ALONG SHORE IN THE GULF OF MEXICO
THE SHAMEFUL STORY OF PENSACOLA AND FORT PICKENS--WHEN LIEUTENANT
RUSSELL BURNED THE _JUDAH_--A BRITISH CONSUL’S ACTIONS WHEN
CONFEDERATE FORTS WERE ATTACKED AT GALVESTON--EXTRAORDINARY PANIC
AT THE HEAD OF THE PASSES IN THE MISSISSIPPI WHEN FOUR GREAT
WARSHIPS, CARRYING FORTY-FIVE OF THE BEST GUNS AFLOAT, FLED
FROM A DISABLED TUGBOAT THAT WAS REALLY UNARMED--ONCE MORE IN
GALVESTON--LIEUTENANT JOUETT’S FIERCE FIGHT WHEN HE DESTROYED THE
_ROYAL YACHT_.
There were stirring events in and around the Gulf of Mexico during
the year 1861--some of them stirring the naval sailors in one way and
some in another. The trouble began there very early in the year--on
January 12th, in fact, when Colonel Lomax and Major W. H. Chase,
with some Florida and Alabama troops, surrounded the navy yard at
Pensacola and compelled Commodore James Armstrong to surrender it to
the Confederates. It was very well known that an attack impended a long
time before it actually happened, but no effort was made by any one in
the yard to preserve any of the government property for government
use. Armstrong was not, indeed, disloyal, but he was very properly
suspended from the navy for five years for his failure at Pensacola.
The executive officer under him, Commander Ebenezer Farrand, and
Lieut. Francis B. Renshaw had already decided to join the Confederate
forces, and it should not be forgotten that they were among the men
willing to serve the Confederates while still wearing the uniform of
the government. Renshaw himself, while in national uniform, had the old
flag hauled down and the Confederate flag sent up in its place. Farrand
did still worse. He refused to allow the powder to be removed from the
magazine when a loyal officer, Commander Henry Walke, proposed removing
it. He kept it in the magazine unguarded in order that the Confederates
might get it. When he could do no more for the Confederates by
remaining in the pay of the government, he sent in his resignation.
[Illustration: Surrender of the Navy Yard at Pensacola.
_From a painting by Admiral Walke._]
Meantime the soldiers in charge of the three forts that guarded the
harbor had been concentrated at Fort Pickens on the 10th by Lieut.
Adam J. Slemmer, U. S. A. At that time Commander Henry Walke was in
Pensacola, in command of the transport _Supply_. She was _en route_ to
Vera Cruz with stores for the government ships lying there. On January
9th, Walke was ordered by Commodore Armstrong to assist Slemmer in
concentrating the troops and army supplies at Fort Pickens. Walke at
once started to obey this order; but when about to engage in doing so,
another order came under which he was to merely give some food to the
men already in Fort Pickens and then return to the navy yard, leaving
the army forces scattered among the three forts about the harbor.
Walke, in his “Reminiscences,” says Farrand “hood-winked” the commodore
into issuing that order. Walke showed it to Slemmer, and Slemmer, in
despair, said if that order was obeyed, no further effort to hold the
forts should be made. But Walke at once determined to disobey the order
in so far as he must in order to concentrate the army forces at Fort
Pickens.
Walke’s act was one of the most remarkable of that day. It was almost
without precedent that a naval officer should be independent-minded
enough to do what was right in the interests of the government without
first receiving an unmistakable order to do it. But that a man should
save a fort for the government by actually disobeying the order of
a superior--that was then unheard of, though an officer of a higher
grade saved three fine ships from the _Merrimac_ in like fashion some
time later. By concentrating the army forces at Pickens, contrary to
Armstrong’s orders, Walke saved the fort. Then, when the yard had been
surrendered to the Confederates, he took the paroled officers and men,
with their families, from the yard and carried them to New York. This,
although done in the interest of the government, and as an act of
humanity, was also contrary to his original order which contemplated a
passage to Vera Cruz. So Walke was court-martialled, found guilty, and
sentenced to be censured! This is perhaps the only case on record where
the legal censure of an American naval officer was as a badge of honor.
[Illustration: Henry Walke.
_From a photograph._]
Meantime the Buchanan administration was in some way moved, after
the navy yard was captured, to send the _Brooklyn_ down there with
eighty-six artillery men and 115 marines. But before these could be
landed the administration repented, and the _Brooklyn_ was ordered
to lie off the harbor. And there she lay when Mr. Lincoln came into
office. On March 12th an order was sent to Capt. J. Vodges, commanding
the artillery company on the _Brooklyn_, to land. This order was
received by Vodges on March 31st, and on April 1st he called on Capt.
H. A. Adams, of the _Brooklyn_, for boats, etc., for the landing.
Instead of giving them, Adams declined, and wrote a letter to the
Navy Department, saying that the order to Vodges “may have been given
without a full knowledge of the condition of affairs here.” He was
sure that reinforcing the fort “would be viewed as a hostile act, and
would be resisted to the utmost.” The department was warned that “it
would be a serious thing to bring on, by precipitation, a collision.”
In short, this officer, who was a Union man, had been cajoled into a
state of mind where he ignored the fact that the Confederates were
working day and night to place their defences in the best possible
order and were adding to their forces daily. He had, in truth, been
instructed by Buchanan’s Secretary of the Navy “not to land the company
unless said fort shall be attacked _or preparations be made for its
attack_.” The italics are not in the original document, of course, but
they are inserted to make plain the way in which Adams ignored the
Confederate work of preparing to capture Fort Pickens by increasing
the effectiveness of Fort McRae and Fort Barrancas. To land a man in
Fort Pickens would be “viewed as a hostile act,” and would “bring on,
by precipitation, a collision.” To improve the Confederate Fort McRae
was not to be considered! Certainly the contempt which the Southern
people of that day felt for men of the North was not without some
justification.
These facts seem worth giving because they show the difference between
the state of mind on the Union side and that on the Confederate.
The Confederates knew what they wanted and were reaching after it
ceaselessly: The Union forces at this time were not much short of
mental demoralization, anywhere, and the quick-witted Confederates took
advantage of it.
This letter was carried to Washington by Lieut. Washington Gwathmey,
who afterwards joined the Confederates. It took him five days to cover
the distance, and the reinforcement of Fort Pickens was delayed by that
much.
The department could hardly tell whom to trust, but Lieut. John L.
Worden was chosen to carry an order to Adams for the landing of the
troops; and no mistake was made in his case, for he was the Worden
who afterward commanded the _Monitor_. He reached Pensacola on April
11th, and on telling Gen. Braxton Bragg, of the Confederate forces,
that he had an oral order for the captain of the _Brooklyn_, was
allowed to go off to her on the 12th. He had committed the order to
memory and destroyed the document. That night, April 12, 1861, Fort
Pickens was reinforced. Bragg had planned an attack on Fort Pickens
for the night of the 13th--an attack that must have succeeded, because
the Union force had been only eighty-three men, all told; but when
the artillerymen and the marines were landed the face of matters was
changed and the attack postponed indefinitely. The flag has never
ceased to float over Fort Pickens. The Confederates were greatly
exasperated, and Worden was arrested in Montgomery and held a prisoner
for seven months.
In September the general dulness of affairs about Pensacola was
relieved by a brilliant dash which a force from the blockader
_Colorado_ made into the harbor. The Confederates had been
strengthening their works along shore gradually, and had at last
started fitting out a schooner called the _Judah_ at the navy yard for
use as a privateer. This schooner was guarded by a ten-inch columbiad
(a columbiad being a gun half-way between a carronade and a long gun)
and a field-piece, both being placed to sweep her deck. There was also
a large force of men camped in the yard--some accounts say 1,000--while
the schooner had a full crew on board, with a long pivot gun and two
broadside guns in place. It is a remarkable fact that the yard where
she was fitted and the schooner herself were within easy range and
plain sight of Fort Pickens, and the fact that she intended to sail out
after American merchant ships was obvious. But not a shot was fired
from the fort to disturb her owners or the workmen.
[Illustration: John G. Sproston.
(Who commanded one of the boats in the attack on the _Judah_.)
_From a photograph at the Naval Academy, Annapolis._]
So Commodore William Marvine, commanding the Gulf squadron, sent 100
men in boats under Lieut. J. H. Russell, on the night of September 13,
1861, to destroy her. In spite of the vigilance of the Confederates,
they arrived near the schooner undiscovered, and were entirely
successful in firing her, in spite of a determined opposition.
Meantime a wave of trouble had rolled over Galveston, Texas--a wave
that stirred the foreign consuls living there into an astonishing
state of anger, and through their efforts it was used with some effect
to misrepresent and prejudice the case of the government throughout
Europe. The affair occurred on August 3, 1861. Galveston was first
blockaded by the _South Carolina_, Capt. James Alden, in the latter
part of June. Captain Alden “never had any intention of troubling” the
people of the city further than interrupting their ocean trade, and
this determination was stated to them in an official communication.
Nevertheless, the Confederates erected a number of batteries in a place
where any attack on them by the blockading squadron would necessarily
result in throwing projectiles into the city. A glance at the map will
show that Galveston is built on the northerly point of an island that
forms the harbor. The city faces the bay, and there is a wide stretch
of sand behind the city--that is, between the city and the sea. It was
between the city and the sea that the batteries were placed.
On the morning of August 3d a tender of the blockading ship was
returning north from a cruise to the south end of Galveston Island.
She passed within range of the batteries, and they opened fire on her.
She returned the fire and reported it to Captain Alden, who “waited all
day for some explanation or disavowal on the part of the authorities.”
He could scarcely realize that people “could be so insane as to
initiate hostilities when their town was so completely at our mercy.”
At 4 o’clock no disavowal having come, he took the _South Carolina_
within a mile of the works. The Confederates opened fire on her and
Alden replied with fifteen shots, after which, finding that he could
not prevent the shot going into the city as well as the works, he
withdrew.
[Illustration: Galveston Harbor.
_From “The Navy in the Civil War.”_]
The next day Mr. Arthur Lynn, the British consul, gathered together the
Hanoverian and Oldenburg consul, the Swiss consul, the Mexican consul;
the deputy consul for Bremen, Saxony, Belgium, and Holland; the consul
_pro tem._ for Electoral Hesse, and the consul for Nassau, besides
representatives of some other countries, and wrote and signed the
following:
“The undersigned, consuls and vice-consuls at Galveston, consider it
their duty to enter their solemn protest against your bombardment of
this city on the evening of the 3d instant, without having given any
notice, so that the women and children might have been removed, and
also against your firing a shell in the midst of a large crowd of
unarmed citizens, amongst whom were many women and children, causing
thereby the death of an unoffending Portuguese and wounding boys
and peaceably disposed persons, as acts of inhumanity, unrecognized
in modern warfare, and meriting the condemnation of Christian and
civilized nations.”
A copy of the protest was sent to Alden, another to the reporters, of
course, and then each official sent one under seal to his government
in such fashion that it would appear in the papers there also.
It was a small affair in itself. The Confederate authorities made no
protest about it. So far as the attack on the blockading squadron
and the return of the fire were of interest from a historical point
of view, the matter was not worth mention. But because this was the
first case in which a British consul, acting in his official capacity,
undertook the work of misrepresenting the deeds of the government
officers, it may not be omitted. For the official attitude of the
European governments has a very important part in the naval history of
the Civil War.
The next event of interest that occurred in the Gulf region might very
well be termed the battle of Bull Run afloat, because a squadron of
American naval ships became involved in a panic and fled precipitately
before a force so utterly insignificant that the shame of it was felt
by every man who wore the uniform.
The mouths of the Mississippi were at first blockaded by the
_Brooklyn_, Captain Poor, and the _Powhatan_, Capt. D. D. Porter, but
when the _Powhatan_ was away, one day, the _Brooklyn_ went chasing a
strange sail, and the watchful Semmes carried the _Sumter_, the first
of the noted Confederate cruisers, out to sea. As the Confederates had
before this carried fifteen ships, two barks, and three schooners from
the Gulf to New Orleans as prizes, the government was moved to place a
sufficient force in the river to close it absolutely.
This force included the flagship _Richmond_, a screw steamer of
2,000 tons, carrying twenty large guns, Capt. John Pope; the sailing
sloop-of-war _Vincennes_, ten guns, Capt. Robert Handy; the sailing
sloop-of-war _Preble_, eleven guns, Capt. H. French, and the little
screw steamer _Water Witch_, of four guns (howitzers). In all, there
were forty-five guns in the squadron, of which twenty were nine-inch
Dahlgrens.
As the reader will remember, a chart of the mouth of the Mississippi
is marvellously like a picture of the roots of a crooked tree. The
waters divide into three main channels, with a host of offshoots. To
effectually close all the entrances to the river it was necessary only
to anchor the squadron in the river itself above the point where it
was split up, and this was done. There were no Confederate forts near
the anchorage, and the officers and men, so far as is known, possessed
their souls in peace until the month of October.
Meantime the Confederates had been working against very great
difficulties to prepare a squadron fit to clear the river. They had
incidentally striven to get a steamer called the _McRae_ in commission
for a cruiser, but had failed in making her machinery work well, and
she was relegated to the work of harbor defence.
[Illustration: Passes of the Mississippi.
_From “The Navy in the Civil War.”_]
The work of shipbuilding was done under the eyes of a commission that
included Capt. L. Rousseau, Commander E. Farrand, and Lieut. Robert
J. Chapman, of the Confederate navy, all of whom had been reared in
the government navy. Capt. George N. Hollins, formerly of the American
navy, was assigned to command the fleet when built.
By the first of October, four river steamers had been converted into
the semblance of gunboats by adding timbers so that they could carry
eight or nine guns. They were called the _Polk_, the _Ivy_, the
_Livingston_, and the _Maurepas_. A merchant steamer with a bark rig
became the _McRae_. To this was added a most remarkable vessel--the
first of her class, the ironclad ram _Manassas_.
The _Manassas_ was originally the double-screw tug _Enoch Train_, of
Boston. She was 128 feet long, twenty-six wide, and when loaded she
drew thirteen feet of water. She was, in short, a tug of the first
class in size. Capt. John A. Stevenson, of New Orleans, undertook the
contract of making a ram of this vessel for a company of capitalists
who determined to use her, privateer-fashion, against the government
blockaders immediately after the Confederate Congress enacted a law on
May 21, 1861, binding the Confederate treasury to pay to the destroyers
twenty per cent. of the value of any government ships that might be
destroyed by volunteers.
The tug was cut down almost to the water, first of all, and then
her bow was filled in solid with timbers for a space of twenty feet
abaft the stem. A deck in the shape of half of a long, sharp egg was
built over her, twelve-inch oak timbers being used for the purpose.
Of course, all the woodwork was thoroughly bolted. Then the bow
and the rounded deck were everywhere plated with flat bar-iron one
and a half inches thick. There was one gun-port forward, where a
sixty-eight-pounder was mounted, but for some fault of construction
they were not able to use it at first.
For motive power she had one compound engine and two screws, the
high-pressure cylinder working one shaft and the low-pressure the
other. There was but one hatch, a small one, at that, and through this
everything--coal, supplies, men--must pass. A ship like that, no matter
what her power, could never be popular in any navy in time of peace,
but she was built for an emergency, and there was no trouble in finding
a crew. Lieut. Alexander F. Warley, formerly in the government service,
took command of her for her owners.
From time to time the government officers on the blockaders down at the
head of the passes heard about the work in the New Orleans ship-yards.
They learned some of the details of the ram that was building, as well
as of the gunboat, but they not only did not make any preparations for
meeting or guarding against an attack: they did not even consider what
might be done if the Confederates should come.
At 3.30 o’clock on the morning of October 13, 1861, the government
fleet lay quietly at anchor, save that the schooner _Joseph H. Toone_
was alongside the _Richmond_, and the _Richmond’s_ watch on deck were
taking coal out of her. The _Preble_ was in advance--that is, was
further up the river than any. Below her lay the flagship _Richmond_,
and below her the _Vincennes_, while the _Water Witch_ lay between
the _Richmond_ and the east shore, with a little prize schooner, the
_Frolic_, near by. It was a moonlight night, with some clouds flying,
the worst kind of a night, as all seamen know, for seeing anything
clearly, but there had been no especial care in posting or warning
lookouts. It was with the squadron literally “the careless end of
night.” Within ten minutes after the bell struck the hour of 3.30, a
lookout on the _Preble_ saw a dark object driving down the river, but
without any smoke or steam or other appearance of motive power. At
nearly the same moment the lookout on the prize schooner saw it, and
as the alarm was raised on the _Preble_ the schooner lookout bawled to
_Richmond_: “A rebel steamer is coming down the river.”
In a minute the whole squadron awoke, and with rattle and shout the
crews ran to quarters, but before they could get a gun cast loose, the
dark object afloat, the ram _Manassas_, driving with the aid of the
current at about nine miles an hour, glanced across the coal schooner’s
bow, crashed through a cutter, and struck the _Richmond_ “abreast of
the port forechannels, tearing the schooner from her fasts.” “Three
planks on the ship’s side were stove in, about two feet below the
water-line, making a hole about five inches in _circumference_.” These
quotations are from Pope’s official report, but the report did not use
italics.
Immediately “a red light was shown as a signal of danger,” and then the
whole squadron except the _Water Witch_ slipped their cables and fled.
“I ordered the _Preble_ and _Vincennes_ to proceed down the Southwest
Pass,” says Pope, and “they did.” Meantime, “after the first blow
given to this ship by the ram,” it “remained under our port quarter,
apparently endeavoring to fix herself in a position to give us a
second blow, but the slipping of our chain and the ship ranging ahead
under steam frustrated the object.” That was Pope’s idea. The fact
was that the ram’s machinery had not been properly stayed to sustain
a shock, and the blow had entirely crippled the low-pressure engine,
and left her with barely enough power to stem the current. She lay
there making repairs, with her crew in a state of alarm lest she be
disabled altogether. However, they got the high-pressure engine working
independently, and then, to the great relief of her crew, she went
creeping and coughing up the river, hugging the shoal water lest the
_Richmond_ or _Water Witch_ pursue her after she had passed them. Both
the _Richmond_ and the _Preble_ fired broadsides at her; the _Richmond_
fired three, “with what effect it was impossible to discover owing to
the darkness,” but “some officers are of opinion they heard shot strike
the ram.” As the ram disappeared up the river, the _Richmond’s_ “helm
was put up, and the ship rapidly fell off, presenting her broadside
up and down the river.” In that position they let her drift with the
current to “cover the retreat” of the squadron.
A squadron of four great ships, armed with forty-five first-class guns,
had been driven into a shameful panic by one crippled tug carrying a
gun that couldn’t be fired.
At about this time a rocket was thrown up from the ram, and at once
three lights were seen--“three large fire rafts, stretching across
the river, were rapidly nearing us, while several _large_ steamers
and a bark-rigged propeller were seen astern of them.” In the minds
of the flying officers the peril was frightful. Nevertheless, as the
_Richmond_ “drifted near the Passes ineffectual attempts were made to
get her head upstream.” The attempts did not include the dropping of an
anchor, because that would have stopped her in her flight for the sea.
Pope was willing to head upstream provided he could keep travelling
away from the fearsome ram and fire-rafts “stretching across the
river.” When the “ineffectual attempts” were stopped “I found myself a
mile and a half down the Southwest Pass.” “I then put the helm up, and
continued down the river, hoping to be able to get her head around off
Pilot Town. In doing this she drifted some distance below, grounding
broadside on.”
Meantime the _Vincennes_ and the _Preble_ had been “drifting” also, and
without making any attempts to get their bows pointed upstream. They
were under sail, and the wind was in the north. The _Preble_ outran the
_Richmond_, even. Captain French says that as he passed the _Richmond_
Captain Pope told him to “proceed down the pass.” He obeyed, and
after bumping on the bar two or three times, crossed over into water
unfretted by rams and fire-rafts. So he “anchored near the coal ships
_Kuhn_ and _Nightingale_ to protect them if necessary.”
Meantime the _Vincennes_, like the _Richmond_, had grounded in the
pass, and a little later along came the _Water Witch_. She had found,
as she steamed down the pass, “that the _fire rafts_ were drifting with
the wind steadily over toward the western shore,” so the “_Water Witch_
was now steered to the northward and eastward (upstream) and easily
cleared them.” The river at this “time in the vicinity of the passes
was entirely clear of the enemy.” Nevertheless, a “_general signal_,
‘cross the bar,’” was displayed on the _Richmond_.
The effect of this signal on Captain Handy of the _Vincennes_ is
well-nigh past belief. He read it “abandon the ship,” he says, but he
was not quite sure about the reading, and so sent a boat to the _Water
Witch_ to ask how Captain Winslow read it. Captain Winslow replied
“that it was impossible” an order to abandon the ship had been given.
Captain Handy was of his original opinion still, and at once ordered
the boats away. A slow match was set to the magazine, and then, as
the crew started over the side of the ship, Captain Handy wrapped the
ship’s flag about him in broad folds and climbed down the ladder to his
gig.
Fortunately, a quarter-gunner (whose name has not been preserved,
alas!) slipped down below, and cutting off the burning end of the slow
match, tossed it overboard. Two of the boats went to the _Water Witch_,
but the others, including the gig, to the _Richmond_. Here Handy’s
theatrical air left him. The utter disgust of his crew became manifest
after it was told that the slow match had been cut, and Handy was
sent back crestfallen to his ship. But, though crestfallen, he was as
nerveless as ever.
Of course daylight had come long before the time the two ships had
grounded, and the Confederates, who had followed their fire-rafts
with the bark-rigged _McRae_ and the four converted gunboats and a
river tug, found, to their astonishment, the whole river clear. They
had hoped, at first, to make some disturbance--possibly to sink the
_Richmond_ with the ram--and, at any rate, get the _McRae_ to sea.
But the _McRae’s_ engines had failed, and so had the ram’s, while
the fire-rafts had drifted ashore harmless. And yet there were the
government ships out at sea, or aground inside and sorry they couldn’t
get away. Very naturally the Confederates came down where their
long-range Whitworth rifles would take effect, and opened fire on the
grounded ships. The only damage done was when a shell lodged in the
locker where Captain Pope kept his linen. Fortunately, the shell did
not explode, and the linen was not wholly destroyed. The _Richmond_
replied with a nine-inch gun on her forecastle, and the Confederates,
having boats so frail that one shell could have sunk any one of them,
were obliged to keep at long range. The _Water Witch_ was sent in great
haste to bring the _South Carolina_ from Barrataria, and after she
came to the rescue the transport _McClellan_ also arrived with rifles
for the _Richmond_. “My mind was very much relieved, knowing that the
armament of four rifled guns on board the _McClellan_, together with
the long gun of the _South Carolina_, would keep the enemy at bay,”
says Pope in his report. Imagine the state of mind of this officer!
“Four rifled guns on board the _McClellan_, together with the long gun
of the _South Carolina_, would keep the enemy _at bay_!”
But before the relief ships arrived, Captain Handy, of the _Vincennes_,
had once more become so nervous he couldn’t stand the strain without
doing something. The Confederates were firing at the _Richmond_; but
they might fire at him and he might get hurt. So he wrote a note to
the already overwrought Pope. Because no other case of the kind is
known to the annals of the American navy, because the exhibit forms an
interesting study in mental phenomena, and because the shame of it,
when spread in history, must serve to make a repetition of the story
impossible, the note shall be given in full:
“SIR: We are aground. We have only two guns that will bear in the
direction of the enemy. Shall I remain on board after the moon goes
down, with my crippled ship and worn-out men? Will you send me word
what countersign my boats shall use if we pass near your ship?
While we have moonlight, would it not be better to leave the ship?
Shall I burn her when I leave her?
“Respectfully,
ROBERT HANDY.”
He was not allowed to abandon his ship again, but it is a fact,
incredible as it may seem, that even after the _South Carolina_ had
come--the _South Carolina_ that, single-handed, was of a force to have
destroyed, with one watch in their hammocks, the whole Confederate
squadron--even after she had come, Handy, in his haste to get clear,
threw overboard all of his guns, and it was done by permission of Pope.
So the _Vincennes_ got away in tow of the steamers.
On the 14th they were all at anchor outside, but even here, according
to Captain Pope’s report, Captain French, of the _Preble_, did not feel
safe. He was ordered to blockade Pass à Loutre, but, after starting,
came back and asked permission to go to Ship Island for wood for the
galley fire. Pope told him there was wood a-plenty at the Northeast
Pass, but he “earnestly requested to go to Ship Island,” and Pope
“reluctantly consented.” At Ship Island the _Preble_ would be safe, but
there was no telling what might happen if she were caught all alone by
a Confederate gunboat off Pass à Loutre.
And then, in his report, written on the 17th, Pope makes this
statement: “My retreat down the pass, although painful to me, was to
save the ships by preventing them being sunk and falling into the hands
of the enemy; and it was evident to me they had us in their power.”
This one other quotation will complete the story: “It having been
rumored there was a panic on board this ship at the time she was
engaged with the enemy, I state it to be false; both officers and men
exhibited the utmost coolness and determination to do their duty.”
This chapter shall conclude with the brief story of brave men at
Galveston.
It was in November. The frigate _Santee_ was blockading Galveston, and
a Confederate steamer, the _General Rusk_, was inside, together with
a privateer schooner called the _Royal Yacht_. The Confederates were
fitting the _Rusk_ for a cruiser, but she could not be shelled without
throwing shot into the city. So Lieut. James E. Jouett volunteered to
go in and cut her out.
One has to look at the chart of the harbor to appreciate the danger of
the service, for the boats would have to pull around the north end of
the island, on which the city stands, and then along the water front of
the city itself, to reach the ship. Nevertheless, Jouett, with forty
men in two boats, started at 11.40 o’clock on the night of November 7,
1861. Everything went well while passing the sentinels on the point,
and those on the _Royal Yacht_ that lay near the point, also. But in
keeping well to the off side of the channel when approaching the city
the leading boat grounded, and the second crashed into her. The noise
of the collision and the efforts to get afloat betrayed them, and fire
was opened from the land and the _Rusk_. There was nothing for it but
to retreat. The forty men could do nothing against the forces of the
Confederates, now that they were alarmed. But Jouett was not to be
balked altogether, and turning about, he dashed at the _Royal Yacht_.
The first boat to reach her had a twelve-pound howitzer in its bow,
with Gunner William W. Carter in charge. Aiming at her water-line
Carter fired just as the boat’s bow was within jumping distance of
the schooner, and as the shell crashed through the schooner’s side he
leaped to her deck. Unfortunately, the recoil of the howitzer drove
the boat away from the schooner, leaving Carter, with cutlass in hand,
alone to face the enemy. But Carter was the man for the place, and at
them he went, slash and parry and thrust, while Jouett slewed the boat
up once more to the schooner’s rail and leaped on board. But the moment
he landed there a Confederate thrust a bayonet through his arm and into
his lung. It was a dangerous wound, but Jouett cut the man down and
hewed his way to Carter’s side.
Even then the fight was not won. Twice the Confederates rallied and
drove the Federals back, but Jouett led on again, gained the victory at
last, and destroyed the schooner. The Federals lost three killed and
six wounded. They carried off thirteen prisoners, but the Confederate
loss in killed and wounded is not recorded. And it is worth adding that
Jouett is to be heard from further on.