blockade, and giving an excellent friend of ours a great deal of trouble
(if it was indeed Mr. Brown), as well as giving us a very unenviable
character for want of hospitality and courtesy; and for both I beg to
apologize with this account of the transaction. But she had a still
greater triumph. As she approached Fort Morgan all was silence. The
morning was just showing a grey streak in the east. “Why, they’re all
asleep at the fort,” observed the indomitable captain, and, regardless
of gun or sentries, down went his helm, and away the Diana thumped into
Mobile Bay, and stole off in the darkness toward the opposite shore.
There was, however, a miserable day before us. When the light fairly
broke we had got only a few miles inside, a stiff northerly wind blew
right in our teeth, and the whole of the blessed day we spent tacking
backward and forward between one low shore and another low shore, in
water the color of pea-soup, so that temper and patience were exhausted,
and we were reduced to such a state that we took intense pleasure in
meeting with a drowning alligator. He was a nice-looking young fellow,
about ten feet long, and had evidently lost his way, and was going out
to sea bodily, but it would have been the height of cruelty to take him
on board our ship, miserable as he was, though he passed within two
yards of us. There was, to be sure, the pleasure of seeing Mobile in
every possible view, far and near, and east and west, and in a lump and
run out, but it was not relished any more than our dinner, which
consisted of a very gamy Bologna sausage pig, who had not decided
whether he would be pork or bacon, and onions fried in a terrible
preparation of Charley, the cook. At five in the evening, however,
having been nearly fourteen hours beating about twenty-seven miles, we
were landed at an outlying wharf, and I started off for the Battle House
and rest. The streets are filled with the usual rub-a-dubbing bands, and
parades of companies of the citizens in grotesque garments and armament,
all looking full of fight and secession. I write my name in the hotel
book at the bar as usual. Instantly young Vigilance Committee, who has
been resting his heels high in the air, with one eye on the staircase
and the other on the end of his cigar, stalks forth and reads my style
and title, and I have the satisfaction of slapping the door in his face
as he saunters after me to my room, and looks curiously in to see how a
man takes off his boots. They are all very anxious in the evening to
know what I think about Pickens and Pensacola, and I am pleased to tell
the citizens I think it will be a very tough affair on both sides
whenever it comes. I proceed to New Orleans on Monday.
LETTER XI.
FORT PICKENS AND PENSACOLA--A VISIT TO BOTH CAMPS.
MOBILE, May 18, 1861.
I AVAIL myself of the departure of a gentleman who is going to New York
by the shortest route he can find, to send you the accompanying letters.
The mails are stopped; so are the telegraphs; and it is doubtful whether
I can get to New Orleans by water. Of what I saw at Fort Pickens and
Pensacola here is an account, written in a very hurried manner, and
under very peculiar circumstances.
* * * * *
TUESDAY, May 14, 1861.
Two New Orleans gentlemen, who came overland from Pensacola yesterday,
give such an account of their miseries from heat, dust, sand, and want
of accommodation, in the dreary waste through which they passed for more
than seventeen hours, that I sought out some other way of going there,
and at last heard of a small schooner, called the Diana, which would
gladly undertake to run round by sea, if permitted to enter by the
blockading squadron.
She was neither clean nor neat-looking; her captain, a tall, wild-haired
young man, had more the air of a mechanic than of a sailor, but he knew
his business well, as the result of the voyage showed. His crew
consisted of three men and a negro cook. Three gentlemen of Mobile, who
were anxious to visit General Bragg’s camp, agreed to join me, but
before I sailed I obtained a promise that they would not violate the
character of neutrals as long as they were with me, and an assurance
that they were not in any way engaged in or employed by the Confederate
States’ forces. “Surely you will not have Mr. R---- hanged, Sir?” said
the Mayor of Mobile to me when I told him I could not consent to pass
off the gentleman in question as a private friend. “No, I shall do
nothing to get Mr. R---- hanged. It will be his own act which causes it,
but I will not allow Mr. R---- to accompany me under false pretences.”
Having concluded our bargain with the skipper at a tolerably fair rate,
and laid in a stock of stores and provisions, the party sailed from
Mobile at five in the evening of Tuesday, May 14, with the flag of the
Confederate States flying; but, as a precautionary measure, I borrowed
from our acting Consul, Mr. Magee, a British ensign, which, with a flag
of truce, would win the favorable consideration of the United States
squadron. Our craft, the somewhat Dutch build of which gave no great
promise of speed, came, to our surprise and pleasure, up with the lights
of Fort Morgan at nine o’clock, and we were allowed to pass unchallenged
through a “swash,” as a narrow channel over the bar is called, which,
despite the absence of beacons and buoys, our skipper shot through under
the guidance of a sounding-pole, which gave, at various plunges, but few
inches to spare.
The shore is as flat as a pancake--a belt of white sand, covered with
drift logs and timber, and with a pine forest; not a house or human
habitation of any sort to be seen for forty miles, from Fort Morgan to
the entrance of the harbor of Pensacola; cheerless, miserable, full of
swamps, the haunts of alligators, cranes, snakes, and pelicans; with
lagoons, such as the Perdida, swelling into inland seas; deep buried in
pine woods, and known only to wild creatures and to the old
fillibusters,--swarming with mosquitoes. As the Diana rushed along
within a quarter of a mile of this grim shore, great fish flew off from
the shallows, and once a shining gleam flashed along the waters and
winged its way alongside the little craft--a monster shark, which plowed
through the sea _pari passu_ for some hundred yards leeward of the
craft, and distinctly visible in the wonderful phosphorescence around
it, and then dashed away with a trail of light seaward, on some errand
of voracity, with tremendous force and vigor. The wretched Spaniards who
came to this ill-named Florida must often have cursed their stars. How
rejoiced were they when the Government of the United States relieved
them from their dominion! Once during the night some lights were seen on
shore, as if from a camp fire. The skipper proposed to load an old iron
carronade and blaze away at them, and one of the party actually got out
his revolver to fire, but I objected very strongly to these valorous
proceedings, and, suggesting that they might be friends who were there,
and that, friends or foes, they were sure to return our fire, succeeded
in calming the martial ardor on board the Diana. The fires were very
probably made by some of the horsemen lately sent out by General Bragg
to patrol the coast, but the skipper said that in all his life-long
experience he had never seen a human creature or a light on that shore
before. The wind was so favorable and the Diana so fast, that she would
have run into the midst of the United States squadron off Fort Pickens
had she pursued her course. Therefore, when she was within about ten
miles of the station she hove to, and lay off and on for about two
hours. Before dawn the sails were filled, and off she went once more,
bowling along merrily, till with the first flush of day there came in
sight Fort M’Rae, Fort Pickens, and the masts of the squadron, just
rising above the blended horizon of low shore and sea. The former, which
is on the western shore of the mainland, is in the hands of the
Confederate troops. The latter is just opposite to it, on the extremity
of the sand-bank called Santa Rosa Island, which for forty-five miles
runs in a belt parallel to the shore of Florida, at a distance varying
from one and a quarter to four miles. To make smooth water of it, the
schooner made several tacks shoreward. In the second of these tacks the
subtle entrance of Perdida Creek is pointed out, which, after several
serpentine and reëntering undulations of channel, one of which is only
separated from the sea for a mile or more by a thin wall of sand-bank,
widens to meet the discharge of a tolerably spacious inland lake. The
Perdida is the dividing line between the States of Alabama and Florida.
The flagstaff of Fort M’Rae soon became visible, and in fainter outline
beyond it that of Fort Pickens and the hulls of the fleet, in which one
can make out three war steamers, a frigate, and a sloop-of-war, and then
the sharp-set canvas of a schooner, the police craft of this beat,
bearing down upon us. The skipper, with some uneasiness, announces the
small schooner that is sailing in the wind’s eye as the “Oriental,” and
confesses to have already been challenged and warned off by her sentinel
master. We promised him immunity for the past and safety for the future,
and, easing off the main sheet, he lays the Diana on her course for the
fleet.
Fort M’Rae, one of the obsolete school of fortresses, rounds up our
left. Beyond it, on the shore, is Barrancas, a square-faced work, half a
mile further up the channel, and more immediately facing Fort Pickens.
A thick wood crowns the low shore which treads away to the eastward, but
amid the sand the glass can trace the outlines of the batteries.
Pretty-looking detached houses line the beach; some loftier edifices
gather close up to the shelter of a tall chimney which is vomiting out
clouds of smoke, and a few masts and spars checker the white fronts of
the large buildings and sheds, which, with a big shears, indicate the
position of the Navy Yard of Warrington, commonly called that of
Pensacola, although the place of that name lies several miles higher up
the creek. Fort M’Rae seems to have sunk at the foundations; the crowns
of many of the casemates are cracked, and the water-face is
poor-looking. Fort Pickens, on the contrary, is a solid,
substantial-looking work, and reminds one something of Fort Paul at
Sevastopol, as seen from the sea, except that it has only one tier of
casemates, and is not so high.
As the Oriental approaches, the Diana throws her foresail aback, and the
pretty little craft, with a full-sized United States ensign flying, and
the muzzle of a brass howitzer peeping over her forecastle, ranges up
luff, and taking an easy sweep lies alongside us. A boat is lowered from
her and is soon alongside, steered by an officer; her crew are armed to
the teeth with pistols and cutlasses. “Ah, I think I have seen you
before. What schooner is this?” “The Diana, from Mobile.” The officer
steps on deck, and announces himself as Mr. Brown, Master in the United
States Navy, in charge of the boarding vessel Oriental. The crew secure
their boat and step up after him. The skipper, looking very sulky, hands
his papers to the officer. “Now, sir, make sail, and lie to under the
quarter of that steamer, the guardship Powhatan.”
Mr. Brown was exceedingly courteous when he heard who the party were.
The Mobilians, however, looked as black as thunder; nor where they at
all better pleased when they heard the skipper ask if he did not know
there was a strict blockade of the port. The Powhatan is a paddle
steamer of 2,200 tuns and 10 guns, and is known to our service as the
flag-ship of Commodore Tatnall, in Chinese waters, when that gallant
veteran gave us timely and kindly proof of the truth of his well-known
expression, “Blood is thicker than water.” Upon her spar-deck there is a
stout, healthy-looking crew, which seems quite able to attend to her
armament of ten heavy 10-inch Dahlgren columbiads, and the formidable
11-inches of the same family on the forecastle. Her commander, Captain
Porter, though only a lieutenant, commanding, has seen an age of active
service, both in the navy and in the merchant steam marine service, to
which he was detailed for six or seven years after the discovery of
California. The party were ushered into the cabin, and Captain Porter
received them with perfect courtesy, heard our names and object, and
then entered into general conversation, in which the Mobilians, thawed
by his sailorly frankness, gradually joined, as well as they could. Over
and over again I must acknowledge the exceeding politeness and civility
with which your correspondent has been received by the authorities on
both sides in this unhappy war.
Though but little beyond the age of forty, Captain Porter has been long
enough in the navy to have imbibed some of those prejudices which by the
profane are stigmatized as fogyisms. Until the day previous he had, he
told me, felt disposed to condemn rifled cannon of a small calibre as
“gimcracks,” but had been rapidly converted to the “Armstrong faith” by
the following experiment: He was making target-practice with his heavy
gun at a distance of some 2,600 yards. At anything like a moderate
elevation the experiment was unsatisfactory; and, while his gunners were
essaying to harmonize cause and effect, the charge and the elevation, he
bethought him of a little rifled brass plaything which Captain Dahlgren
had sent on board a day or two before his departure. To his astonishment
the ball, after careering until he thought “it would never stop going,”
struck the water 1,000 yards beyond the target, and established a
reputation he had never believed possible for a howitzer of 6lb. calibre
carrying a 12lb. bolt. He observed that the ancient walls of Fort M’Rae
would not resist this new missile for half an hour.
If it comes to fighting, you will hear more of the Powhatan and Captain
Porter. He has been repeatedly in the harbor and along the enemy’s works
at night in his boat, and knows their position thoroughly; and he showed
me on his chart the various spots marked off whence he can sweep their
works and do them immense mischief. “The Powhatan is old, and if she
sinks I can’t help it.” She is all ready for action; boarding-nettings
triced up, fieldpieces and howitzers prepared against night boarding,
and the whole of her bows padded internally, with dead wood and sails,
so as to prevent her main deck being raked as she stands stern on
toward the forts. Her crew are as fine a set of men as I have seen of
late days on board a man-of-war. They are healthy, well fed, regularly
paid, and can be relied on to do their duty to a man. As far as I could
judge, the impression of the officers was that General Bragg would not
to expose himself to the heavy chastisement which, in their belief,
awaits him, if he is rash enough to open fire upon Fort Pickens. As
Captain Porter is not the senior officer of the fleet, he signaled to
the flag-ship, and was desired to send us on board.
One more prize has been made this morning--a little schooner with a crew
of Italians and laden with vegetables. This master, a Roman of Civita
Vecchia, pretends to be in great trouble, in order to squeeze a good
price out of the captain for his “_tutti fruti e cosi diversi_.” The
officers assured me that all the statements made by the coasting
skippers, when they return to port from the squadron, are lies from
beginning to end.
A ten-oared barge carried the party to the United States frigate Sabine,
on board of which Flag-Captain Adams hoists his pennant. On our way we
had a fair view of the Brooklyn, whose armament of twenty two heavy guns
is said to be the most formidable battery in the American navy. Her
anti-type, the Sabine, an old-fashioned fifty-gun frigate, as rare an
object upon modern seas as an old post-coach is upon modern roads, is
reached at last. As one treads her decks, the eyes, accustomed for so
many weeks to the outlandish uniforms of brave but undisciplined
Southern Volunteers, feel _en pays de connaissance_, when they rest upon
the solid mass of three hundred or four hundred quid-rolling, sunburnt,
and resolute-looking blue-shirted tars, to whom a three years’ cruise
has imparted a family aspect, which makes them almost as hard to
distinguish apart as so many Chinamen.
A believer in the serpent-symbol might feel almost tempted to regard the
log of the Sabine as comprising the Alpha and the Omega of, at least,
the last half century of the American Republic. Her keel was laid
shortly after our last war with Brother Jonathan, and so long as the
Temple of Janus remained closed--her size having rendered her unfit to
participate in what is called the Mexican war--she remained in the
shiphouse of the Navy Yard which had witnessed her baptism. In the year
1858 she was summoned from her retirement to officiate as flagship of
the "Paraguay expedition,” and after having conveyed the American
Commissioner to Montevideo, whence he proceeded with a flotilla of
steamers and sloops-of-war up to Corrientes, and thence in the temporary
flagship, the steamer Fulton, to Assumpcion, she brought him back to New
York in May, 1859, and was then dispatched to complete her cruise as
part of the Home Squadron in the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico.
During the concluding months of her cruise the political complications
of North and South burst into the present rupture, and the day before
our visit one of her lieutenants, a North Carolinian, had left her to
espouse, as nearly all the Southern officers of both army and navy have
done, the cause of his native State. Captain Adams is in a still more
painful predicament. During his eventful voyage, which commenced a six
days’ experience in the terrible Bermuda cyclone of November, 1858, he
had been a stranger to the bitter sectional animosities engendered by
the last election; and had recently joined the blockade of this port,
where he finds a son enlisted in the ranks of the C. S. A., and learns
that two others from part of the Virginia divisions of Mr. Jefferson
Davis’s forces. Born in Pennsylvania, he married in Louisiana, where he
has a plantation and the remainder of his family, and he smiles grimly
as one of our companions brings him the playful message from his
daughter, who has been elected _vivandière_ of a New Orleans regiment,
“that she trusts he may be starved while blockading the South, and that
she intends to push on to Washington and get a lock of Old Abe’s
hair”--a Sioux lady would have said his scalp.
The veteran sailor’s sad story demands deep sympathy. I, however, cannot
help enjoying at least the variety of hearing a little of the _altera
pars_. It is now nearly six weeks since I entered “Dixie’s Land,” during
which period I must confess I have had a sufficiency of the music and
drums, the cavaliering and the roystering of the Southern gallants. As
an impartial observer. I may say I find less bitterness and
denunciation, but quite as dogged a resolution upon the Roundhead side.
Some experience, or at least observation of the gunpowder argument, has
taught us that attack is always a more grateful office than defence,
and, if we are to judge of the sturdy resolution of the inmates of Fort
Pickens by the looks of the officers and crews of the fleet, Fort
Pickens will fall no easy prize, if at all.
After some conversation with Captain Adams, and the ready hospitality
of his cabin, he said finally he would take on himself to permit me and
the party to land at the Navy Yard and to visit the enemy’s quarters,
relying on my character as a neutral and a subject of Great Britain that
no improper advantage would be taken of the permission. In giving that
leave he was, he said, well aware that he was laying himself open to
attack, but he acted on his own judgment and responsibility. We must,
however, hoist a flag of truce, as he had been informed by General Bragg
that he considered the intimation he had received from the fleet of the
blockade of the port was a declaration of war, and that he would fire on
any vessel from the fleet which approached his command. I bade good-by
to Captain Adams with sincere regret, and if--but I may not utter the
wish here. Our barge was waiting to take us to the Oriental, in which we
sailed pleasantly away down to the Powhatan to inform Captain Porter I
had received permission to go on shore. Another officer was in his cabin
when I entered--Captain Poore, of the Brooklyn--and he seemed a little
surprised when he heard that Captain Adams had given leave to all to go
on shore. “What, all these editors of Southern newspapers who are with
you, Sir?” I assured him they were nothing of the kind, and after a few
kind words I made my adieu, and went on board the Diana with my
companions.
Hoisting one of our two table-cloths to the masthead as a flag of truce,
we dropped slowly with the tide through the channel that runs parallel
to one face of Fort Pickens. The wind favored us but little, and the
falling breeze enabled all on board to inspect deliberately the
seemingly artistic preparations for the threatened attack which frowns
and bristles from three miles of forts and batteries arrayed around the
slight indenture opposite. Heavy sand-bag traverses protect the corners
of the parapet, and seem solid enough to defy the heavy batteries
ensconced in earthworks around the Lighthouse, which to an outside
glance seems the most formidable point of an attack, directed as it is
against the weaker flank of the fort at its most vulnerable angle.
A few soldiers and officers upon the rampart appeared to be inhaling the
freshening breeze which arose to waft the schooner across the channel,
and enable her to coast the mainshore, so that all could take note of
the necklace of bastions, earthworks, and columbiads with which General
Bragg hopes to throttle his adversary. We passed by Barrancas, the
nearest point of attack (a mile and a quarter), the Commander-in-Chief’s
head-quarters, the barracks, and the hospital successively, and as the
vessel approached the landing-pier of the Navy Yard one could hear the
bustle of the military and the hammers of the artificers, and descry the
crimson and blue trappings of Zouaves, recalling Crimean reminiscences.
A train of heavy tumbrils, drawn by three or four pairs of mules, was
the first indication of a transport system in the army of the
Confederate States, and the high-bred chargers mounted by the escorts of
these ammunition wagons corroborated the accounts of the wealth and
breeding of its volunteer cavalry. The Diana now skirted the Navy Yard,
the neat dwellings of which, and the profusion of orange and fig groves
in which they are embosomed, have an aspect of tropical shade and
repose, much at variance with the stern preparations before us. Our
skipper let go his anchor at a respectful distance from the quay,
evincing a regard for martial law that contrasted strangely with the
impatience of control elsewhere manifested throughout this land, and
almost inspiring the belief that no other rule can ever restore the lost
bump of veneration to American craniology.
While the master of the Diana was skulling his leaky punt ashore to
convey my letters of introduction to the Commander-in-chief, I had
leisure to survey the long, narrow, low sand belt of the island
opposite, which loses itself in the distance, and disappears in the
ocean forty-seven miles from Fort Pickens. It is so nearly level with
the sea that I could make out the main-yards of the Sabine and the
Brooklyn, anchored outside the island within range of the Navy Yard,
which is destined to receive immediate attention whenever the attack
shall begin. Pursuing my reflections upon the _morale_ of the upper and
nether millstones between which the Diana is moored, I am sadly puzzled
by the anomalous ethics or metaphysics of this singular war, the
preparations for which vary so essentially--it were sin to say
ludicrously--from all ancient and modern belligerent usages. Here we
have an important fortress, threatened with siege for the last sixty
days, suffering the assailants of the flag it defends to amass battery
upon battery, and string the whole coast of low hills opposite with
every variety of apparatus for its own devastation, without throwing a
timely shell to prevent their establishment.
War has been virtually declared, since letters of marque and a
corresponding blockade admit of no other interpretation, and yet but
last week two Mobile steamers, laden with £50,000 worth of provisions
for the beleaguering camp, were stopped by the blockading fleet, and,
though not permitted to enter this harbor, were allowed to return to
Mobile untouched, the commander thinking it quite punishment enough for
the Rebels to thus compel them to return to Mobile, and carry up the
Alabama River to Montgomery this mass of eatables, which would have to
be dispatched thence by rail to this place! Such practical jokes lend a
tinge of innocence to the premonitories of this strife which will hardly
survive the first bloodshed.
The skipper returned from shore with an orderly, who brought the needful
permission to haul the Diana alongside the wharf, where I landed, and
was conducted by an aide of the Quartermaster-General through the shady
streets of this graceful little village, which covers an inclosure of
three hundred acres, and, with the adjoining forts, cost the United
States over £6,000,000 sterling, which may have something to do with the
President’s determination to hold a property under so heavy an
hypothecation. Irish landlords, with encumbered estates, have no such
simple mode of obtaining an acquittal.