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 a
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 home 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
filibusters--swarming with mosquitos. 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 ploughed
through the sea _pari passu_ for some hundred yards leeward at 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 blush 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 re-entering 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 sharpset 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 having 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 fastnesses, rounds up on 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 trends 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 Sebastopol, 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 to 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 were 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 ten 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 ten-inch Dahlgren columbiads, and the formidable
eleven-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 any thing 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 six-pound
calibre carrying a twelve-pound 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, field-pieces 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 be rash
enough 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 22 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
300 or 400 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
ship-house of the navy-yard which had witnessed her baptism. In the year
1858 she was summoned from her retirement to officiate as flag-ship 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
flag-ship, 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 the 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 with 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 form part of the Virginia division
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 _vivandiere_ 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 only 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
seeming 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 parapets, and seem solid enough to defy the batteries ensconced
in earthworks around the lighthouse, which to an outside glance seems
the most formidable point of 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 main-shore, 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 mainyards 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 aid of the quartermaster-general through the shady
streets of this graceful little village, which covers an enclosure of
300 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.
The navy-yard is, properly speaking, a settlement of exceedingly neat
detached houses, with gardens in front, porticoes, pillars, verandahs,
and Venetian blinds to aid the dense trees in keeping off the scorching
rays of the sun, which is intensely powerful in the summer, and is now
blazing so fiercely as to force one to admit the assertion that the
average temperature is as high as that of Calcutta to be very probable.
The grass-plots under these trees are covered with neat piles of
cannonballs, mostly of small size; two obsolete mortars--one dated
1776--are placed in the main avenue. Tents are pitched under the trees,
and the houses are all occupied by officers, who are chatting, smoking,
and drinking at the open windows. A number of men in semi-military
dresses of various sorts and side-arms are lounging about the quays and
the lawns before the houses. Into one of these I am escorted, and find
myself at a very pleasant mess, of whom the greater number are officers
of the Zouave corps, from New Orleans--one, a Dane, has served at
Idstedt, Kiel, Frederichstadt; another foreigner has seen service in
South America; another has fought in half the insurrectionary wars in
Europe. The wine is abundant, the fare good, the laughter and talk loud.
Mr. Davis has been down all day from Montgomery, accompanied by Mrs.
Davis, Mr. Maloney, and Mr. Wigfall, and they all think his presence
means immediate action.
The only ship here is the shell of the old Fulton, which is on the
stocks, but the works of the navy-yard are useful in casting shot,
shell, and preparing munitions of war. An aide-de-camp from General
Bragg entered as we were sitting at table, and invited me to attend him
to the general’s quarters. The road, as I found, was very long and very
disagreeable, owing to the depth of the sand, into which the foot sank
at every step up to the ankle. Passing the front of an extended row of
the clean, airy, pretty villas inside the navy-yard, we passed the gate
on exhibiting our passes, and proceeded by the sea-beach, one side of
which is lined with houses, a few yards from the surf. These houses are
all occupied by troops, or are used as bar-rooms or magazines. At
intervals a few guns have been placed along the beach, covered by
sand-bags, parapets, and traverses. As we toiled along in the sand the
aide hailed a cart, pressed it into the service, and we continued our
journey less painfully. Suddenly a tall, straight-backed man in a blue
frock-coat, with a star on the epaulette strap, a smart kepi, and
trowsers with gold stripe, and large brass spurs, rode past on a
high-stepping powerful charger, followed by an orderly. “There is
General Bragg,” said his aide. The general turned round, reined up, and
I was presented as I sat in my state chariot. The commander of the
Confederated States army at Pensacola is about forty-two years of age,
of a spare and powerful frame; his face is dark, and marked with deep
lines, his mouth large, and squarely set in determined jaws, and his
eyes, sagacious, penetrating, and not by any means unkindly, look out at
you from beetle brows which run straight across and spring into a thick
tuft of black hair, which is thickest over the nose, where naturally it
usually leaves an intervening space. His hair is dark, and he wears such
regulation whiskers as were the delight of our generals a few years
ago. His manner is quick and frank, and his smile is very pleasing and
agreeable. The general would not hear of my continuing my journey to his
quarters in a cart, and his orderly brought up an ambulance, drawn by a
smart pair of mules, in which I completed it satisfactorily.