The fourth day of June the Eleventh went on board the steamer Boston
and sailed for Fernandina, Fla., to relieve the 7th New Hampshire.
Fernandina, a city of two or three thousand inhabitants, is situated on
the Cumberland Sound side of Amelia Island, a large island off the
Florida coast particularly, though from Fernandina in sight of a
southeastern bit of the State of Georgia.
For four months we garrisoned Amelia Island; those of the Eleventh that
did not go from there to Morris Island with Lieutenant Sellmer of D,
who took a detachment made up of men from Companies C, E, G and K, to
the siege of Charleston, they manning the famous Swamp Angel battery.
We that were left behind at Fernandina, excepting Companies A,
stationed at the Railroad Bridge, and C, garrisoning Fort Clinch at the
mouth of the harbor, were languidly occupied for these four months with
our camp and picket duties, the picket one being the only duty at all
arduous. This picket service was entirely confined to guarding the
railroad that comes into Fernandina from across a bridgeable point of
the sound. In fact, this was the only way the enemy could get at us
except by boats, the road running through a series of the swamps, the
south half of Amelia Island seeming to be formed of hummocks of
comparatively dry ground. It was on some of these hummocks that our
picket posts were stationed, on rises of ground in the middle of
alligator and snake-invested swamps, where a breed of the most
sanguinary mosquitoes imaginable filled the air at night to an extent
that not only made it impossible for a man to sleep, but forced him to
keep his already net-covered head in a thick smudge of smoke.
Admiral Ammen says that Amelia Island contributed so little to the
purpose of the Confederates, that, though they fought for Port Royal,
they made us a present of Amelia Island, evacuating it so thoroughly,
Fort Clinch and all, that but a few rifle shots were fired from
thickets on the fleet that captured it. Still, whether from pride or
wholesome military caution I know not, still our commander would have
it that we occupied a post of extreme danger, and that we were liable
to be surprised and overwhelmed by a superior force at any time. And
one night for some reason yet unknown to me, there came a general
alarm, routing out all of our little army, even the peaceful camp guard
being aroused from its slumbers and its sergeant ordered to fall his
men in and follow the commander of the post. The commander led us to
the road that runs from Fernandina to Old Town (once _the_ Fernandina
itself), near Fort Clinch, and we followed him into the swamp that lies
between the old and the new towns, a swamp that is an impassable jungle
of trees and tangled grape vines, the haunt of alligators and snakes
and the breeding place of the most blood-thirsty breed of mosquitoes
I ever had fasten upon me, led us down into the head of the narrow
corduroy road running across this swamp, and bade us stand there and
hold the pass at all hazards, for all I now remember throwing out a few
encouraging words about the fame of Thermopyle and the Immortal Three
Hundred, then turned and rode away towards Fernandina, with his orderly
dangling at his heels, leaving us in the midst of a dense and
ever-thickening cloud of bayonet-billed mosquitoes.
The enemy? Suppose he was to land at Old Town, take Fort Clinch, and
put Captain Nickels and its garrison to the sword, must we stand there
and be eaten alive for a little thing like that? Not if we knew it. We
forthwith resolved ourselves into a council of war, with the result
that we marched ourselves to the high land overlooking the swamp, where
the night breeze swept the pursuing mosquitoes back into their haunts.
Then, after stationing a guard between us and Fernandina to prevent our
alert commander from surprising us, we went into bivouac, confident
that our danger did not lie towards Fort Clinch, for neither loyal nor
rebel was yet so desperate as to tread that stretch of mosquito,
alligator, snake-infested swamp road in the darkness of a moonless
night. After some weeks spent on this, then isolated island, where a
mail steamer from Port Royal put in only about once in three weeks, and
no other vessel, except the gunboat cruising on the Cumberland Sound
station, ever put in except when forced to by an extraordinary Atlantic
gale, the Eleventh was relieved by the 97th Pennsylvania, and October
6th went on board the Boston again to proceed to Morris Island, that it
might take part in the siege of Charleston.