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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

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

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:

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.