Navy-Yard, in the eastern branch of the Potomac, on duty connected
with the patrol of the river; the Virginia bank of which was occupied
by the Confederates, who were then erecting batteries to dispute the
passage of vessels. After one excursion down-stream in this
employment, the ship was detached to the combined expedition against
Port Royal, South Carolina, the naval part of which was under the
command of "Flag-Officer" Dupont. The point of assembly was Hampton
Roads, whither we shortly proceeded, after filling with stores and
receiving a new captain, Percival Drayton, a man greatly esteemed in
the service of the day, and a South-Carolinian. Coincidently with us,
but independently as to association, the steam-sloop _Seminole_,
slightly larger, also started. We outstripped her; and as we passed a
position where the Confederates were believed to be fortifying, our
captain threw in a half-dozen shells. No reply was made, and we went
on. Within a half-hour we heard firing behind us, apparently
two-sided. The ship was turned round and headed up-river. In a few
minutes we met the _Seminole_, her men still at the guns, a few ropes
dangling loose, showing that she had, as they say, not been exchanging
salutes. We had stirred up the hornets, and she had got the benefit;
quite uselessly, her captain evidently felt, by his glum face and
short answers to our solicitous hail. He was naturally put out, for no
good could have come, beyond showing the position of the enemy's guns;
while an awkward hit might have sent her back to the yard and lost her
her share in the coming fray, one of the earliest in the war, and at
that instant the only thing in sight on the naval horizon. As no harm
resulted, the incident would not be worth mentioning except for a
second occasion, which I will mention later, in which we gave the
_Seminole's_ captain cause for grim dissatisfaction.
The gathering of the clans, the ships of war and the transports laden
with troops, in the lower Chesapeake had of course a strange element
of excitement; for war, even in its incipiency, was new to almost all
present, and the enthusiasm aroused by a great cause and approaching
conflict was not balanced by that solemnizing outlook which experience
gives. We lived in an atmosphere of blended exaltation and curiosity,
of present novelty and glowing expectation. But business soon came
upon us, in its ordinary lines; for we were not two days clear of the
Capes, in early November, when there came on a gale of exceptional
violence, the worst of it at midnight. It lasted for forty-eight
hours, and must have occasioned great anxiety to the heads of the
expedition; for among the curious conglomerate of heterogeneous
material constituting both the ships of war and transports there were
several river steamers, some of them small. Being utterly unpractised
in such movements, an almost entire dispersal followed; in fact, I
dare say many of the transport captains asked nothing better than to
be out of other people's way. The _Pocahontas_ found herself alone
next morning; but, though small and slow, she was a veritable sea-bird
for wind and wave. Not so all. One of our extemporized ships of war,
rejoicing in the belligerent name of _Isaac Smith_, and carrying eight
fairly heavy guns, which would have told in still water, had to throw
them all overboard; and her share in the subsequent action was limited
to a single long piece, rifled I believe, and to towing a
sailing-corvette in the column.
There were some wrecks and some gallant rescues, the most conspicuous
of which was that of the battalion of marines, embarked on board the
_Governor_; a steamer, as I recollect, not strictly of the river
order, but like those which ply outside on the Boston and Maine coast.
She went down, but not before her living freight had been removed by
the sailing-frigate _Sabine_. The first lieutenant of the latter, now
the senior rear-admiral on the retired list of the navy, soon
afterwards relieved Drayton in command of the _Pocahontas_; so that I
then heard at first hand many particulars which I wish I could now
repeat in his well-deserved honor. His distinguished share in the
rescue was of common notoriety; the details only we learned from his
modest but interesting account. The deliverance was facilitated by the
two vessels being on soundings. The _Governor_ anchored, and then the
_Sabine_ ahead of her, dropping down close to. The ground-tackle of
our naval ships, as we abundantly tested during the war, would hold
through anything, if the bottom let the anchor grip.
With very few exceptions all were saved, officers and privates; but
their clothes, except those they stood in, were left behind. The
colonel was a notorious martinet, as well as something of a character;
and a story ran that one of the subalterns had found himself at the
start unable to appear in some detail of uniform, his trunks having
gone astray. "A good soldier never separates from his baggage," said
the colonel, gruffly, on hearing the excuse. After various adventures,
common to missing personal effects, the lieutenant's trunks turned up
at Port Royal. He looked sympathetically at the colonel's shorn plumes
and meagre array, and said, reproachfully, "Colonel, where are your
trunks? A good soldier should never separate from his baggage." But,
doubtless, to follow it to the bottom of the sea would be an excess of
zeal.
Not long afterwards I was shipmate with an assistant surgeon who had
been detailed for duty on board the _Governor_, and had passed through
the scenes of anxiety and confusion preceding the rescue. He told me
one or two amusing incidents. An order being given to lighten the
ship, four marines ran into the cabin where he was lying, seized a
marble-top table, dropped the marble top on deck, and threw the wooden
legs overboard. There was also on board a very young naval officer,
barely out of the Academy. He was of Dutch blood and name--from
central Pennsylvania, I think. Although without much experience, he
was of the constitutionally self-possessed order, which enabled him to
be very useful. After a good deal of exertion, he also came into the
cabin. The surgeon asked him how things looked. "I think she will last
about half an hour," he replied, and then composedly lay down and went
to sleep.
There was in the hero of this anecdote a vein of eccentricity even
then, and he eventually died insane and young. I knew him only
slightly, but familiarly as to face. He had mild blue eyes and curly
brown hair, with a constant half-smile in eyes as well as mouth. In
temperament he was Dutch to the backbone--at least as we imagine
Dutch. A comical anecdote was told me of him a few years later,
illustrating his self-possession--cool to impudence. He was serving on
one of our big steam-sloops, a flag-ship at the time, and had charge
of working the cables on the gun-deck when anchoring. Going into a
port where the water was very deep--Rio de Janeiro, I believe--the
chain cables "got away," as the expression is; control was lost, and
shackle after shackle tore out of the hawse-holes, leaping and
thumping, rattling and roaring, stirring a lot of dust besides.
Indeed, the violent friction of iron against iron in such cases not
infrequently generates a stream of sparks. The weight of twenty
fathoms of this linked iron mass hanging outside, aided by the
momentum already established by the anchor's fall through a hundred
feet, of course drags after it all that lies unstoppered within. I
need not tell those who have witnessed such a commotion that the
orderly silence of a ship of war breaks down somewhat. Every one who
has any right to speak shouts, and repeats, in rapid succession,
"Haul-to that chain! Why the something or other don't you haul-to?"
while the unhappy compressor-men, saving their own wind to help their
arms, struggle wildly with the situation, under a storm of obloquy.
The admiral--by this time we had admirals--was a singular man,
something of a lawyer, acute, thinking he knew just how far he might
go in any case, and given at times to taking liberties with
subordinates, which were not to them always as humorous as they seemed
to him. In this instance he miscalculated somewhat. He was on deck at
the moment, and when the chain had been at last stopped and secured,
he said to the captain, "Alfred, send for the young man in charge of
those chains, and give him a good setting-down. Ask him what he means
by letting such things happen. Ride him down like a main-tack,
Alfred--like the main-tack!" The main-tack is the chief rope
controlling the biggest sail in the ship, and at times, close on the
wind, it has to be got down into place by the brute force of half a
hundred men, inch by inch, pull by pull. That is called riding down,
and is clearly a process the reverse of conciliatory. The Dutchman was
sent for, and soon his questioning blue eyes appeared over the hatch
coaming. Alfred--as my own name is Alfred, I may explain that I was
not that captain--Alfred was a mild person, and clearly did not like
his job; he could not have come up to the admiral's standard. The
latter saw it, and intervened: "Perhaps you had better leave it to me.
I'll settle him." Fixing his eyes on the offender, he said, sternly,
"What do you mean by this, sir? Why the h--l did you not stop that
chain?" This exordium was doubtless the prelude to a fit oratorical
display; but the culprit, looking quietly at him, replied, simply,
"How the h--l could I?" This was a shift of wind for which the admiral
was unprepared. He was taken flat back, like a screaming child
receiving a glass of cold water in his face. After a moment's
hesitation he turned to the captain, and said meekly, yet with evident
humorous consciousness of a checkmate, "That's true, Alfred; how the
h--l could he?"
Still, while the defence implied in the lieutenant's question is
logically unimpeachable, it does not follow that the method of the
admiral--as distinct from his manner, which need not be excused--was
irrational. The impulse of reprimand, applied at the top, where
ultimate responsibility rests, is transmitted through the intervening
links down to the actual culprits, and takes effect for future
occasions. As Marryat in one of his amusing passages says: "The
master's violence made the boatswain violent, which made the
boatswain's mate violent, and the captain of the forecastle also; all
which is practically exemplified by the laws of motion communicated
from one body to another; and as the master swore, so did the
boatswain swear, and the boatswain's mate, and the captain of the
forecastle, and all the men." An entertaining practical use of this
transmission of energy was made by an acquaintance of mine in China.
Going to bed one night, he found himself annoyed by a mosquito within
the net. He got up, provided himself with the necessities for his own
comfort during the period of discomfort which he projected for others,
and called the servant whose business it was to have crushed the
intruder. Him he sent in search of the man next above him, him in turn
for another, and so on until he reached the head of the domestic
hierarchy. When the whole body was assembled, he told them that they
were summoned to receive the information that "one piecee mosquito"
was inside his net, owing to the neglect of--pointing to the culprit.
This done, they were dismissed, in calm assurance that in future no
mosquito would disturb his night's rest, and that the desirable
castigation of the offender might be intrusted to his outraged
companions.
After the gale subsided, the _Pocahontas_ proceeded for the
rendezvous, just before reaching which we fell in with a
coal-schooner. Though a good fighting-ship, she carried only
sixty-three tons of coal, anthracite; for that alone we then used to
burn. The amount seems too absurd for belief, and it constituted a
very serious embarrassment on such duty as that of the South Carolina
and Georgia coasts. To economize, so as to remain as long as possible
away from the base at Port Royal, and yet to have the ship ready for
speedy movement, was a difficult problem; indeed, insoluble. We used
to meet it by keeping fires so low, when lying inside the blockaded
rivers, that we could not move promptly. This was a choice between
evils, which the event justified, but which might have been awkward
had the Confederates ever made a determined attempt at boarding with
largely superior force in several steamers, as happened at Galveston,
and once even by pulling boats in a Georgia river. Under steam, the
battery could be handled; anchored, an enemy could avoid it. With this
poor "coal endurance," as the modern expression has it, the captain
decided to fill up as he could. We therefore took the schooner in tow,
and were transferring from her, when the sound of cannonading was
heard. Evidently the attack had begun, and it was incumbent to get in,
not only on general principles, but for the captain's own reputation;
for although in service he was too well known to be doubted, the
outside world might see only that he was a South Carolinian. It was
recognition of this, I doubt not, that led Admiral Dupont, when we
passed the flag-ship after the action, to hail aloud, "Captain
Drayton, I knew you would be here;" a public expression of official
confidence. We were late, however, as it was; probably because our
short coal supply had compelled economical steaming, though as to this
my memory is uncertain. The _Pocahontas_ passed the batteries after
the main attack, in column on an elliptical course, had ceased, but
before the works had been abandoned; and being alone we received
proportionate attention for the few moments of passage. The enemy's
fire was "good line, but high;" our main-mast was irreparably
wounded, but the hull and crew escaped.
After the action there followed the usual scene of jollification. The
transports had remained outside, and now steamed up; bands playing,
troops hurrahing, and with the general expenditure of wind from vocal
organs which seems the necessary concomitant of such occasions. And
here the _Pocahontas_ again brought the _Seminole_ to grief. She had
anchored, but we kept under way, steaming about through the throng.
Drayton had binoculars in hand; and, while himself conning the ship,
was livelily interested in what was passing around. I believe also
that, though an unusually accomplished officer professionally, he had
done a good deal of staff duty; had less than the usual deck habit of
his period. Besides, men used mostly to sails seemed to think steamers
could get out of any scrape at any moment. However that be, after a
glance to see that we were rightly headed for a clear opening, he
began gazing about through his glasses, to the right hand and to the
left. He had lost thought of the tide, and in such circumstances as
ours a very few seconds does the business. When he next looked, we
were sweeping down on the _Seminole_ without a chance of retreat;
there was nothing but to go ahead fast, and save the hulls at least
from collision. Her flying jib-boom came in just behind our main-mast
(we had only two masts); and as the current of course was setting us
down steadily, the topping-lifts of our huge main boom caught her
jib-boom. Down came one of the big blocks from our mast-head, narrowly
missing the captain's head, while we took out of her all the head
booms as far as the bowsprit cap, leaving them dragging in helpless
confusion by her side. Then we anchored.
It is a nuisance to have to clear a wreck and repair damages; and the
injured party does not immediately recover his equanimity after such a
mishap, especially coming fresh upon a former instance of trouble
occasioned barely a fortnight before. But after a victory all things
are forgiven, and the more so to a man of Drayton's well-deserved
popularity. A little later in the day he went on board the flag-ship
to visit the admiral. When I met him at the gangway upon his return, I
had many questions to ask, and among others, "Have you learned who
commanded the enemy?" "Yes," he replied, with a half-smile; "it was my
brother."
Very soon afterwards he left us, before we again quitted port. He was
dissatisfied with the _Pocahontas_, partly on account of her coal
supply; and the captain of the _Pawnee_ then going home, he obtained
command of her. The _Pawnee_ was _sui generis_; in this like the
_Pocahontas_, only a good deal more so, representing somebody's fad. I
cannot vouch for the details of her construction; but, as I heard, she
was not only extremely broad in the beam, giving great battery
space,--which was plain to see,--but the bilge on each side was
reported to come lower than the keel, making, as it were, two hulls,
side by side, so that a sarcastic critic remarked, "One good point
about her is, that if she takes the ground, her keel at least is
protected." Like all our vessels at that time, she was of wood. Owing
to her build, she had for her tonnage very light draught and heavy
battery, and so was a capital fighting-ship in still, shoal waters;
but in a seaway she rolled so rapidly as to be a wretched gun
platform. Her first lieutenant assured me that in heavy weather a
glass of water could not get off the table. "Before it has begun to
slide on one roll, she is back on the other, and catches it
before it can start." This description was perhaps somewhat
picturesque--impressionist, as we now say; but it successfully
conveyed the idea, the object of all speech and impressions. However
satisfactory for glasses--not too full--it may be imagined that under
such conditions it would be difficult to draw sight on a target
between rolls. Whatever her defects, the _Pawnee_ was admirably
adapted for the inland work of which there was much in those parts,
behind the sea islands; and she continued so employed throughout the
war. I met her there as late as the last six months of it. But she was
not reproduced, and remains to memory only; an incident of the
speculative views and doubting progresses of the decade before the War
of Secession.
Drayton's successor was one of the senior lieutenants of the fleet,
George B. Balch, late the first of the _Sabine_ frigate. His services
in saving the people of the _Governor_ have already been mentioned. He
still survives in venerable old age; but Drayton, who later on was
with Farragut at Mobile, being captain of the flag-ship _Hartford_ and
chief of staff at the time of the passage of the forts, was cut off
prematurely by a short illness within six months after hostilities
ended. Balch remained with us till the _Pocahontas_ returned North,
ten months later. He was an officer of varied service, and like all
such, some more, some less, abounded in anecdote of his own
experiences. A great deal that might be instructive, and more still
that is entertaining, is lost by our slippery memories and the rarity
of the journal-keeping habit. I remember distinctly only two of his
stories. One related to a matter which now belongs to naval
archaeology,--"backing and filling in a tideway," by a ship under sail.
In this, in a winding channel, the ship sets towards her destination
with the current, up or down, carrying only enough canvas, usually the
three topsails, to be under control; to move her a little ahead, or a
little astern, keeping in the strength of the stream, or shifting
position as conditions of the navigation require. Backing is a term
which explains itself; filling applies to the sails when so trimmed as
to move the vessel ahead. Sometimes a reach of the river permits the
sails to be braced full, and she bowls along merrily under way; anon a
turn comes where she can only lie across, balanced as to headway by
the main topsail aback. Then the smallest topsail, the mizzen, has a
game in its hands. The ship, as she drifts up or down, may need to be
moved a little astern, more or less, to avoid a shoal or what not; and
to do this the sail mentioned is braced either to shake, neutralizing
it, or to bring it also aback, as the occasion demands. This rather
long preamble is perilously like explaining a joke, but it is
necessary. Balch had seen a good deal of this work in China, and he
told us that the Chinese pilot's expression, if he wanted the sail
shaken, was "Makee sick the mizzen topsail;" but if aback, he added,
"Kill him dead." I wonder does that give us an insight into the
nautical idiom of the Chinese, who within the limitations of their
needs are prime seamen.
By the time I got to China, two years after the War of Secession,
steam had relieved naval vessels from backing and filling. I once,
however, saw the principle applied to a steamer in the Paraguay River.
We were returning from a visit to Asuncion, and had a local pilot, who
was needed less for the Paraguay, which though winding is fairly
clear, than for the Parana, the lower stream, which finally merges in
the Rio de la Plata and is constantly changing its bed. We had
anchored for the night just above a bend, head of course up-stream,
for the tide does not reach so far. The next morning the pilot was
bothered to turn her round, for she was a long paddle steamer, not
very handy. He seemed to be in a nautical quandary, similar to that
which the elder Mr. Weller described as "being on the wrong side of
the road, backing into the palings, and all manner of unpleasantness."
The captain watched him fuming for a few minutes, and then said, "Is
there any particular trouble on either hand, or is it only the
narrowness?" The pilot said no; the bottom was clear. "Well," said the
captain, "why not cast her to port, and let her drift till she heads
fair for the turn below?" This was done easily, and indeed was one of
those things which would be almost foolishly simple did we not all
have experience of overlooking expedients that lie immediately under
our noses.
Balch's other story which I recall was at the moment simply humorous,
but has since seemed to me charged with homely wisdom of
wide application. He had made a rather longish voyage in a
merchant-steamer, and during it used to amuse himself doing navigation
work in company with her master, or mate. On one occasion a discussion
arose between them as to some result, and Balch in the course of the
argument said, "Figures won't lie." "Yes, that's all right," rejoined
the other, "figures won't lie, if you work them right; but you must
work them right, Mr. Balch." I was too young then to have noted a
somewhat similar remark about statistics; and I think now, after a
pretty long observation of mankind, its records and its statements,
that I should be inclined to extend that old seaman's comments to
facts also. Facts won't lie, if you work them right; but if you work
them wrong, a little disproportion in the emphasis, a slight
exaggeration of color, a little more or less limelight on this or that
part of the grouping, and the result is not truth, even though each
individual fact be as unimpeachable as the multiplication table.
After the capture of Port Royal, and the establishment there of the
naval base, and until the arrival of monitors a year later, operations
of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, as it was styled, were
confined to blockading. This took two principal forms. The
fortifications of Charleston and Savannah being still in the hands of
the enemy, and intact, these two chief seaports of that coast were
unassailable by our fleet. Even after Fort Sumter had been battered to
a shapeless heap of masonry, and Fort Pulaski had surrendered,
neither city fell until Sherman's march took it in the rear. But the
numerous inlets were substantially undefended against naval attack;
and for them the blockade, that tremendously potent instrument of the
national pressure, the work of which has been too little commemorated,
was instituted almost universally within. Even Fort Pulaski, before
its fall, though it sealed the highway to Savannah, could not prevent
the Union vessels from occupying the inside anchorage off Tybee
Island, completely closing the usual access from the sea to the town.
During the ensuing ten months there were very few of these entrances,
from Georgetown, the northernmost in South Carolina, down to
Fernandina, in Florida, into which the _Pocahontas_ did not penetrate,
alone or in company. I do not know whether people in other parts of
the country realize that these various inlets are connected by an
inside navigation, behind the sea islands, as they are called, the
whole making a system of sheltered intercommunication. The usefulness
of this was reinforced by the numerous navigable rivers which afford
water roads to the interior, and gave a vessel, once entered, refuge
beyond the reach of the blockaders' arm, with ready means for
distribution. Such a gift of nature to a community, however, has the
defects of its qualities. Ease of access, and freedom of movement in
all directions, now existed for foe as it had for friend, and the very
facility which such surroundings bestow had prevented the timely
creation of an alternative. Deprival consequently was doubly severe.