CHAPTER I
THE OUTBREAK OF THE CIVIL WAR
IN 1859, after seventeen years of almost continuous sea service, for during all that time I had never been on shore more than two months at any one time, I determined to abandon the sea and pass the remainder of my life on shore.
The fact that I had just taken to myself a wife was, no doubt, a very potent factor in bringing me to this decision, which was strengthened by a favorable opportunity being presented just then for investing my savings in a safe commercial enterprise in Boston.
So I fell in with it, rented a nice little house in a pleasant suburb within sight of the gilded dome of the State House, and there set up my lares and penates.
At first this radical change from the free and easy habits of a sea life to the more rigid conventional routine of a mercantile career rather irked me, but by the end of a year I had shaken down into my new rôle, and should probably have become reasonably well contented to pass the remainder of my days in a ’longshore life, had it not been for the march of events, which, in bringing about the upheaval of a nation, sent me off on salt water again.
Early in April, 1861, the North was startled by the news of the attack upon Fort Sumter by the Southern forces, which followed so quickly after the secession of South Carolina, and on the 19th of the month the excitement in Boston was sent up to fever heat by the telegrams announcing the cowardly attack upon the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment by the Baltimore roughs, on its passage through that city.
The youngsters who are living in these peaceful days cannot possibly realize the state of public feeling in New England at that time. Business was practically suspended, and the sole thought of the people was to avenge the insult to our flag and the murder of our soldier boys. The enrolling officers worked day and night, and companies and regiments were raised, equipped, and hurried to the front with amazing alacrity.
In common with all my friends and neighbors, I, too, was full of patriotic zeal, and should probably have enlisted in one of the numerous regiments forming, had not my attention been directed to an article in the “Boston Transcript” which referred to the great number of resignations of Southern naval officers that were pouring in on the Navy Department, and expressed a fear that our navy would be hopelessly crippled, as the Southern officers predominated so greatly in that branch of the service.
This gave me an idea, and I at once called upon the late Robert Bennett Forbes, the public-spirited merchant and shipowner, whose wise counsels in this exigency had been sought by Mr. Welles, President Lincoln’s newly appointed Secretary of the Navy.
Mr. Forbes was in his private office, deeply immersed in his private correspondence, when I called, but he courteously listened to me when I asked him why the vacancies in the navy could not be filled by the intelligent and experienced officers of the mercantile marine.
“I have already made such a suggestion to the Secretary of the Navy, Captain Kelson,” said he, “and I have also sent him a list of a number of gentlemen whom I consider competent to fill the position of ‘master’ in the navy.”
“Mr. Forbes,” I responded, “will you not include my name in your list? You know something of my qualifications, I think.”
With the promptitude that was a very notable characteristic of the man, he turned to his desk and wrote a brief letter to Mr. Welles, which he handed to me unsealed. “Take that on to Washington, yourself, Captain Kelson, and to supplement it, get half a dozen others from Boston shipowners who know you.”
I did as he suggested, and within twenty-four hours was on my way to Washington. My interview with the Secretary was brief, but to the point. He read all my letters, asked me a half dozen pregnant questions, and then, writing a few words on a slip of paper, rang for a messenger and sent me with him across the corridor to the Bureau of Detail, where Captain Charles Henry Davis—afterward Rear Admiral Davis—prepared my appointment as an Acting Master in the United States Navy.
While the document was sent back to the Secretary for his signature I took the oath of allegiance, and my orders were at once made out to the United States steamer Richmond.
Thus quickly was I transformed into an officer in the navy and assigned to a ship, a fact I could not realize as I walked down the steps of the building, which I had entered less than an hour before as a private citizen. But events, both public and private, moved quickly in those stirring days.
On my way up Pennsylvania Avenue I stopped in at an outfitter’s and purchased a naval cap, and found an undress blue navy flannel blouse which fitted me. Upon the shoulders of this garment the tailor attached the straps of my grade, and, with trousers to match my coat, I returned to the hotel in time for dinner, a full-fledged officer, rather to the surprise of the clerk, who had seen me go out a few hours before in citizen’s costume.
The next morning, in company with a friend, I hired a horse and buggy, and, obtaining a pass, drove over the “long bridge” and out about ten miles, to the encampment of our army.
This was but a few weeks before the disastrous battle of Bull Run, but at the time of the visit our troops were in high feather and felt very confident that the war was to be only an affair of a few months; a mere military promenade to Richmond.
All the officers I met seemed so confident of the result that I became half converted to their theory, and feared that I had made a mistake in going into the navy for such a brief period as the war was to continue. The real awakening from our dream came sharply when these same troops, a month later, were pouring into Washington a beaten, disorganized rabble!
The following day I went on to New York, where I found the Richmond at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and, by a most curious coincidence, at the very wharf where I had gone on board the Bombay nearly twenty years before.
The Richmond had just arrived from the Mediterranean, whence she had been recalled by cablegram. After reporting to the executive officer I obtained a week’s leave of absence and returned to Boston.
During that brief time I made such arrangements as were necessary for the comfort of my little family and for the proper continuance of my business, in which there was very little doing just then, and at the end of the week reported again on board my ship at Brooklyn.
The Richmond was rated as a second-class steam sloop-of-war. She was pierced for twenty-six guns, but mounted twenty-two 9-inch Dahlgren guns in broadside. She was almost a new vessel, a good stanch ship of her class, which included the Hartford, the Brooklyn, and the Pensacola. She was rather slow, making with favorable conditions about ten knots under steam. Before the wind or at anchor in a seaway she had a capacity for rolling beyond that of any ship I ever saw, before or since. Her performances in that direction a year later, when we were on the blockade of Mobile, afforded a constant source of interest and admiration to the entire fleet, but were exceedingly unsatisfactory to us who were compelled to endure them. She was commanded by Captain John Pope, and had a complement of nearly four hundred officers and men.
I am thus particular in describing her, for she was to be my home for the next eventful two years.
Not long after I received my appointment, on June 30, 1861, news came to Washington of the escape from New Orleans of the Confederate privateer Sumter, under the command of Captain Rafael Semmes.
This steamer, originally the Havana, had been fitted out by the Confederate authorities, and although the mouth of the Mississippi was closely blockaded by the United States steamer Brooklyn, with two other ships, Semmes watched an opportunity when the Brooklyn was chasing a decoy vessel off shore, and dashing out, by her superior speed escaped our fleet.
Three days later, she captured and burned at sea the ship Golden Rocket, and by July 6 seven more prizes had been taken by this dashing privateer.
This, of course, created a tremendous excitement throughout the country, and our government sent every available ship they had in pursuit of her.
Orders also came to Captain Pope to hasten his preparations for sea, and on August 3 we sailed under sealed orders, which, when opened at sea, proved to be directions to make a thorough search for thirty days through the West India islands for the Sumter, and, failing to fall in with her, to join the West Gulf Squadron, then commanded by Flag Officer Mervine.
So we started on what proved to be a wild-goose chase, but which gave us an opportunity of making a very agreeable cruise, with the constant excitement of a possible capture that would have brought us no end of glory.
Among other incidents, we fell in one day with the wreck of Her Britannic Majesty’s ship Driver, piled up on a reef off Mariquana Island, with her crew living ashore under tents they had improvised from the ship’s sails.
We were boarded by her commanding officer, who bore the historic name of Horatio Nelson. He seemed to be a kind of nautical Mark Tapley, exceedingly jolly under very trying circumstances, and perfectly at ease, notwithstanding his ship was a total loss.
In fact, he appeared to look upon that as a mere incident of the cruise, and declined our offers of assistance, saying he “was all right, barring the blasted mosquitoes, don’t you know!” He was every day looking for the arrival of a British man-of-war to take them off, as he had sent a launch down to Port Royal for assistance.
At last, having nearly exhausted our coal, we steamed into Port Royal, Jamaica, on August 21, to obtain a fresh supply. Here we met the Powhatan, Commander David D. Porter, homeward bound after an ineffectual hunt after the Sumter.
After coaling, our thirty days having expired, we ran down to Key West and the Dry Tortugas, and stopping for a day off Pensacola at Fort Pickens, we received orders from the flagship to relieve the Brooklyn off the Passes of the Mississippi.
We anchored off the Pass à L’Outre, September 13, and soon after, the Brooklyn and St. Louis sailed for home, and the Niagara for Pensacola, leaving us with the Vincennes and the Preble to blockade the entrance to the river.
A week later, we were joined by the little steamer Water Witch, a vessel that had distinguished herself some years before in the ascent of the river Amazon. We then settled down to the monotonous and wearying routine duty that was to be our lot for nearly a year on this blockade.