From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life

When I joined, the Pocahontas was lying off the Washington 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 archæology,—"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 Paraná, 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.