haste to rob the
nation by scamping the work, and the engines were constantly breaking
down.
In November the first of a series of moves against Vicksburg was made
by the way of the Yazoo River country. The swamps of the Yazoo had
served to keep the Federal forces from turning the north end of the
Confederate defences along the Vicksburg side of the river, and an
expedition was sent across through the bayous, leaving the Mississippi near
Helena, and entering the head-waters of the Yazoo. It failed utterly, and the
gunboat Cairo was destroyed by torpedoes made of whiskey demijohns.

David D. Porter.
From a photograph.

Then, in January, 1863, a naval force was sent to help the army capture
Arkansas Post, fifty miles up the Arkansas River. The De Kalb (former St.
Louis), the Louisville, and the Cincinnati, and all the tin-clads were in the
expedition, and on January 9th and 10th they shot the forts to pieces, and
disabled all the guns, seventeen in number, including two nine-inch
Dahlgrens that had come all the way from the Norfolk Navy Yard. The
white flag was raised before the army could make an assault.
General Grant arrived opposite Vicksburg on January 30, 1863, and the
plan of attacking Vicksburg by turning the river line on the south was
adopted, and that succeeded some months later. Meantime Porter, to control
the river between Vicksburg and Port Hudson, sent Col. Charles R. Ellet,
with his ram, Queen of the West, down past the Vicksburg batteries. Owing
to trouble with her steering gear, she did not get off till daylight on February
2d; but the Ellets were the most recklessly brave family known to the
Mississippi. The colonel started in the face of fire, rammed and set fire to a
Confederate steamer at the Vicksburg wharf, and passed on without losing a
man.

A small ferryboat, called the De Soto, was added to Ellet’s command
when below Vicksburg, and then Porter sent down the Indianola, one of the
newest armored boats. That seemed to give the Union forces full sway as
far as Port Hudson; but within a week Ellet attacked a fort near Gordon’s
Landing, on the Red River, got his ship aground, and had to abandon her.
He retreated in the De Soto until a prize they had captured was reached,
when the De Soto was burned, and in the prize (a steamer called the Era)
they reached the Indianola. But the Confederates were still after them,
using the abandoned Queen of the West and one of the original Confederate
rams, called the Webb, with a couple of ordinary river steamers, the whole
fleet being protected with cotton. The Indianola tried to escape up the river,
but the rams being swifter, chose their own time, and rammed her to death
on the night of the 24th. The Confederates once more held the river.
A curious thing then happened. The Indianola was sunk on the easterly
bank, not far below Vicksburg. A Confederate force set to work to raise and
repair her. They were getting on well, when, early on the morning of the
26th, a Federal gunboat was reported coming down the river. There was a
most furious cannonading at the Vicksburg batteries, and the four steamers
that had so gallantly captured the Indianola at once fled militia-fashion. A
lieutenant with a hundred men was left on the wreck (she was awash and
near shore); but when he saw what a fearsome aspect the coming monster
had, he set the Indianola’s two big guns muzzle to muzzle, fired them to
destroy them, and then fled. The story of these doings made the government
forces laugh and the Confederates curse for many a day after that, for the
so-called gunboat was a dummy in the form of a monitor, sent adrift for a
lark by Porter’s men.

Admiral Farragut Passing Port Hudson.
From a painting by Admiral Walke.

The U. S. Flotilla Passing the Vicksburg Batteries.
From a painting by Admiral Walke.

On the whole, however, the Confederates were plainly having the best
of the contest, and Farragut came up from the Gulf to see about matters. He
had himself had both good and bad fortune in the Gulf. A number of Texas
ports, including Galveston and Corpus Christi, were captured, but
Galveston was retaken by the Confederates, who attacked it with a
combined land and marine force, the ships being cotton-clads. The Union
navy had the Westfield destroyed, and the Harriet Lane captured, after both
her captain and executive officer were killed. And a little later the famous
Alabama appeared at night off Galveston. An armed merchant steamer was
sent to inspect her, and the Alabama opened fire and sank her, escaping
before the other blockading steamer could come out to assist.
So Farragut was in a state of mind to take risks, and he ran his squadron
past the works at Port Hudson on the 14th of March, 1863, where nineteen
heavy guns were mounted. It was a dangerous place naturally on account of
the currents in the stream and the shoals. Seven vessels, including the
Hartford, tried the passage. The Hartford, with the gunboat Albatross

alongside, led the procession. The Monongahela, with the Kineo alongside,
were next, with the Richmond and Genesee following, and the Mississippi
alone in the rear.
The Hartford with her consort got past the batteries after some little
trouble. The Richmond was disabled by a shot, and with her consort’s aid
turned back. The Monongahela and consort both grounded, but the
Monongahela passed on, while the Mississippi grounded so hard that she
was fired and abandoned. It was a pretty serious affair for the government
force, but the Red River was blockaded, and it was not opened for traffic
until the end of the war. When two of the Ellet rams were sent down past
Vicksburg to increase Farragut’s force above Port Hudson, one, the
Lancaster, was sunk, and the other got through. Both were commanded by
the indomitable Ellet boys.

Confederate Forts.
Benton.
Tuscumbia.
Pittsburg.
Lafayette.
Louisville.
St. Louis.
Carondelet.

Battle of Grand Gulf—First Position.
From a painting by Admiral Walke.

Near the end of February, while Farragut held the river between Port
Hudson and Vicksburg, Porter tried to get in behind Vicksburg by the way
of the Yazoo swamps once more. He took a different route from that of the
first expedition, but he could not drive the tin-clads over the willows, and
the Confederates cut trees across the bayous both in front of and behind his
steamers until he was well-nigh lost. And at the last he found his way
blocked by the hulk of the Star of the West, the steamer at which the first

shot of the war was fired—the shot that turned her back when she was
carrying supplies to Fort Sumter. After the Sumter event she had gone to
New Orleans, was there taken forcibly by the Confederates, and ended her
existence as a barrier hulk in a Yazoo bayou.
This expedition having failed, Grant determined to go down the
westerly bank of the Mississippi to New Carthage, and then cross and
surround Vicksburg. On the night of April 16, 1863, Porter took the
following vessels down past Vicksburg to cover Grant when crossing: The
flagship Benton, sixteen guns, Lieut.-commander James A. Greer, leading,
and the other vessels in the following order: Lafayette, eight guns, Capt.
Henry Walke; Louisville, twelve guns, Lieut.-commander Elias K. Owen;
Mound City, fourteen guns, Lieut. Byron Wilson; Pittsburg, thirteen guns,
Lieut. W. R. Hoel; Carondelet, eleven guns, Lieut. J. McLeod Murphy;
Tuscumbia, five guns, Lieut.-commander James W. Shirk. The Lafayette
carried with her, lashed to the other side of her coal barge, the ram General
Price, Lieut. S. E. Woodworth, which had continued in the service after
being taken from the Confederates at Memphis. After the Carondelet,
between her and the Tuscumbia, came three army transports, the Silver
Wave, Henry Clay, and Forest Queen, unprotected except by bales of hay
and cotton round the boilers. They carried stores, but no troops.
The armed vessels were repeatedly hulled, but were in no way disabled.
One transport, the Henry Clay, caught fire and sank. On the 22d of April a
number of transports ran the batteries, and on the 29th, the plans having
been changed somewhat, the squadron attacked the works at Grand Gulf.
Here there were four of the best rifled cannon of the day, two eight-inch
smooth-bores, two old thirty-twos, and some light guns—a battery of not a
fourth of the power of the fleet, but it was seventy-five feet above the water,
and the fleet pounded it all day and accomplished nothing. They lost
eighteen killed and fifty-six wounded at that.
However, the work of carrying the army across the river at Bruinsburg,
below Grand Gulf, began next day. This was on April 30th. On that day the
gunboats left above Vicksburg made such a determined attack on the works
there that no reinforcements were sent down to Grand Gulf. Having carried
the Union army over at Bruinsburg, Porter, on May 3d, attacked the works
at Grand Gulf and found them evacuated. Then Grant made Grand Gulf his
base of supplies, and the surrounding of Vicksburg was accomplished by

May 21, 1863. From that time on a steady advance was made by the army,
and the flotilla supported every movement by shelling the river batteries.
There was no great conflict on the part of the navy, but the help of the ships
in keeping open the water route for supplies and in covering the movements
of the army was fully appreciated by General Grant and by the whole
nation. The writer hereof, who was a lad in the backwoods of Ohio at the
time, remembers that when, on the afternoon of the 4th day of July, the
people of the village where he lived, half crazy with joy over the news,
were piling up dry rails fifty feet high for a bonfire to celebrate the fall of
Vicksburg, the name of Porter was frequently mentioned by the shouting
crowd, with that of Grant, although the people there didn’t know a warship
from a coal barge.

Benton.
Fort.
Tuscumbia.
Carondelet.
Mound City.
Lafayette.
Lower Forts.

Battle of Grand Gulf—Second Position.
From a painting by Admiral Walke.

Confederate Batteries.
Pittsburg.
Louisville.
Lafayette.
Mound City.
Carondelet.

Battle of Grand Gulf—Third Position.
From a painting by Admiral Walke.

Admiral Porter on Deck of Flagship at Grand
Écore, La.
From a photograph.

Meantime, while Grant was before Vicksburg the French troops were in
Mexico, and on June 10, 1863, they entered Mexico City, the capital. The
French Emperor, Napoleon III, had shown an unfriendly disposition toward
the United States, and, as already intimated, had been trying, through his
diplomatic agents, to get Texas to secede from the Confederacy and
establish an independent government. The operations of the French led the
Administration at Washington to send General Banks on an expedition that
had Shreveport, on the Red River, near the boundary between Louisiana and
Texas, and about 400 miles from the Mississippi River, for its destination. It
may be briefly said that the expedition won some battles and accomplished

nothing. Admiral Porter, with the following vessels, accompanied the
expedition:
Essex, Commander Robert Townsend; Eastport, Lieut.-commander
S. L. Phelps; Black Hawk, Lieut-commander K. R. Breese; Lafayette,
Lieut.-commander J. P. Foster; Benton, Lieut.-commander J. A. Greer;
Louisville, Lieut.-commander E. K. Owen; Carondelet, Lieut.-commander
J. G. Mitchell; Osage, Lieut.-commander T. O. Selfredge; Ouachita, Lieut.-
commander Byron Wilson; Lexington, Lieut. G. M. Bache; Chillicothe,
Lieut. S. P. Couthouy; Pittsburg, Lieut. W. R. Hoel; Mound City, Lieut
A. R. Langthorne; Neosho, Lieut. Samuel Howard; Ozark, Lieut. G. W.
Browne; Fort Hindman, Lieut. John Pearce; Cricket, Master H. H.
Gorringe; Gazelle, Master Charles Thatcher.

U. S. Ram Lafayette.
From a photograph.

U. S. Gunboat Fort Hindman.
From a photograph.

It was on March 12, 1863, that Porter’s command started up Red River.
The advanced vessels of the fleet reached Alexandria on the 15th, and all
the fleet was there on the 16th. It was an easy voyage so far, but above
Alexandria were (and are) two rapids not to be passed during low water,
and in the spring of 1863 the water was exceptionally low.
However, the Eastport, Mound City, Carondelet, Pittsburg, Louisville,
Chillicothe, Ozark, Neosho, Lexington, and Hindman were dragged over
with some thirty transports. These went up the river and rendered
considerable aid to the army, but the real interest in the expedition lies in
the backwoods scheme by which the whole squadron above the falls was
saved from destruction.

Joseph Bailey.
From a photograph.

Instead of finding high water at the season when it was naturally
expected, the river fell, and ten gunboats and two tugs were left helpless
above the falls. Nevertheless, help came when Lieut.-col. Joseph Bailey, of
the Fourth Wisconsin Volunteers, saw the situation. Bailey was a log-driver,
and knew how to lift a jam over any kind of rifts or obstructions. Nearly
everybody who heard of his plan, doubted and many jeered at the idea; “but
Bailey had the faith that moves mountains.” Moreover, there were right at
hand two regiments of men from Maine—nearly 2,000 men, of whom
Jeremiah O’Brien, who captured the Margaretta, would have been proud.
The rifts were a mile long, and at a point below them the high banks
were 758 feet apart. The water between the high banks was deep enough to
float any gunboat, but not too deep for building a dam. Bailey said he
would build a dam there that would flood the rifts to navigating depth, and
he did it. The men from Maine swung their axes in the forest near by, and
the teamsters hauled the cut trees, branches and all, and dumped them into
the water. Here other Maine men piled the trees up with their butts down-
stream, cross-tied with logs and their branches interlacing above. Similar
dams can be seen in any of the logging regions of the United States in these
days. This dam extended from the north bank, a little more than half-way
across the stream. From the south bank, for lack of trees, a crib dam—cribs
of logs filled with stone—was built. When the opening between the ends of

these dams was small enough—when it was but 150 feet wide—it was
filled with four coal barges that were loaded with brick and sunk there.

Red River Dam.
From “The Navy in the Civil War.”

Astonishing as it seems to one who has seen such dams built, Bailey
and his men from Maine had completed the dam in eight days, deepening
the water on the rifts by more than six feet—the water was deep enough on
the rifts for the Osage, the Neosho, and Hindman to pass down and anchor
in the still water between the foot of the rifts and the dam.
But just as this success had been attained two of the sunken coal barges
in the centre of the dam were shoved out of line by the weight of water, and
in an instant the backwater above the dam began to pour through the
opening in a mighty torrent.
At that moment the gunboat Lexington, with steam up, was at the head
of the rifts, ready to follow the gunboats that had passed down to safety,
while Admiral Porter stood on the bank, overseeing the operation. One
glance at the broken dam showed that the level of the water must quickly
fall, and Porter shouted to the Lexington to go ahead over the rifts and
through the break in the dam to the still water below. Instantly her pilot rang
the bell to start the engines.

Up to this moment the thousands of soldiers who lined the banks had
been shouting and talking to each other, and making a most confused noise;
but when the Lexington entered the growing current on the rifts a hush fell
upon the great throng, until no sound was heard save the beating of her
paddles and the rush of the current as the pilot drove her straight at the
opening. There the current took her from his hands, lifted her up on the
leaping waves, and, rolling her heavily from side to side, dashed her down
into the pool below.

The Fleet Passing the Dam.
From an engraving.

The mighty cheer that the great host of spectators raised seems to echo
in the ear to this day as one reads the story of the incident, for the ship was
safe.
The Neosho, Hindman, and Osage passed through the dam after the
Lexington, but there were others still above the rifts, and these could not
pass. But after a while it was found that, even with the break unrepaired, the
dam still raised the water more than five feet, and so, instead of repairing

the break, Bailey built two wing dams on the rifts above, and these gave the
needed depth, and the remainder of the squadron passed down in safety.
Bailey received the thanks of Congress, and was made a brigadier-general.
And to conclude the story of the Mississippi squadron, we may quote
the words of Mahan in his admirable “Gulf and Inland Waters”: “After the
Red River expedition little is left to say of the operations of the Mississippi
squadron during the rest of the war.”

CHAPTER XIII

FARRAGUT AT MOBILE
THE FORTS AND THE CONFEDERATE SQUADRON THE UNION
FORCES WERE COMPELLED TO FACE—THE
CONFEDERATE IRONCLAD JUST MISSED BEING A MOST
FORMIDABLE SHIP—TEDIOUS WAIT FOR MONITORS—
WHEN THE SOUTHWEST WIND FAVORED—THERE WAS A
FIERCE BLAST FROM THE FORTS AT FIRST, BUT THE
TORPEDO WAS WORSE THAN MANY GUNS—FATE OF THE
TECUMSEH AND CAPTAIN CRAVEN—THE LAST WORDS
OF THE MAN FOR WHOM “THERE WAS NO
AFTERWARD”—TORPEDOES THAT FAILED BENEATH THE
FLAGSHIP—CAPTAIN STEVENS ON THE DECK OF HIS
MONITOR—WHEN NEILDS UNFURLED THE OLD FLAG IN
THE MIDST OF THE STORM—HOW FARRAGUT WAS
LASHED TO THE MAST—JOUETT WOULD NOT BE
INTIMIDATED BY A LEADSMAN—MOBBING THE
TENNESSEE.

Entrance to Mobile Bay.
From “The Navy in the Civil War.”

Mobile Bay lies like a great bell open to the south—a bell that is thirty
miles long, fifteen wide at the mouth, and six at the head. It is a shoal-water
bay, save for a rather deep hole (twenty-one feet) just within; the two sandy
islands that stretch out from either side across its mouth almost meet. That
is to say, they reach within 2,000 yards of each other, and between them lies
the entrance to the channel. In these days a wide ditch carries twenty-three
feet of water from the deep hole inside the islands clear to the town of
Mobile; but at the time of the Civil War that had not been dredged, and the
water shelved gradually from the ripples at the beach to twelve feet at the
centre line above the hole. There was a bar outside; but ships drawing
twenty feet of water could pass. The main point of land at the entrance to

Mobile Bay lay on the east, and was called Mobile Point. On the west lay
Dauphin Island, and the water between this island and the mainland was
and is called Mississippi Sound—a stretch of shoal water that gives inland
navigation to New Orleans. The Confederate defences, ashore and afloat in
1864, are described by Mahan as follows:
“The entrance from the Gulf was guarded by two works, Fort Morgan
on Mobile Point, and Fort Gaines on Dauphin Island. The approach by
Mississippi Sound was covered by Fort Powell, a small earthwork on Tower
Island, commanding the channel which gave the most water, known as
Grant’s Pass. Gaines was too far distant from the main ship channel to
count for much in the plans of the fleet. It was a pentagonal work mounting
in barbette three X-inch columbiads, five 32-, two 24-, and two 18-pounder
smooth-bore guns, and four rifled 32-pounders; besides these it had eleven
24-pounder howitzers for siege and for flank defence. In Fort Powell there
were one X-inch, two VIII-inch and one 32-pounder smooth-bore and two
VII-inch Brooke rifles; these bore on the sound and channels, but the rear of
the fort toward the bay was yet unfinished and nearly unarmed. The third
and principal work, Fort Morgan, was much more formidable. It was five-
sided, and built to carry guns both in barbette and casemates; but when
seized by the Confederates the embrasures of the curtains facing the
channel were masked and a heavy exterior water battery was thrown up
before the northwest curtain. The armament at this time cannot be given
with absolute certainty. The official reports of the United States engineer
and ordnance officers, made after the surrender, differ materially, but from a
comparison between them and other statements the following estimate has
been made: Main fort, seven X-inch, three VIII-inch and twenty-two 32-
pounder smooth-bore guns, and two VIII-inch, two 6.5-inch and four 5.82-
inch rifles. In the water battery there were four X-inch and one VIII-inch
columbiads and two 6.5-inch rifles. Of the above, ten X-inch, three VIII-
inch, sixteen 32-pounders and all the rifles, except one of 5.82 calibre, bore
upon the channel.
“In the waters of the bay there was a little Confederate squadron under
Admiral Franklin Buchanan, made up of the ram Tennessee and three small
paddle-wheel gunboats, the Morgan, Gaines, and Selma. They were
unarmored, excepting around the boilers. The Selma was an open-deck river
steamer with heavy hog frames; the two others had been built for the

Confederate Government, but were poorly put together. The batteries were:
Morgan, two VII-inch rifles and four 32-pounders; Gaines, one VIII-inch
rifle and five 32-pounders; Selma, one VI-inch rifle, two IX-inch, and one
VIII-inch smooth-bore shell-guns. Though these lightly built vessels played
a very important part for some minutes, and from a favorable position did
much harm to the Union fleet in the subsequent engagement, they counted
for nothing in the calculations of Farragut.
“The Tennessee was the most powerful ironclad built, from the keel up,
by the Confederacy, and both the energy showed in overcoming difficulties
and the workmanship put upon her were most creditable to her builders.
The work was begun at Selma, on the Alabama River, one hundred and fifty
miles from Mobile, in the spring of 1863, when the timber was yet standing
in the forests, and much of what was to be her plating was still ore in the
mines. The hull was launched the following winter and towed to Mobile,
where the plating had already been sent from the rolling mills of Atlanta.
“Her length on deck was 209 feet, beam 48 feet, and when loaded, with
her guns on board, she drew 14 feet. The battery was carried in a casemate,
equidistant from the bow and stern, whose inside dimensions were 79 feet
in length by 29 feet in width. The framing was of yellow pine beams, 13
inches thick, placed close together vertically and planked on the outside,
first with 5½ inches of yellow pine, laid horizontally, and then 4 inches of
oak laid up and down. Both sides and ends were inclined at an angle of
forty-five degrees, and over the outside planking was placed the armor, 6
inches thick, in thin plates of 2 inches each, on the forward end, and
elsewhere 5 inches thick. Within, the yellow pine frames were sheathed
with 2½ inches of oak. The plating throughout was fastened with bolts 1¼
inches in diameter, going entirely through and set up with nuts and washers
inside. Her gunners were thus sheltered by a thickness of five or six inches
of iron, backed by twenty-five inches of wood. The outside deck was plated
with two-inch iron. The sides of the casemate, or, as the Confederates called
it, the shield, were carried down to two feet below the water line and then
reversed at the same angle, so as to meet the hull again six to seven feet
below water. The knuckle thus formed, projecting ten feet beyond the base
of the casement, and apparently filled in solid, afforded a substantial
protection from an enemy’s prow to the hull, which was not less than eight
feet within it. It was covered with four inches of iron, and being continued

round the bows, became there a beak or ram. The vessel carried, however,
only six guns; one VIII-inch rifle at each end and two VI-inch rifles on each
broadside. These were Brooke guns, made in the Confederacy; they threw
110-pound and 90-pound solid shot. The ports were closed with iron sliding
shutters, five inches thick; a bad arrangement, as it turned out.
“Though thus powerfully built, armored, and armed, she had two grave
defects. Her engines were not built for her, but taken from a high-pressure
river steamboat, and though on her trial trip she realized about eight knots,
six seems to be all that could usually be got from her. She was driven by a
screw, the shaft being connected by gearing with the engines. The other
defect was an oversight, her steering chains, instead of being led under her
armored deck, were over it, exposed to an enemy’s fire. She was therefore a
ram that could only by a favorable chance overtake her prey, and was likely
at any moment to lose the power of directing her thrust.”
While Banks was on the useless Red River expedition Farragut had
been anxious to attack Mobile, but had been unable to do so because no
troops could be spared for use against the forts and to hold the place when it
should be taken. For six months, in fact, the admiral had to lie idle while the
Confederates strengthened their works—even watching them while they
brought the Tennessee down the river on which she had been built, and then
carried her over the shoal waters of the upper part of the bay, just as Perry
carried his two brigs out of Erie harbor on Lake Erie when he went out to
win his great victory. It was in March, 1864, that the Confederates began
this slow task under Farragut’s eyes (figuratively speaking; Farragut was
not with the fleet constantly), and it was not until May 18th that they had
her anchored in the deep water within the forts guarding the channel.
As a matter of fact, Buchanan, the Confederate admiral, intended to go
out and attack Farragut’s fleet that night, as the Merrimac had attacked the
wooden fleet in Hampton Roads. What he would have accomplished may
not now be guessed; but Farragut had wooden ships only to meet the
Tennessee, although he had done everything he could to get ironclads.
However, the Tennessee grounded, and when she was floated Buchanan, for
some reason unknown, changed his mind.
Meantime the Confederate had anchored forty-six beer-keg torpedoes
and 134 torpedoes made of tin, all fitted with percussion fuses, across the

channel, leaving a pass, marked by a red buoy, near Fort Morgan (on the
east side) for the blockade-runners. The pass was about 100 yards wide and
at the most deadly range from the fort.
After six months of tedious delay four monitors came with the
assurance that a sufficient number of troops would coöperate. Two of these
monitors had single turrets, armored with ten inches of iron and carrying
two fifteen-inch Dahlgren guns—guns that used sixty pounds of powder
(and might have used a hundred) behind solid-steel shot weighing 440
pounds. The others had eleven-inch Dahlgrens.
Eventually a day for landing the troops on Dauphin Island was fixed—
August 4, 1864—and Farragut was to pass the forts and anchor in the bay
before daylight. The troops were landed, but Farragut had to wait for some
of his squadron that had failed to arrive. But during the day they were all
there. The wooden ships were prepared much as they had been at the battle
of New Orleans, and then all that was wanting was a flood-tide to help
sweep the ships, and a southwest wind to blow the smoke of battle into the
eyes of Fort Morgan’s gunners. As fortune turned, Farragut got both early
on the morning of August 5, 1864. It had been raining the night before, and
it is recorded that Farragut could not sleep well. At 3 o’clock in the morning
he sent a man on deck to ask how the wind was, and the man brought word
that it was southwest.
“Then we will go in this morning,” said Farragut, and a few minutes
later the boatswains were turning out all hands on every ship of the fighting
squadron. It was not a long task to get the men to quarters, but the ships had
to be lashed together two and two,—the little Octorara on the off side of
the Brooklyn, and the little Metacomet on the off side of the flagship
Hartford, and so on, to protect the little ones from the fire of Fort Morgan.

Farragut and Drayton on Board the Hartford at Mobile Bay.
Drawn by I. W. Taber from a photograph.

When this was done the line was formed in two columns, the monitors
on the right, next to the fort, in the following order of battle:
Monitors—starboard column: Tecumseh, 1,034 tons, two guns,
Commander T. A. M. Craven; Manhattan, 1,034 tons, two guns,
Commander J. W. A. Nicholson; Winnebago, 970 tons, four guns,
Commander Thomas H. Stevens; Chickasaw, 970 tons, four guns, Lieut.-
commander George H. Perkins.
Wooden ships—port column: Brooklyn, twenty-four guns, Capt. James
Alden; Octorara, six guns, Lieut.-commander Charles H. Greene; Hartford,
twenty-one guns, Rear-admiral David G. Farragut, Capt. Percival Drayton;
Metacomet, six guns, Lieut.-commander James E. Jouett; Richmond, twenty
guns, Capt. Thornton A. Jenkins; Port Royal, six guns, Commander
Bancroft Gherardi; Lackawanna, eight guns, Capt. John B. Marchand;
Seminole, eight guns, Commander Edward Donaldson; Monongahela, eight
guns, Commander James H. Strong; Kennebec, five guns, Lieut.-

commander William P. McCann; Ossipee, eleven guns, Commander
William E. Le Roy; Itasca, five guns, Lieut.-commander George Brown;
Oneida, nine guns, Commander J. R. M. Mullany; Galena, ten guns, Lieut.-
commander Clark H. Wells. The Octorara, Metacomet, and Port Royal
were side-wheel double-enders; the others were screw ships. All had been
built for the naval service.
The signal to move rose to the Hartford’s masthead at 5.30 o’clock, and
by 6.10 the leaders were crossing the bar, heading for the narrow passway
marked by the red buoy just under the heaviest guns of Fort Morgan.

B. Brooklyn.
B1. Brooklyn backlog.

C. Chickasaw.
H. Hartford.
L. Lackawanna.
M. Monongahela.
Mh. Manhattan.
O. Ossipee.
On. Oneida.
R. Richmond.
R1 Richmond backing
T. Tecumseh.
T1. Tecumseh, Position of Wreck.
Ts. Tennessee (Confederate.)
W. Winnebago.

I. Position of vessel when Tecumseh struck the Torpedo.
II. Position of vessels when Tennessee passed down the Union line.
III. Conflict of Tennessee with the fleet.
IV. Selma surrenders.
Figures not attached to vessels give the soundings. Within the channel they
indicate depth in fathoms; beyond the dotted lines, feet.

1. Octorara.
2. Metacomet.
3. Port Royal.
4. Seminola.
5. Kennebec.
6. Itasca.
7. Galena.
b. Buoy marking torpedo line.
g. Gaines (Confederate.)
m. Morgan. (Confederate.)
s. Selma. (Confederate.)
w. Water Battery.
? Anchorage before Tennessee was seen coming up to attack.
? Torpedoes.
* Light House.

Battle of Mobile Bay.
From “The Navy in the Civil War.”

“It was a glorious sight to see those brave fellows wearing a smile of
joy upon their faces in view of such odds against them, and not knowing
how soon they and their comrades would be lying at the bottom of the bay.
All could not hope to escape this trying ordeal, when several of the coolest
officers calculated that at least six of the ships would be blown up. They
never stopped to consider whose fate this would be; all they desired was to
grapple with the enemy, and see the Union flag floating over the forts that
had been taken from their lawful owners.”
Slowly—too slowly, the squadron steamed in, the American flag
fluttering at every peak until within easy range, when the Tecumseh, the
leading monitor, hurled two fifteen-inch shot at the fort. There was no reply,
and the squadron continued slowly on with the monitors blazing away.
The silence of the fort was ominous, for its garrison were waiting for
the shortest range; but at 7.7 o’clock, as the head of the squadron drew in to
make the turn at the red buoy, the time had come, and a roaring blast of iron
hail struck the leading ships. But ominous as the silence of the fort had
seemed, the result of their best aim was insignificant, for only one shot did
any damage worth mention, and that one killed nearly all of a gun’s crew on
the Hartford.
All the guns of the fleet that would bear were now opened on the fort,
grape and canister being chiefly used in order to drive the men from the
guns, and so steady was the rain of the small projectiles through the fort’s
portholes that the fire there was instantly slackened.

T. A. M. Craven.
From a photograph owned by Mr. C. B.
Hall.

And then came the Confederate squadron from behind the fort to take a
position above the line of torpedoes to help repel the fleet. As the Tennessee
opened fire the monitor Tecumseh, at the head of the Union line, had her
turret turned with portholes from the fort while the guns were loaded.
Captain Craven, intent on reaching the Tennessee as quickly as possible,
saw that if he had to pass between the red buoy and the fort, his route would
be a crooked one, and turning to the pilot at his side in the pilot-house, he
said:
“It is impossible that the Admiral means us to go inside the buoy; I
cannot turn my ship.” He knew that outside the red buoy lay the torpedoes,
but saying “starboard” to the man at the wheel, he headed the Tecumseh

straight for the Confederate ram. For a few minutes she held her course
undisturbed, but as the red buoy was brought abeam, her bow was suddenly
lifted out of water, she lurched heavily from side to side, and then down she
went bow first, her screw lifted up to view, and with a minute or two of
time between the shock and the sinking. A torpedo had ripped open her hull.
A few men in the turret climbed out. Craven and Pilot John Collins both
started for the opening in the pilot-house, and then Craven drew back and
said:
“After you, pilot.” But there was no afterward for Tunis Augustus
Craven. There was a chance for one, but not for two. “When I reached the
uppermost round of the ladder,” said Collins, “the ship dropped from under
me.” In all, ninety-two good men went down with their immortal captain.
Farragut, who had climbed into the port main rigging of the Hartford,
where he could see over the smoke of battle, saw the Tecumseh sink, and
turning to Capt. J. Jouett, of the little Metacomet alongside, asked him to
send a boat to rescue some of the Tecumseh’s crew. But Jouett had already
ordered the boat away, and it carried another hero of that battle—Ensign
H. C. Neilds. Neilds was only a lad, but he sat unmoved in the stern of the
frail craft as it passed out from the shelter of his ship into the hurtling storm
that ripped the water into a misty spray. A moment later he remembered that
his flag was not flying, and standing up, as a Perry might have done, he
unfurled the flag, set it to its staff in the face of friend and foe, and then sat
down quietly to guide the boat on her mission.
Over on the monitors was still another hero—Commander Stevens, of
the Winnebago. He was of the old school of seamen, who believed that the
captain’s place was on the quarter-deck. The double-turreted monitor had no
quarter-deck, but Stevens, restive in the iron box, got out on the deck
between the turrets, and pacing to and fro alone in the storm, gave his
orders now to one turret and then another. And what was more, the monitors
were all driving ahead in the wake of the lost Tecumseh—driving toward
the torpedoes.
But just then the captain of the Brooklyn, being in the lead of all, saw
some little floats that marked the location of a nest of torpedoes, and first
stopped and then backed his engines. It was not the right move for a ship in
Farragut’s squadron to make, and it threw the line into confusion, and held

the ships under the hottest fire of the fort—held the Hartford in particular
where the shot from the enemy turned her gun-deck into a slaughter pen so
that blood ran in streams from her scuppers, and the splinters of her walls
and bits of flesh and clothing from the dead were scattered in a shower over
the deck of the gunboat lashed alongside.
As the Hartford ranged up near the Brooklyn, Farragut, from his perch
in the rigging, asked what was the trouble, and the one word “torpedoes”
came back to him.
“D——n the torpedoes! Follow me,” said the admiral, and as the
Hartford took the lead of her column, he signalled for “close order.”
A moment more, and the Hartford had reached the torpedo nest. The
torpedo cases were distinctly heard striking against her bottom, and their
primers were heard snapping, but not one exploded.
It was at this time that Captain Drayton, of the Hartford, seeing
Farragut clinging to the shrouds just under the maintop, sent a sailor up to
make fast a slender rope from one shroud to another in such a way that the
admiral could not fall in case he was struck. It is so far literally true that
Farragut was “lashed to the mast.”

Fort Gaines.
U. S. Fleet.
Hartford.
Monitors.
Tennessee.
Fort Morgan.

Battle of Mobile Bay.
Front a painting by Admiral Walke.

And then came the Richmond with her consort to narrowly escape a
collision with the Brooklyn, but as she turned away, her broadside was
brought to bear fairly on the fort, and she opened such a rapid fire that she
was wholly hid from view. Admiral Buchanan, who had watched her with
more than ordinary interest because of a personal friendship for Captain
Jenkins, was led to say:
“What became of Jenkins? I saw his vessel go handsomely into action,
and then lost sight of her entirely.”

Nevertheless, Jenkins was there, and in a most active condition of
health. With the other larger ships, she helped to silence the forts so far that
the last ships of the line passed in with but slight damage.
But once inside the line of torpedoes—torpedoes that had failed
because made of tin that rusted away or because of other defects in make—
the Union squadron had to face the Confederate ships. The Confederate
gunboats had seemed of no moment at first, but as the Hartford advanced
they retreated slowly, keeping within about 700 yards, and delivering an
effective fire. Farragut sent the Metacomet after them, and she disabled the
Gaines, drove another flying back to the fort, while the third, the Selma,
kept on, with Jouett eager in the chase. The two were soon in shoal water,
and the man at the lead on the Metacomet called out a foot less water than
she drew. It was reported instantly to Jouett.
“Call the man in,” said Jouett. “He is only intimidating me with his
soundings.”
Fortunately, it was a soft mud bottom. The Metacomet kept on. A squall
came to hide the Selma, but when it passed, Jouett was upon her, and her
flag came down.
Meantime the Tennessee had run amuck among the Union squadron.
Her first attempt to ram was on the Hartford, but the Hartford was swifter
and handier, and so escaped. Then she passed the Brooklyn, the Richmond,
and the Lackawanna, and turned toward the Monongahela. Captain Strong
of this ship strove in turn to ram the Tennessee, and each glanced from the
other. Thereafter the Tennessee passed clear through the fleet, doing and
receiving but little damage. Then she turned near the fort to follow up the
Union squadron.
At about this time (8.35 o’clock) Farragut ordered the men on the
Hartford sent to breakfast. Captain Drayton said:
“What we have done has been well done, sir, but it all counts for
nothing so long as the Tennessee is there under the guns of Morgan.”
“I know it,” said Farragut, “and as soon as the people have had their
breakfasts I’m going for her.”
The mess kits were on the deck when word came down that the
Tennessee, instead of staying near Fort Morgan, as Farragut had supposed

she would do, was coming. In a jiffy the scouse and coffee were sent back
to the galley, and the men ran to their guns. The anchor was slipped, and
with signals flying to direct the Monongahela, Lackawanna, and Ossipee to
ram the Confederate ship, and the monitors to attack her, the Hartford
headed at full speed to lead the ramming gunboats. In this the spirit of
Farragut was shown even more faithfully than when he braved the fire of
the forts, for the Tennessee was a much more powerful ship than the
Merrimac, and the Hartford was not so powerful as any of the steamers that
lay in Hampton Roads when the Merrimac made her first raid. Indeed, one
involuntarily compares the action of Farragut on this day with that of
Goldsborough on the day that the Merrimac ran down within range of the
Rip Raps, and defied a squadron gathered especially to ram her.
There was no hesitation at Mobile. The Monongahela was the first to
reach the Confederate ship. Two raking shots were received, but at full
speed the Monongahela struck her amidships on the starboard side, and a
minute later, as the two swung side by side, the Monongahela gave her a
broadside.
And then came the Lackawanna to ram the Tennessee on the port side.
A good blow it was too; but as the Hartford approached to give a third
blow, the Tennessee turned so that she and the Hartford struck bow to bow,
but both glanced clear.
A broadside from the Hartford also proved harmless, but the Tennessee,
that had been unable to return the fire for some time on account of defective
primers, managed to discharge one shell that entered the Hartford, though it
did no material damage. And then the danger of mobbing a ship, as the
Tennessee was mobbed, became apparent, for the Lackawanna, in coming
around to ram again, struck the Hartford instead of the Tennessee, and
narrowly missed sinking her, while Farragut, by an equally narrow margin,
escaped death, for he was standing near where the Lackawanna struck.
Meantime the three monitors were coming with all speed, the
Chickasaw burning tallow and tar to get up steam faster. Passing along the
Tennessee’s port side, the Chickasaw got under the stern of the Confederate,
and there she hung, working her four eleven-inch guns with deadly
accuracy. The monitors Manhattan and Winnebago both attacked the

Tennessee, but one of the former’s guns was accidentally spiked, and the
latter’s turret machinery failed, and it was the Chickasaw that did the work.
“D——n him!” said the Tennessee’s pilot afterward. “He stuck to us
like a leach; we could not get away from him. It was he who cut away the
steering gear, jammed the stern port shutters and wounded Admiral
Buchanan.”
And that was true. Both the bow and the stern port shutters were
jammed so that the guns of the Tennessee could not be worked at the ends
of the ship. Her smoke-stack was shot away, and the smoke from the stump
poured down through the upper-deck gratings to fill the casemate, where the
temperature had risen to 120 degrees. Buchanan, to clear one of the port
shutters, sent for a machinist and personally superintended his work for a
few moments, when one of the Chickasaw’s projectiles struck the iron
plating just outside where the machinist was at work, and the concussion,
although the shot did not enter, reduced the man to a pulp, so that his
remains were shovelled into buckets to be carried away. Worse yet for the
ship, an iron splinter was driven through the admiral’s leg, breaking the
bone.
It was near this time that the tiller chains were carried away, and that
completed the needed work of destruction. Capt. J. D. Johnson took
command of her when Buchanan fell, and for twenty minutes longer
endured the hammering while wholly unable to return the fire or steer the
ship. But to hold out longer under such circumstances was useless, and the
flag was hauled down.
As it happened, the flag had been shot down before, and it was flying
from a boat hook thrust up through a deck grating. The Union forces,
supposing the flag had been shot away again, continued firing, and to end
the matter Johnson went on the upper deck and waved a white flag.
Just then the Ossipee came slicing through the water at top speed to
ram the Tennessee. Captain Le Roy was out on deck, and recognized
Johnson instantly as an old friend. Sheering the Ossipee to one side, he
shouted cheerfully:
“Hello, Johnson, old fellow! How are you? This is the United States
steamer Ossipee. I’ll send a boat alongside for you. I’m Le Roy; don’t you

know me?”
The boat was sent. The American flag was hoisted on the Tennessee.
The battle was ended.
Farragut, in his report, gave special praise to the following men: Capts.
Percival Drayton and Thornton A. Jenkins; Commanders Mullany,
Nicholson, and Stevens; Lieut.-commanders Jouett and Perkins; Lieutenants
Watson and Yates; Acting-Ensigns Henry C. Nields, Bogart, and
Heginbotham; Ensign Henry Howard Brownell, Secretary McKinley, the
pilot Martin Freeman, Acting Volunteer Lieuts. William Hamilton and P.
Giraud. Of his crew he said: “I have never seen a crew come up like ours.
They are ahead of the old set in small arms, and fully equal to them at the
great guns. They arrived here a mere lot of boys and young men, and have
now fattened up and knocked the 9-inch guns about like 24-pounders, to the
astonishment of everybody. There was but one man who showed fear, and
he was allowed to resign. This was the most desperate battle I ever fought
since the days of the old Essex.”

The Confederate Ram Tennessee, Captured at
Mobile.
From a photograph.

A consideration of this fight shows that the Union forces had their
blood up, and that nothing but an impregnable ship could have withstood

this onslaught. The Tennessee was not that kind of a ship. The defects in the
shutters and the steering gear, and the inability to keep up the fires after the
smoke-stack fell, ruined her chances. These matters must be emphasized
because such defects are inevitable in ships built during actual war. The
Confederacy lacked ships just as the United States would lack them in case
a war with a first-class nation were suddenly precipitated upon us, and the
ships we should then build would very likely fail, as the Tennessee failed. It
is worth noting that not one shot penetrated the Tennessee’s casemate, but
one from the Manhattan bulged the wood backing of the armor into a mass
of splinters.
The Tennessee lost two killed and ten wounded. The Union forces lost
fifty-two killed by shots, 120 drowned in the Tecumseh, and 170 wounded.
The Chickasaw shelled Fort Gaines on the 6th, and it surrendered next
day. The fort on the other point was invested by the troops as well as the
ships, the shelling beginning on the 22d of August, and the next day it
surrendered. This effectually closed Mobile harbor as a port for blockade-
runners, but the city was not taken until the middle of the next spring. The
naval forces helped in bombarding the defences about the city, but the only
incidents of real importance to history of this kind were the various losses
from torpedoes. The bay was swept for torpedoes thoroughly, and yet the
Milwaukee ran on one on returning from a trip up to shell a fort near the
city, and was sunk. The Osage, in shifting her anchorage in a fresh breeze,
was sunk in like fashion. The wrecking steamer Rodolph, while going to
raise the Milwaukee, struck another and went down. Even after the
Confederate troops withdrew and 150 torpedoes had been removed from the
Tombigbee channel, two tugs and a launch struck torpedoes and were
destroyed. The danger from such obstructions had never been so well
shown as at Mobile.

CHAPTER XIV

TALES OF THE CONFEDERATE CRUISERS
THE MOST INSTRUCTIVE CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF THE
UNITED STATES—WORK ACCOMPLISHED BY AN
ENERGETIC SEAMAN IN A SHIP HIS BROTHER OFFICERS
CONDEMNED—BRILLIANT WORK OF THE FLORIDA
UNDER JOHN NEWLAND MAFFIT—BAD MARKSMANSHIP
AND A WORSE LOOKOUT OFF MOBILE—A CASE OF
VIOLATED NEUTRALITY—SEMMES AND THE ALABAMA—
THE BATTLE WITH THE KEARSARGE—WHAT KIND OF A
MAN IS IT THAT FIGHTS HIS SHIP TILL SHE SINKS UNDER
HIM?—AMERICAN COMMERCE DESTROYED—THE
BRITISH WITHOUT A RIVAL ON THE SEA, AT LAST, AND AT
VERY SMALL COST.

The most instructive chapter in the history of the United States is that
relating to the deeds of the cruisers in the Confederate navy; for, though few
in number, they proved to the world that the over-sea commerce of a nation
at war could be swept away entirely by means so inexpensive and of such
little power as to be absolutely insignificant. Consider the first Confederate
cruiser worth mention—the Sumter. She was a small coaster lying at New
Orleans. Her cabins for passengers were on deck, and her coal-carrying
capacity was equal to but five days at sea, and her hull was so frail that she
was condemned by a board of able Confederate officers who examined her.
But Raphael Semmes eagerly took hold of her. He cleared away the cabin
hamper on deck, overhauled her sails and rigging, mounted an eight-inch
pivot and some thirty-two-pounders from the Norfolk Navy Yard, and then
did one other thing to her worth especial mention: “The engine which was
partly above the water line was protected by a system of woodwork and
iron bars.” So says Semmes’ “Memoirs”; and that is important because he

said the captain of the Kearsarge, having used chains for armor, was
unchivalrous. He began work on April 22, 1861. On June 3d he put her in
commission under the name of Sumter. Thereafter some time was spent in
drilling the crew, and then he dropped down to the head of the Passes to
wait opportunity to get to sea. Very naturally he was astonished to find that
the Brooklyn, the only blockading steamer, was lying out at sea instead of
anchoring at the head of the Passes. He was also astonished that he was not
attacked by the Brooklyn during the nine days that he lay there, and the
reader is likely to share his feeling. And then came Sunday, June 30th.
While the men on the Sumter prepared themselves for the usual man-o’-war
inspection, a report that the Brooklyn was off on a chase was received.

Raphael Semmes.
From a photograph owned by Mr. C. B.
Hall.

Instantly preparations began for a run to sea. It was a hopeless attempt
in the eyes of one of her lieutenants, for he had been on the Brooklyn, and
thought her the faster ship; but Semmes was a daredevil who would “make
a spoon or spoil a horn.” As they approached the bar the Brooklyn was seen
coming, and she was but four miles away when the Sumter crossed the bar.
But she did not overhaul the Sumter. There was a fresh breeze, and both
ships made sail. The Sumter had large fore and aft sails, which enabled her,

when they were set, to lie closer to the wind than the Brooklyn could do,
and the Sumter fairly ran her out of sight.
As the pilot left the Sumter at the bar he said to Semmes: “Now,
Captain, you are all clear; give her h-ll and let her go,” and that is just what
Semmes did after “this bold and dashing adventure,” as Porter calls it.
Going to the south coast of Cuba, he fell in with his first prize, a ship called
the Golden Rocket, “from the Black Republican State of Maine.” A gun—
the first fired by any Confederate naval officer afloat—brought her to, with
the American flag flying. She was found to be in ballast, and was, of course,
burned. Her flag was marked with her name and the date of capture, and
stowed in a bag, where many others came to keep it company, for Semmes
saved all the flags he captured, and when the Alabama was at last shot from
under his feet he says: “I committed to the keeping of the guardian spirits of
that famous battle ground a great many bags full of ‘old flags,’ to be stowed
away in the caves of the sea as mementoes that a nation once lived whose
naval officers loved liberty more than the false memorial of it, and who
were capable, when it became ‘Hate’s polluted rag,’ of tearing it down.”
Within three days Semmes captured five American vessels, three of
which he determined to carry into a Cuban port. On the fourth day, being
then off Cienfuegos, he saw three more come out, and by hoisting false
colors he disguised his ship so that they all proceeded on their courses until
a marine league or more from the coast, when they were captured, and all
taken into port. Semmes hoped that he should be able to sell them as prizes,
but the Cuban authorities, after proper consideration, refused to allow this
to be done.
In explanation of the refusal it should be said that when England
declared in favor of granting the South belligerent rights, orders were issued
that “required every ship-of-war or privateer of either belligerent which
should enter British waters to depart within twenty-four hours afterwards,
except in case of stress of weather, or of her requiring provisions, or things
necessary for the subsistence of her crew, or repairs. In either of these cases
she was to put to sea as soon after the expiration of the twenty-four hours as
possible, taking in no supplies beyond what might be necessary for
immediate use, and no more coal than would carry her to the nearest port of
her own country, or some nearer destination. Nor, after coaling once in
British waters, was she to be suffered to coal again within three months

unless by special permission.” These orders were very annoying to the
North, because when made, the Confederates had not a single ship of any
kind afloat. It was simply excluding United States warships from what had
once been friendly ports. On the other hand, the determination that no
prizes should be sold in British ports was a hardship upon the South,
because it prevented the Southern cruisers, that were eventually sent afloat,
disposing of their prizes. Because of it the South did not sell a single prize,
for the other nations followed England’s lead in this matter. But, on the
whole, it must be said that while England’s attitude toward the cruisers of
the two belligerents was, by the letter of the law, that of strict neutrality, the
operation of this neutrality was a much greater hardship to the North than to
the South, considered as national governments. The crews of the
Confederate cruisers failed to get any prize money, but they could “sink,
burn, and destroy ad lib.” They were about as great a menace to American
commerce as if they had been getting prize money. There is now no
disputing the oft-repeated assertion that England managed to maintain a
neutrality that should help the South and hurt the North as much as was
possible without causing open war with the United States.
Having failed to get his prizes sold in Cuba, because Spain had
followed England in refusing to allow such sales in her ports, Semmes took
another prize, the Abby Bradford, to Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, hoping to
find a market there. He says of this attempt:
“All these small South American towns are, more or less, dependent
upon American trade. The New England States and New York supply them
with their domestic cottons, flour, bacon, and notions; sell them all their
worthless old muskets, and damaged ammunition, and now and then,
smuggle out a small craft to them, for naval purposes. The American
Consul, who is also a merchant, represents not only those ‘grand moral
ideas,’ that characterize our Northern people, but Sand’s sarsaparilla, and
Smith’s wooden clocks. He is, par excellence, the big dog of the village.
The big dog was present on the present occasion, looking portentous and
savage, and when he ope’d his mouth, all the little dogs were silent. Of
course, the poor Sumter, anchored away off in the bay, could have no
chance before so august an assemblage.”
The Abby Bradford was ordered to New Orleans, but the Powhatan,
Capt. D. D. Porter, captured her.

The Sumter was at Puerto Cabello on July 26th. She had taken nine
prizes cruising in the island region of the Caribbean Sea. To follow her in
all the details of her voyage would be monotonous. The reader can find the
story in full, even to the number of ladies who showered their favors upon
the Confederate captain, for Semmes was so proud of all of his conquests as
to omit none. She was usually under sail, but used coal in chasing, and was
able to renew her supply at Trinidad as well as other ports.
Meantime Semmes had been carrying a considerable number of
merchant seamen to abide the fate of the crew of the Savannah (privateer)
who were held for trial in New York on a charge of piracy. Semmes
informed these merchant seamen that he should hang them if the
Savannah’s crew were executed, and he says himself he should have done
so, but does not tell by what process of reasoning he concluded it would be
right to retaliate on men not engaged in warring against the Confederacy.
From Trinidad the Sumter went down the Brazil coast to Maranham,
and thence to a point near the equator, where homeward-bound American
ships from South America crossed, and then back to the Caribbean Sea
islands, where, eventually, at St. Pierre, she was blockaded by the Iroquois.
The Iroquois’ captain made a mistake. He arranged with an American
shipmaster in the harbor to hoist signals, in case the Sumter sailed at night,
to tell what course she was steering from the open roadstead. The signals
were duly hoisted as Semmes started away south, but Semmes saw and
understood them, and after running a mile or two with the Iroquois making
all steam to head him off, he turned around and ran away to the north and
escaped.
The Sumter now went to Spain, stopping at Cadiz, where she was not
cordially received, and from there went to Gibraltar, where, as Semmes
says, “the army and navy of Great Britain were with us almost to a man,”
while “the Yankee officers of the several Federal ships of war, which by this
time had arrived, were kept at arm’s length. No other than the customary
official courtesies were extended to them. We certainly did not meet any of
them at the club.”
However, if the Sumter’s officers had a good time ashore, they were
unable to have one afloat, for the “several Federal ships” that had arrived

effectually blockaded her. The work she did and the fate of the ship are thus
summed up by Semmes:
“She cruised six months, leaving out the time during which she was
blockaded in Gibraltar. She captured eighteen ships, as follows: the Golden
Rocket, Cuba, Machias, Ben. Dunning, Albert Adams, Naiad, Louisa
Kilham, West Wind, Abby Bradford, Joseph Maxwell, Joseph Parke, D.
Trowbridge, Montmorency, Arcade, Vigilant, Eben Dodge, Neapolitan, and
Investigator. It is impossible to estimate the damage done to the enemy’s
commerce. The property actually destroyed formed a very small proportion
of it. The fact alone of the Sumter being upon the seas, during these six
months, gave such an alarm to neutral and belligerent shippers, that the
enemy’s carrying-trade began to be paralyzed, and already his ships were
being laid up, or sold under neutral flags—some of these sales being bona
fide, and others fraudulent. In addition to this, the enemy kept five or six of
his best ships of war constantly in pursuit of her, which necessarily
weakened his blockade, for which, at this time, he was much pressed for
ships. The expense to my Government of running the ship was next to
nothing, being only $28,000, or about the price of one of the least valuable
of her prizes. The Sumter was sold in the course of a month or two after
being laid up, and being put under the English flag as a merchant-ship,
made one voyage to the coast of the Confederate States, as a blockade-
runner, entering the port of Charleston. Her new owner changed her name
to that of Gibraltar. She was lost afterward in the North Sea.”
The next cruiser to be considered was named the Florida. She was built
at Liverpool under the name of Oreto. The American officials learned,
while she was building, that she was of the same model and scantling as the
best British gunboats of that day. She had ports for four guns. On February
18, 1862, complaint was made to the British government by the American
representative charging that she was building for use as a Confederate
cruiser, whereat “orders were given that she be vigilantly watched.” On
March 3d she was registered in the name of a member of a Sicilian firm,
then in Liverpool, and cleared for “Palermo, the Mediterranean and
Jamaica” in ballast. She sailed on March 22d with a crew of fifty men, but
she went directly to Nassau, in the Bahamas. When there she appeared as a
merchant ship consigned by Fraser, Trenholm & Co., of Liverpool,
notorious as Confederate agents, to their Nassau house. Here, on complaint

of the United States consul, she was libelled, and there was a farce of a trial
in the Nassau court. Of course she was released. It was proved that she had
taken on munitions of war, but these had been sent ashore again, and to the
mind of the court she was a genuine British merchantman. Meantime her
crew asked the British authorities to discharge them, alleging as a reason for
the request that they had been deceived when they shipped in her. She had
been represented as a merchantman, they said, but it was plain she was a
man-o’-war, and they did not want to fight. On this plea they were at once
discharged.
On August 2d she cleared for Havana, shipped twenty-two men of the
blockade-running class, went to a desolate island called Green Key, and met
a vessel that had brought out a first-class English armament of two seven-
inch rifles and six six-inch guns. Her new commander was John Newland
Maffitt, formerly of the American navy, and one who, because of his good
qualities, did not lose his friends there when he forsook the flag. Maffitt
was so pressed for men that he worked as a common sailor himself to
transfer the arms. In fact, every man on board worked so hard that when
one man came down with yellow fever the others took it. The ship reached
Cardenas, in spite of losses from the fever. While still ill with the fever,
Maffitt was compelled by the authorities to go to Havana.
Finding he should never get a crew there, he decided on the desperate
expedient of running over to Mobile and braving the blockade, although he
had barely enough men to man the stoke-hole.
The blockaders were sighted on September 4, 1862, and Maffitt, with
just one man on deck to steer, hoisted the British flag, and headed directly
for the blockaders.
At that time Commander George H. Preble was in charge of the station,
and he had the Oneida and Winona under him. Seeing a boat exactly like a
British gunboat, and under British colors, and knowing that British gun-
boats were frequently sent alongshore to see whether the ports were really
blockaded, Preble was deceived. He called his men to quarters and
approached the stranger, but did not seem to have been suspicious when he
saw that she was running at full speed and had no men on deck. He hailed
her when near enough, and got no reply. Then he fired, in rather slow

succession, three shots across her bow. As she still kept on he opened on her
with a broadside, and the Winona joined in.
The Florida was but 300 yards away, and yet so wretched was the
American marksmanship, that the broadsides cut the rigging and tore away
the upper part of her bulwarks. One shell did, indeed, pass through and
through the Florida near the water-line, to explode beyond her, but it did
her no material damage. She passed in clear. The remarks which all the
writers on the subject make about the narrow margin of luck in the time
fuse of that one shell are not adapted to increase one’s respect for the ability
of the gunners. It is a fact, as already noted, that the gunners of the war of
1861 were not to be compared in skill with those of 1812. And this is a
subject that cannot be impressed deeply enough on the minds of American
readers. For we may shout “Tirez! Tirez toujour!” as the Frenchman did, till
we are blind, and still suffer defeat unless we can hit the target when we
fire.
As between John N. Maffitt, sitting alone on deck because unable to
stand—alone save for the man at the wheel—while his ship made that
desperate dash for home, and the Union forces wasting their ammunition on
the salt-sea air, one cannot hesitate long in bestowing his sympathy even if
Maffitt was an enemy of the flag. It was a most heroic deed on one side and
a sorry exhibit of incompetence on the other. On the other hand, when
Preble was dismissed the punishment was unjust, for he had done his duty
as he saw it. He had given his men all the target practice that the regulations
provided. The fault was not in the man, but in the naval regulations that are
careful to provide that every man blacks his shoes daily and limit the target
practice of the gunners to, say, ten shots a year.
When Maffitt had recruited his health and a good crew, he found the
blockading squadron increased, among other ships, by the Cuyler, Capt.
Francis Winslow, that, because of her speed, was sent there especially to
take him should he run out. But little that worried Maffitt. At 2 o’clock on
the morning of January 16, 1863, he was ready, and out he went.

The Florida Running the Blockade at Mobile.
After a painting by R. S. Floyd.

The lookout on the Cuyler saw him coming when he was a long way
from the bar, and notified the officer of the deck. Now, there was a
regulation on the Cuyler which forbade the officer of the deck slipping the
cable until Captain Winslow was on deck to order it done. By this
regulation just a half hour’s time was lost. So the Florida was away, passing
between the Susquehanna and the Cuyler at a distance of 300 yards while
the Cuyler was still at anchor. The Cuyler did get under way at last, and
chased the Florida until the next night, when the Florida changed her
course and escaped.
The Oneida’s crew saw the signal announcing the coming of the
Florida, and beat to quarters, but remained at anchor, although she was one
of the swifter vessels present. And she remained at anchor until 3.50
o’clock, when, to quote her log, “having seen no vessel run out, beat the
retreat.” Porter calls this affair “the greatest example of blundering
committed throughout the war.” Certainly the captains of the Cuyler and the
Oneida were not fit for their commands.
Maffitt went to Nassau, where the British population went delirious
with joy over his success, and sold him coal to last three months, instead of
enough to last to the nearest Confederate port, as the government orders had
provided. Then Maffitt went cruising between New York and Brazil. In the

course of five months he took seventeen prizes, and then went to Brest,
France, where the ship was thoroughly overhauled.
Meantime Maffitt fitted one of his prizes, the Clarence, with light guns,
and sent her cruising under Lieut. Charles W. Read. Read was as brave and
dashing as Maffitt. Between the 6th and 10th of May, 1863, he took five
prizes, shifting his flag to the fifth, the Tacony, and burning the Clarence.
Then he took ten prizes, including the Archer, to which he made another
shift. With the Archer he came to off Portland, Maine, and with small boats
rowed in and cut out the revenue cutter Caleb Cushing. The Archer was a
sailing ship. Read burned the Cushing, but steamers overhauled him next
day and he was captured.
At Brest, Maffitt was relieved by Capt. Charles M. Morris, who took
the Florida to Bahia, where Capt. Napoleon Collins, in the Wachusett,
found her. Morris thought he was safe, and with half his crew went ashore.
Collins rammed the Florida, fired a few shots into her, and took her to the
United States. That carrying her home was a very grave mistake will soon
appear; for a more open violation of a neutral port was never recorded, and
if a naval officer feels justified in such an act he should not try to get prize
money out of it, but make an end of his capture as soon as possible.

“A Prize Disposed and one Proposed.”
(The Florida in chase, having burnt the Star of Peace.)
After a painting by R. S. Floyd.

In considering violations of neutral ports, one may say that in practice
the neutral port of a weak power has always been violated whenever there
was any occasion for it. Moreover, since respect for a neutral port is a
matter of courtesy only, we may be sure that whenever wars shall occur in
future, weak neutral ports will be violated as they have been in the past. It is
a question of policy in each case, and the captain of the aggressive ship
must decide for himself whether the circumstances warrant the insult to the
weak power.
As to this particular case, it is the sentiment of the people of the United
States, if the writer knows that sentiment, that Captain Collins was entirely
justified in capturing the Florida, especially as the Brazil authorities had
permitted Semmes, of the Alabama, to use Fernando de Noronha as
headquarters, so to speak, while cruising against American commerce.
Indeed, Semmes took an American ship, the Louisa Hatch, into the port at
that island, coaled his ship from her, and then towed her outside and burned
her. While lying there, too, he saw two American vessels in the offing, went

out and burned them, and came back again within a few hours to hobnob
with the Governor. The mouth of Brazil was stopped. If Collins had sunk
the Florida in port or burned her outside, it would have been proper for the
United States government to set off the Alabama’s case against that of the
Wachusett, and leave it to arbitration to decide which government should
pay damages. But the most interesting feature of this case is found in the
attitude of the British writers on the subject. When one recalls how the
Essex was captured at Valparaiso after Porter’s too generous treatment of
Hillyar, and how the Armstrong was attacked in the Azores, and how the
Levant was taken at Porto Praya, one might suppose that the British would
be rather lenient with their cousins across the sea, especially as blood is
thicker than water; but we find in a work printed in 1896, called “Ironclads
in Action,” by H. W. Wilson, a work that deals with ironclads as late as
1895, the capture of the Florida is denounced (page 151, vol. 1) as
“disgraceful.” The writer really goes out of his way to do this, for neither
the Wachusett nor the Florida was an ironclad in any sense. Moreover, he
asserts that “the Florida’s officers were very badly treated,” which is simply
a false statement.
Nevertheless, there was one disgraceful feature of the Florida affair.
When Brazil demanded the restoration of the ship with her crew on board in
the harbor of Bahia, the United States agreed to give her up, and Collins,
who had captured her, was ordered to take her back as a punishment for his
violation of international law. But the Florida never left the waters of the
United States as a warship. She was lying at Hampton Roads when the
order was issued—lying “just at the spot where the Cumberland was sunk
in very deep water. An engineer was placed on board in charge with two
men to assist him in looking after the water cocks; but, strangely enough,
although the Florida was to all appearances water tight when she reached
Newport News, she sank that night at 2 o’clock in ten fathoms.” “When the
sinking of the vessel was reported to Admiral Porter (he was there fitting for
the Fort Fisher expedition) he merely said ‘Better so’; while the Secretary
of State and Secretary of the Navy never asked any questions.”
Those quotations are from Admiral Porter’s “Naval History of the Civil
War,” and they are not unlikely to give the reader a choking sensation, for
they show that the sinking of the Florida was the work of a sneak—that the
“two men,” when “looking after the water cocks,” opened them under

orders. The humiliating story is inserted here because the shame of it should
serve to prevent the necessity of ever writing another of the kind.
The story of the Alabama is longer but not more interesting than that of
the Florida. She was built by the Lairds and was known as No. 290,
because she was the 290th ship the firm had built. The British government
had full information that she was building for a Confederate cruiser under
the supervision of Commander James D. Bullock of the Confederate navy,
and, later, that Bullock was shipping men (British subjects) for her,
promising petty offices to this and that capable man. The reader who wants
to go into the details of this matter will find plenty of them in an
Englishman’s work on the “Neutrality of Great Britain during the American
Civil War,” by Mountague Bernard, of Oxford University. It furnishes,
curiously enough, abundant proof that England escaped with a light penalty
when in court in the matter of the “Alabama claims.”
The Alabama was a perfect cruiser for her day—long, lean, and shoal
of draft. She was 230 feet long, only thirty-two wide, and she drew but
fifteen feet of water. She had the rig of a barkentine, with long lower masts
to give her plenty of fore and aft sail so that she could lie closer to the wind
than any ordinary square-rigged ship. She had also a steam power able to
drive her ten knots an hour, and her screw propeller could be detached and
hoisted out of water whenever it was desirable to work with sails only. She
carried eight guns, of which one was a hundred-pounder Blakely rifle,
mounted on a pivot forward; one an eight-inch smooth-bore on a pivot aft,
and six were thirty-twos in broadside.
Semmes, for his activity in the Sumter, was ordered to the new cruiser.
He gathered his officers and crew at Liverpool, and shipping the outfit of all
kinds in the merchant ship Bahama, he, with all hands, took passage in her.
The cruiser, that was still known only as No. 290, was allowed to go on a
trial trip. Although the ship was plainly a cruiser, and although men had
testified under oath that they had shipped in her as a Confederate cruiser,
the law officer of the customs authority decided that the evidence was
insufficient, and she did not return from that trial trip. She met the Bahama
at Terceira, a Portuguese island, and there, a marine league from land, on
Sunday, August 24, 1862, No. 290 became the Alabama, and Semmes her
captain, in the usual form. She was without any doubt a Confederate man-
of-war. The people who still persist in calling her a pirate craft are probably

unaware that if she had really been a pirate the United States would never
have presented any claims against Great Britain for the damages she did to
American commerce. And as for Semmes, he is entitled, in his official
capacity as her captain, to as courteous treatment at the hands of historians
as any captains that ever went afloat. Of his personal character it need only
be said that he has written it into his “Memoirs.”
To his “Memoirs,” also, the reader may be referred for details of the
burning of the hosts of American merchantmen that he captured. From
Terceira the Alabama made a cruise against the whalers off the Azores, and
thence went to Martinique, where the American warship San Jacinto found
her. But Semmes escaped on the night of October 20, 1862. His first prize
of consequence after this adventure was the Ariel of the Panama line. She
was expected to bring a million or so in gold, but in this Semmes was
disappointed.
From the place where the Ariel was captured Semmes went to
Galveston to intercept the transports of the Banks expedition, of which he
had read in captured papers. As he approached Galveston, on the afternoon
of January 11, 1863, the Hatteras, a merchant steamer fitted with guns, was
sent off to inspect him. Semmes pretended to run, and so drew the Hatteras
away from the other blockaders, and then at 7 p.m. (it was dark of course)
lay to for her. When the Hatteras ranged up and hailed, Semmes said his
ship was “Her Britannic Majesty’s ship Vixen.” Capt. H. C. Blake, of the
Hatteras, said he would send a boat, but when the boat had been lowered
Semmes shouted, “We are the Confederate steamer Alabama,” and fired a
broadside. Semmes was not at any time more than 100 yards away, and the
Hatteras, a paddle-wheel steamer, was soon riddled. Blake tried to get
alongside the Alabama to board, but could not do it, of course, and the
Hatteras was soon rapidly sinking. A lee gun was fired and help called for.
The living were all taken off by the Alabama’s crew, save the boat’s crew
that had started to board the Alabama.

Raphael Semmes and his Alabama
Officers.
From a photograph owned by C. B. Hall.

The Hatteras carried two short thirty-twos and two small rifles—a
twenty-pounder and a thirty-pounder—that she was able to bring to bear.
The prisoners were landed at Jamaica.
From this point Semmes went to the coast of Brazil, and then off to the
point near the equator where homeward-bound American Indiamen cross
the line. It was on the Brazil coast, in April, 1863, that he gave the
Americans good excuse, by his violations of neutral waters, for the taking
of the Florida. In July he went to the Cape of Good Hope, and at Cape
Town was even more heartily welcomed than he had been at Gibraltar when
in the Sumter. Here is the way he describes his reception:
“During my entire stay, my table was loaded with flowers, and the most
luscious grapes, and other fruits, sent off to me every morning, by the ladies
of the Cape, sometimes with, and sometimes without, a name. Something
has been said before about the capacity of the heart of a sailor. My own was
carried by storm on the present occasion. I simply surrendered at discretion,
and whilst Kell was explaining the virtues of his guns to his male visitors,
and answering the many questions that were put to him about our cruisers
and captures, I found it as much as I could do, to write autographs, and

answer the pretty little perfumed billets that came off to me. Dear ladies of
the Cape of Good Hope!”
Perhaps while we are about it, it may be worth while to make one more
quotation to show the full extent of the gallantry of which Semmes makes
boast in every chapter. It will be found on page 620 of the “Memoirs,”
where he describes the Brazilian people, but no part of the original is
italicized:
“The effete Portuguese race has been ingrafted upon a stupid, stolid,
Indian stock, in that country. The freed negro is, besides, the equal of the
white man, and as there seems to be no repugnance, on the part of the white
race—so called—to mix with the black race, and with the Indian,
amalgamation will go on in that country, until a mongrel set of curs will
cover the whole land. This might be a suitable field enough for the New
England school-ma’am, and carpet-bagger, but no Southern gentleman
should think of mixing his blood or casting his lot with such a race of
people.”
At Cape Town Semmes was troubled a little by “the stereotyped
American consul; half diplomat, half demagogue.” The American consuls
were in chase wherever he entered a port, but the truth is that they were
rarely able to do more than accumulate facts that were eventually handed in
along with the bill for damages when the Alabama claims got into court in
1871.
Before reaching Cape Town a prize was turned into a cruiser, and she
was of some little consequence in the Cape waters, but did nothing as
compared with what the dashing Read accomplished on the American coast.
From the Cape of Good Hope Semmes went to the East Indies, where
he found a harvest of prizes, came back to the Cape, and eventually went to
Europe; and late at night, on the 10th of June, 1864, the Alabama reached
Cherbourg, France, which was her last port, for there the Kearsarge, Capt.
John A. Winslow, caught her.

John A. Winslow.
From a photograph.

It is to the credit of Captain Semmes that he had no wish to escape the
Federal ship, though he says that had he known that the Kearsarge had been
armored by placing iron cables on her sides opposite her machinery he
should not have done so. Ship for ship and crew for crew, the Alabama was
inferior to the Kearsarge by a greater extent than has usually been told in
history. In size they were practically the same—1,031 tons for the
Kearsarge and 1,016 for the Alabama, but the Kearsarge was the swifter
ship of the two. The Alabama carried eight guns, and she fired 328 pounds
of metal at a broadside. The Kearsarge carried seven guns, and fired 366
pounds at a broadside; but these figures do not fully tell the superiority of
the guns of the Kearsarge, for her two pivots were eleven-inch Dahlgrens, a
style of gun that, at the range of this battle, and in a fight between
unarmored ships, were far superior to the 100-pounder Blakely and the
eight-inch (sixty-four-pounder) smooth-bore on the Alabama. And, then, in
the crews the Kearsarge carried 163 men, chiefly Americans, to the
Alabama’s 149, almost exclusively Europeans. The officers of the Alabama
were about the only ones who had any sentiment in the fight; the men
before the mast were at best filibusters—as ragged a crew (mentally) as that
of the Bonhomme Richard. That they should have made any fight at all was
due to the training received from men who had been reared under the old

flag. Another great difference was in the powder, for that on the Alabama
was very old and bad.
The Alabama remained in Cherbourg until Sunday, June 19, 1864,
when soon after 9 o’clock Semmes headed her out of the harbor. The
French ironclad Couronne went along to see that the fight took place three
sea miles from shore, and a steam yacht, the Deerhound, followed to give
her owner and his family a chance to see a sea battle. The shores were soon
covered with equally eager if less fortunate spectators, trains being run from
Paris to bring people to the fight. And the sympathy of nearly all the
spectators was with the Confederate ship.
Captain Winslow steamed off shore until seven miles from land, and
then at 10.50 o’clock turned and drove the Kearsarge straight at the
Confederate cruiser. At 10.57, when the ships were yet 1,800 yards apart,
the Alabama yawed enough to open fire with a broadside. It was aimed
rather worse, perhaps, than that which the Oneida fired into the Florida off
Mobile, for the shot flew over the Kearsarge. Two more broadsides were
fired from the Alabama as the Kearsarge approached head on, but when the
Kearsarge, at a range of 900 yards, was seen to be heading to run across the
Alabama’s stern, the Alabama started off in a way that set the two ships
running “in a circle against the sun”—starboard side to starboard side,
gradually approaching nearer and nearer, while the current swept them
slowly down the coast.

Engagement between the U. S. S. Kearsarge and the Alabama off
Cherbourg, on Sunday, June 19, 1864.
From a French lithograph.

As this circling was started the Kearsarge opened fire. Word was sent
to every gunner to “make every shot count,” and they obeyed. The gunnery
of the Kearsarge was the best shown during the Civil War. The Alabama
fired rapidly—she hurled 370 shot in sixty-five minutes, of which only
twenty-eight struck the Kearsarge. Of these, two were turned by the chain
armor, but had they penetrated they would have had no serious effect. One
shell penetrated the stern post, but failed to explode. Had it exploded, the
Kearsarge would have had difficulty in steering—perhaps she would have
been made helpless; but the battle was then so far done that the Alabama
would, at best, have been able to escape.
The Kearsarge fired only 173 shot, but so many of these struck home
that before the end of an hour the Alabama was sinking.

Hoisting trysail and jib, Semmes headed for the shore, hoping to escape
with the aid of his sails, but it was too late. The Kearsarge ran across her
bow to deliver a raking broadside, and then the Alabama hauled down her
flag. A little later a white flag was displayed, and then it was seen that the
Alabama was rapidly settling in the water. A boat put off from her to ask for
assistance. The Kearsarge sent two boats to rescue the crew, and the steam
yacht Deerhound came up to help also. Semmes seeing at last that she must
sink, threw his sword into the sea and leaped overboard, and while he swam
for life the Alabama’s stern sank under the sea, the bow was lifted high out
of water, and down she went, with her bowsprit disappearing last of all.
There was some diplomatic trouble over the escape of a lot of the
Alabama’s crew, including Semmes, on the Deerhound. The reader will,
perhaps, be able to determine the rights of the Deerhound in this case by
putting himself mentally in her owner’s place. Suppose Ireland should
secede from Great Britain and an Irish cruiser should be sunk in the
presence of a Yankee yacht. Would the Yankee yacht-owner deliver up the
Irishmen’s crew to the triumphant British warship? Certainly, if the Yankee
yacht-owner was a politician, he would not do so.

The Kearsarge Sinking the Alabama.
From an engraving.

And, then, there were the virulent attacks on Semmes for swimming to
the Deerhound instead of swimming to the Kearsarge. What would the
reader have done? What would that other “pirate,” John Paul Jones, have
done in a case like that?
It is now thirty-seven years since the Alabama sank in the green waves
off Cherbourg. Those of us who were old enough to read the newspaper
extras that were issued when the account of it was telegraphed home are old
enough to know better than to call Semmes a pirate.

Action between the Kearsarge and the Alabama.
(Rescue of the crew of the Alabama by the Deerhound.)
From an engraving of the painting by Chappel.

Semmes having escaped to England, was counted a hero there, and a
fine sword was given to him to replace the one he threw into the sea. Let the
prejudiced shipowner who lost money through the work of this sea rover
candidly ask himself what kind of a sea captain it is who, knowing his force
is inferior, sails boldly out to meet a watchful enemy, and then fights till his
ship is shot from under his feet.
Raphael Semmes earned the right off Cherbourg to have his name
inscribed in the list of the sea heroes of America.
The total number of prizes made by the Alabama was sixty-nine, of
which fifty-three were destroyed, two had their cargoes only destroyed, and
eleven were bonded. The Florida took thirty-seven, of which twenty-eight
were destroyed. While the number taken was but a small percentage of the
American merchant fleet, the effect of the captures was to raise insurance
rates, frighten shippers as well as shipowners, and so prevent the

employment of the ships at sea. The carrying trade utterly abandoned
American ships.

Whitworth Rifle Captured from the
Shenandoah.
There were a few other Confederate cruisers, the Shenandoah being the
most important, although she did nothing but destroy the American whaling
and sealing fleet on the northwest coast. Her total number of captures was
thirty-six. What the cruisers did altogether might be told in a list of the
American ships destroyed, but it is better to express the facts by saying that
they literally swept the American flag from the sea. England was obliged to
pay $15,000,000 for the aid she gave the Confederates in this work. As has
been said, “she got off cheap.” What she failed to do when she sent
shiploads of war material to help the Barbary pirates who were attacking
American commerce, she accomplished entirely when she allowed the
Confederate warships to fit out in her ports. She destroyed the only
competitor on the high seas of whom she had any fear. Does any one doubt
that she did it deliberately? From 1864 until this day in 1897 the maritime
supremacy of Great Britain has been undisputed. She paid $15,000,000 in
damages, and every year has collected in profits on the American carrying
trade which she then secured—who shall say how many times $15,000,000
her profits on the American carrying trade are? Perhaps if the reader will
learn the answer to this question, he may make up his mind what the
American people ought to do about it.

Florida.
Shenandoah.
Alabama.

Three Famous Confederate Cruisers.
From a painting by M. J. Burns.

CHAPTER XV

THE ALBEMARLE AND CUSHING
A FORMIDABLE WARSHIP WAS BUILT UNDER REMARKABLE
CONDITIONS TO ENABLE THE CONFEDERATES TO
REGAIN CONTROL OF THE INLAND WATERS OF NORTH
CAROLINA—VERY SUCCESSFUL AT FIRST, BUT SHE WAS
LAID UP TO AWAIT THE BUILDING OF ANOTHER ONE,
AND THEN CAME CUSHING WITH HIS LITTLE TORPEDO
BOAT, AND THE CONFEDERATE HOPES WERE
DESTROYED WITH THEIR SHIP.

The loss of the control of the North Carolina sounds, as already told,
proved more damaging to the Confederate forces than they realized at first,
but they very soon began making efforts to establish themselves there once
more, and the oftener they were defeated in their hopes the more
determined they became. To tell the complete story of the skirmishes that
took place between the Dismal Swamp and Newbern would be to give a
hundred instances of the courage, enterprise, and persistence of the men on
both sides. There was the case of John Taylor Wood, who, with a party of
Confederates, boarded and destroyed the Union gunboat Underwriter under
the eyes of the Union forces afloat and ashore. As another instance, there is
also the story of Cushing’s trip up the New River Inlet with the Ellis, where
he got into the wrong channel and had to destroy her, and then row in an
open boat for a mile and a half under fire of the Confederates to escape.
They were all brilliant, but none of them was decisive in any way.
Eventually it became apparent that no dashing exploit could restore
Confederate supremacy there, and their hope was dying, when two flatboat-
builders living at Edward’s Ferry, on the Roanoke River, offered to build an
ironclad, somewhat on the plan of the Merrimac, that should be able to
navigate the shoal waters of the Sound and yet be invulnerable to the shot

of the Union gunboats. Because the water at Hatteras Inlet was too shoal for
any of the Union ironclads to pass, it was reasonable to suppose a well-built
craft could clear the Union wooden gunboats from the waters of North
Carolina.
The chief contractor for the boat that was, in accordance with these
ideas, laid down at Edward’s Ferry, was Mr. Gilbert Elliott. Naval
Constructor John L. Porter, who had rebuilt the Merrimac, was sent to work
out the plans, and Commander J. W. Cooke was appointed to gather the
outfit and supervise the construction.
Work began on her in January, 1863. Her keels (she was flat-bottomed)
were laid in a cornfield. A common country blacksmith shop was the only
“machine shop.” Her engines were put together from the scrap heaps of the
iron works at Richmond and Wilmington. The timbers were from good pine
logs, and her armor was like that of the Merrimac, but the ship, as a whole,
excited the amusement even of many of the Confederates until she was
afloat.
At this time the gunboats Miami, Capt. C. W. Flusser, and the
Southfield, Captain French, were stationed at the west end of Albemarle
Sound, rather in the mouth of Roanoke River, near Plymouth. Flusser, as
early as June 8, 1863, sent to Rear-admiral S. P. Lee, then commanding the
station, a very accurate description of the new ironclad. An expedition was
sent up the river to destroy her on the ways, but it could not pass—at least it
did not pass—the Confederate forts. Then an appeal was made to Gen. John
G. Foster, commanding the Federal troops, to send a cavalry regiment to
burn the ship, but “General Foster expressed his unconcern about the rebel
ram.” Sorrowful to relate, the vigilant Flusser, and not the self-satisfied
Foster, suffered the penalty of this unconcern.
The Albemarle was “122 feet over all, had forty-five feet beam and
drew eight feet of water. The casemate, built of massive pine timbers,
covered with four-inch planking, was sixty feet long, and was covered with
two layers of two-inch iron. The vessel was propelled by twin screws,
operated by engines of 200 horse power each. She was armed with an
Armstrong 100-pounder in the bow and one in the stern, while the casemate
was so pierced that they could be used as broadside or quarter guns.”

She was not ready for action, however, until April, 1864. On the 17th of
that month the Confederate General Hoke advanced on Plymouth. Captain
Cooke, of the Albemarle, had promised to coöperate in order to deprive the
Union soldiers of the help of the Union gun-boats. The Albemarle was not
quite ready, but she left her moorings with the mechanics still at work
screwing on her armor plates. While the foreman shouted orders to the
mechanics, naval officers alongside were drilling the crew at great guns;
and John N. Maffitt tells an amusing story of how the orders were mingled:
“Drive in spike No. 10! Serve vent and sponge! On nut below and screw
up! Load with cartridge!” And the fact that all this was done is especially
interesting when we remember that the men equal to such an occasion were
the kind to win, and they did win in their first onslaught.
The Union forces had driven piles to keep her up the river, but, aided
by high water, the Albemarle passed them with no delay whatever, and just
before midnight, on April 19th, the Union gunboats found her upon them.
The Miami and the Southfield had been yoked together with long booms
and chains in such fashion that the Albemarle was expected to strike in
between them and there get caught at such short range that their nine-inch
Dahlgren projectiles would easily penetrate her armor. But instead of going
between them, the Albemarle crossed the Miami’s bow and rammed and
sunk the Southfield. Flusser bravely worked his guns, but one shell that he
himself fired against the Albemarle’s side broke into pieces, which,
rebounding back, killed him where he stood. Then the Miami fled and
Plymouth surrendered.
On May 5th the Albemarle had another fight with a squadron gathered
to disable her. She was rammed by the Sassacus. The blow hurt the
Sassacus more than the ironclad, and a few shot from the Albemarle’s guns
sent the Union ship adrift and almost unmanageable. She would have been
entirely so but for a heroic engineer who kept her engine going in spite of
escaping steam in the engine-room. The Whitehead, the Mattabesett, and
the Wyalusing also took part, firing as rapidly as possible. The action is
described in one history as a “desperate battle.” The casualties on the Union
side in this desperate affair amounted to four killed, twelve wounded by
projectiles, and fourteen scalded by steam from a cut pipe. The hero of the
battle was Engineer J. M. Hobby, who stood at his post on the Sassacus in

spite of the scalding steam when every other man fled, and so saved the
ship.

William B. Cushing.
From a photograph.

Thereafter the Albemarle was tied up at the Plymouth wharf to await
the completion of another ship like her that was building on Tar River, and
this needless delay was fatal, for Lieut. William B. Cushing asked for, and
obtained, the task of destroying her, and he was of the kind that succeed.
Cushing, after serving as a cadet nearly four years at the Naval
Academy, resigned on March 21, 1861—just why has never been told. In
May he entered the navy once more. He was made a master’s mate, and by
July, 1862, had obtained a lieutenant’s commission through repeated “acts
of successful daring.” He was with Rowan at Elizabeth City, and obtained
command of the Ellis, captured there. His courage, combined with good
judgment, continued to keep him in the eyes of his superior officers. He was
constantly looking for something to do, and when he offered to destroy the
Albemarle he was allowed to try.

At about this time Engineer John L. Lay, U. S. N., had devised a
torpedo boat that consisted of a light steam launch rigged to carry a torpedo
at the end of a long spar—a torpedo that might be placed against a ship’s
side and fired by means of a string that led from the trigger of the torpedo to
the launch’s bow. It would be considered a crude affair now, for the man
operating the torpedo had to stand erect in the bow of the launch, wholly
unprotected even from musketry. Two of these little boats were built in New
York, and Cushing carried one of them through inland waters to Albemarle
Sound, Norfolk being then in Federal hands. Admiral Ammen, in his
history, complains that “the newspapers had gratuitously furnished the
enemy with information” about all the movements of Cushing, “as well as
the avowed object of destroying the Albemarle.” The writer hereof was not
a reporter in those days, but he imagines that some naval officer told the
reporters where Cushing was going before the destination was announced in
any newspaper; though the matter is important only as a warning to naval
officers not to tell vital secrets to reporters. As to the effect of this publicity,
the Confederates put double lines of pickets along the river below
Plymouth, stationed 1,000 soldiers about the wharf, built a boom of cypress
logs around the Albemarle at such a distance that no torpedo spar could
reach over it to the hull, and kept the sentries on board, pacing to and fro at
night, constantly on the lookout, while an outpost was established in the
river on the wreck of the sunken Southfield, one mile down-stream.
It was in the month of October, 1864, that Cushing brought his boat to
the waters below Plymouth, and on the night of the 26th the gunboat Otsego
towed the launch to the mouth of the river, where Cushing cast off, and with
a ship’s cutter loaded with armed men in tow of his launch, he started up the
river. The cutter’s men were to land at the outpost, on the old wreck, if
necessary, and care for the Confederates there, while the steam launch was
to be driven at full speed to the Albemarle, a mile away. But luck was
against the expedition. The launch grounded, and before she could be gotten
afloat day was at hand, and Cushing returned to the Otsego.
And then came the night of the 27th. There were thirteen officers and
men in the launch with Cushing, besides the cutter load in tow. It was a dark
night, and with no light and with his machinery working in perfect silence,
Cushing steamed up the river. Cushing himself stood in the bow, steering-
wheel in hand, with a loaded howitzer on one side ready for firing, and with

the gear for working the torpedo on the other. There were two schooners
beside the old wreck; but the sentinels failed to see Cushing, and wholly
unobserved, he arrived opposite the well-guarded ironclad, and then for the
first time learned that the boom was so far out from the ship that the torpedo
could not reach her.
For a moment Cushing thought to land, walk boldly on board, and
strive to carry her out into the stream. But even as the thought came to him
he was discovered by the sentinels on shore, and a hail was heard.
“Boat ahoy!” followed almost instantly by a musket-shot, and then by a
rattling fire from an uncounted line of sentinels up and down the shore and
on the ship. A huge bonfire of fat pine knots blazed up to illuminate the
shore, and the call of the ship’s crew to quarters arose on the air.
To the mind of any other man than a Cushing the expedition was a
failure, but casting off the cutter with orders to pull for life, Cushing turned
his launch out into the stream, swung her around in a wide circle to give her
full speed, and then headed straight at the log-boom abreast of the fated
ram. A host of Confederates gathered on the ram’s deck to beat him off.
Two howitzers loaded with canister, and a score of muskets, were fired at
him, and a man by his side fell, but Cushing with his own well-aimed
howitzer scattered the Confederate host. And then the sled-runner bow of
the launch struck the half-submerged boom, rose with the impetus, and over
she went with her bow half under water, but inside the boom. The muzzle of
a hundred-pounder was shoved out through the Albemarle’s broadside port,
directly in front of the launch, but Cushing drove the torpedo under the hull
of the ironclad, raised it up until he felt it strike her bottom, and then, as the
Confederates fired their big gun, he pulled the trigger. A dull roar from
beneath the ship answered to the crash of the broadside gun. The charge of
the gun flew over the heads of the launch’s crew, but the torpedo opened
wide the hull of the Albemarle, and down she went.

Cushing Blowing up the Albemarle.
The huge wave thrown up by the torpedo swept over the bow of the
little launch, and she, too, sank. Even then the fortitude and resourcefulness
of Cushing preserved him. Plunging into the river, he swam away unhurt
and reached the swampy shore below, utterly exhausted. There he lay in the
water until day was breaking, when he crawled into the woods and hid
himself. While lying there he heard two men talking as they walked in an
alongshore path, and learned how complete had been his work. During the
day he found one of the enemy’s picket-boats, and that night he paddled his
way off to the Valley City, where he arrived at 11 o’clock at night.
He was only a boy—he was but twenty-one years old—but no man, old
or young, has ever surpassed him. He was officially complimented by the
Secretary of the Navy, and this was the fifth time that the department had

“had the gratification of expressing its approbation” of his conduct. He had
said when leaving the Otsego, “another stripe or a coffin,” and he got the
stripe. But no gold medal was voted to him. Gold was at a premium in those
days—so high a premium, apparently, that Congress could not afford it. The
writer does not mean to carp, but to deplore the fact that men who during
the Civil War showed the most magnificent qualities of mind did not
receive every recognition possible. For it is the men who write rank with a
capital R that make and save the nation.
It is comforting to note that of the launch’s crew but two were killed,
though all the rest were captured except Cushing and one other. The
following is a list of the crew:
“William B. Cushing, Lieutenant, commanding expedition, escaped;
William L. Howarth, Acting-Master’s Mate, picket-boat; William
Stotesbury, Acting-Third-Assistant Engineer, picket-boat; John Woodman,
Acting-Master’s Mate, U. S. S. Commodore Hull, drowned; Thomas S. Gay,
Acting-Master’s Mate, U. S. S. Otsego; Charles S. Heener, Acting-Third-
Assistant Engineer, U. S. S. Otsego; Francis H. Swan, Acting-Assistant
Paymaster, U. S. S. Otsego; Edward T. Horton, ordinary seaman, U. S. S.
Chicopee, escaped; Bernard Harley, ordinary seaman, U. S. S. Chicopee;
William Smith, ordinary seaman, U. S. S. Chicopee; Richard Hamilton,
coalheaver, U. S. S. Shamrock; R. H. King, landsman, picket-boat; ——
Wilkes, landsman, picket-boat; —— Demming, landsman, picket-boat;
Samuel Higgins, first-class fireman, picket-boat, drowned.”
Cushing became a commander in 1872, and he was then the youngest
man of the rank. He died of brain fever at Washington in 1874. He was tall
(six feet) and slender, and, as his portrait shows, looked more like a poet
than a warrior. And the student of history who reads his dispatches will say
that he was both.
With the destruction of the Albemarle the hope of the Confederates
fled. But two seaports remained to them—Charleston and Wilmington.

CHAPTER XVI

THE NAVY AT CHARLESTON
IT WAS A WELL-GUARDED HARBOR, AND THE CHANNEL
WAS LONG AND CROOKED—THE “STONE FLEET” AND
THE ATTITUDE OF FOREIGN POWERS—BRIEF CAREER OF
TWO CONFEDERATE IRONCLADS—THE BLOCKADE WAS
NOT RAISED—A CONFEDERATE CRUISER BURNED—
UTTER FAILURE OF THE IRONCLAD ATTACKS ON THE
FORTS—CAPTURE OF THE CONFEDERATE WARSHIP
ATLANTA—“BOARDERS AWAY” AT FORT SUMTER—
MAGNIFICENT BRAVERY OF THE MEN WHO MANNED
THE CONFEDERATE TORPEDO BOATS.

When the student of American history turns from the stories of the
battles of New Orleans and Mobile to that of the naval efforts to reduce
Charleston, he is driven to a conclusion that may be expressed by saying
there was only one Farragut in the Civil War. He may easily believe that
both Dupont and Dahlgren were great men, but their absolute failures
before Charleston simply emphasize the fact that Farragut earned the place
he has held in the hearts of his countrymen.