John Randolph Spears

“ That the politicians should have been secessionists is not at all a matter of wonder. It was entirely natural. But how a Tatnall, the story of whose bravery at Vera Cruz still thrills the heart; how an Ingraham, whose quick defence of the rights of a half-fledged American in the Mediterranean is still an example to all naval officers—how these men could have placed the call of friends and neighbors and a State above the obligation of their oath to support the Constitution, is something that is now incomprehensible. ”

“ The determination of the people of the North to preserve the American nation intact was growing, under the shame of early reverses ashore, into a mighty tide that was to be irresistible at the last. A blockade was established within the time mentioned, in which even the critical eye of British men-o’-warsmen, sent especially to examine it in the interests of British commerce, could find no flaw. ”

“ The roar of the cannon echoed to the boom and rumble of the thunder. But the lightning that revealed the “phantom ship” blinded the eyes of the gunners, and they strove in vain to aim their guns with accuracy. The Carondelet passed unharmed, and the fate of Island No. 10 was sealed.
The hardy spirit of the brave Walke has never been sufficiently appreciated. This was because other batteries were run safely later on. But Walke was not only the pioneer. He alone of all the captains in Foote’s command favored the project from the first. ”

“ To the mind of any other man than a Cushing the expedition was a failure, but casting off the cutter with orders to pull for life, Cushing turned his launch out into the stream, swung her around in a wide circle to give her full speed, and then headed straight at the log-boom abreast of the fated ram. A host of Confederates gathered on the ram’s deck to beat him off. Two howitzers loaded with canister, and a score of muskets, were fired at him, and a man by his side fell, but Cushing with his own well-aimed howitzer scattered the Confederate host. ”

“ On the contrary, the New York was an assurance that in our dealings with other peoples we would “not be influenced, or even be suspected of being influenced, by a consciousness of weakness on the sea.” Nations are like dogs in this, that the weaker must needs put his tail between his legs and sneak away when trouble brews. But, if any one doubts that nations are bullies, let him consider the names that are given to534 ships in Europe. With the New York afloat, the American patriot was so far assured that his country would not be bullied, and so we should have peace. ”

“ The400 anchor was slipped, and with signals flying to direct the Monongahela, Lackawanna, and Ossipee to ram the Confederate ship, and the monitors to attack her, the Hartford headed at full speed to lead the ramming gunboats. In this the spirit of Farragut was shown even more faithfully than when he braved the fire of the forts, for the Tennessee was a much more powerful ship than the Merrimac, and the Hartford was not so powerful as any of the steamers that lay in Hampton Roads when the Merrimac made her first raid. ”

“ The water had risen at this time to the gun-deck, and the ship was heeling swiftly to port. There was need of haste if the crew were to save themselves even by swimming, but with their feet in the rising flood one crew lingered to fire a last shot. And as its smoke rolled from the ship’s side she sank out of sight with her flag flying.
“Never did a crew fight a ship with more spirit and hardihood than these brave fellows of the Cumberland while the vessel was going down. ”

“ But, if the story of the American navy has been written here as the writer understood it, then it is apparent that the American’s hope of peace has always rested on the efficiency of a modest number of ships. We have had peace with the aggressive nations of the earth while we have had an efficient force afloat, and we have suffered humiliation when we have neglected our navy. To make the appeal that is likely to be effective, history shows that it does not pay to try to get on without a navy. ”

“ But when all has been told and written about the history of the American navy since the Civil War, the one significant fact of all is this: we have from our own resources, mental and material, sent afloat a White Squadron that, though small in number, is fit to keep the sea in spite of foul weather or any other foul force. ”

“ As the Confederates came in range the Cincinnati opened fire and stood her ground. The Confederates scattered at once, but continued advancing. The leading Confederate boat, the General Bragg, hugged the Arkansas shore, passed above the Cincinnati, and then turning around, drove her bow into the unprotected quarter of the lone government boat. The two boats were alongside each other in a moment, and the Cincinnati gave the Confederate boat a broadside that sent her skurrying down the stream and out of the battle. ”

“ If the British were wrong in taking the American from a Dutch ship and treating him as a criminal in 1780, the Americans were wrong in taking the Confederate envoys from the British ship in 1861 and treating them as criminals. ”

“ It was a far cry from the sailing ships of the old days to the steam frigates of the later, but it was a farther one, and a cry over the shoulder at that, from the men who swept the seas25 under the once-despised gridiron flag to those who carried the American naval commissions in 1859. It was not that courage and enterprise were dead, or knowledge and skill were lacking. There were, of course, men a-plenty who were brave and tactful and energetic and learned—plenty who were to become during the war men of the widest fame. ”

“ So it might—so it usually did happen that a blockade-runner carried one man (the pilot) whose courage and firmness excite the heartiest approbation of every unprejudiced mind, while every other member of the crew was at heart a coward who dared not fight the blockaders in pursuit, and a sneak who would sell his soul for gold.
However, even the trick of transferring cargo at Nassau did not serve them long, for “it was held that the ships carrying on this traffic to neutral ports were confiscable, provided the ultimate destination of the cargo to a blockaded port was known to the owner.” ”

“ As to the legal status of a blockade-runner,58 Taylor says: “The blockading force is entitled to treat such a ship in all respects as an enemy, and to use any means recognized in civilized warfare to drive off, capture or destroy her. A crew so captured may be treated as prisoners of war, nor is any resistance to capture permitted, and a single blow or shot in his own defence turns the blockade-runner into a pirate.” ”

“ The most instructive chapter in the history of the United States is that relating to the deeds of the cruisers in the Confederate navy; for, though few in number, they proved to the world that the over-sea commerce of a nation at war could be swept away entirely by means so inexpensive and of such little power as to be absolutely insignificant. Consider the first Confederate cruiser worth mention—the Sumter. She was a small coaster lying at New Orleans. ”

“ Every shot reached home in the parapet, and some passed clear through to lodge in and fire the barracks of the Confederates. The Confederates fought back stubbornly. “The fort seemed a blaze of fire.” Their shells drove the officers of the boats down into the casemates, but when the casemates were struck the projectiles bounded clear, doing little or no harm until the battle had raged for nearly fifty minutes. Then the gunner in charge of the Confederate rifle got the range of the Essex and drove his sixty-pound shell right through her bow armor just above a port. ”

“ The people there were dependent on commerce for their supplies of even the most common necessities of life—for household goods, for clothing, and even for some kinds of food. And as for the arms and supplies needed for a war, there was one small powder mill, but nothing more in all the South, unless, indeed, the existence of the Tredegar iron mills at Richmond might be called a gun and engine factory. ”

“ It is a matter of the greatest moment when our ship of 11,500 tons is conceded to be a match for one of 15,000 tons in the best navy of the world—not because we have the ship, but because we have developed the men who can do that kind of work and the tools for their use. ”

“ Every citizen of every town in the United States, to which a creek leads that can float a canoe, becomes henceforward ‘a merchant’; and the grower of wheat or tobacco sends his son to a counting-house, that he may be initiated in the profitable art of falsifying ship’s papers, and covering belligerent property. ”

“ At this writing there is trouble between Spain and the people of Cuba. If a Cuban agent escaped from Cuba to the United States and sailed from New York in an American liner for England, would the government of the United States permit a Spanish warship to carry the Yankee liner to Spain and there have her condemned as a prize? As this question must be answered in the negative, it is impossible to resist saying that in the Trent case the British government, instead of showing a spirit hostile toward the American government, was, in spite of the time limit, forbearing. ”

“ The insurgents would have been driven into making peace very quickly but for the fact that the British, in the interests of trade and politics, were very anxious to have the monarchy restored. British residents of Rio Janeiro contributed considerable sums of money to the support of the rebels and served actively as spies on the government. The senior officer of the British navy present, under the plea of neutrality, was able to see that the rebel leaders received all the rights of belligerents, although no nation had accorded these rights to them. ”

“ The Confederates were entitled to the rights of belligerents—they at least became entitled to them the moment that President Lincoln issued his proclamation blockading the Southern ports. There is no point of international law more firmly established now than that a proclamation of a blockade carries with it a concession that war exists between the blockaders and the blockaded. ”

“ But on November 8, 1861, an American captain, being not well informed in the causes of America’s fights for life and liberty, undertook the very act that, when done by Great Britain, led to the War of 1812. He stopped a neutral ship on the high seas and took from her men whom he declared to be American citizens, and without any form of trial haled them away to a condition that was in law, if not in fact, exactly the condition of the impressed American seamen before the War of 1812. Great Britain had often taken advantage of such an act ”

“ Here the water over the bar is, at high tide, usually fourteen feet deep; within is a safe anchorage for any ship that can pass in. But a mile inside the bar lies another, where the water is ordinarily but seven feet deep. Once across that, plenty of deep water is found, both north and south, and away inland to the ports whence came, in those days, the bounties of nature called naval stores. Hatteras is of small importance in these days, since railroads have been stretched along the coast, but the time was when not a small fleet of coasters used it regularly. ”

“ The Florida was but 300 yards away, and yet so wretched was the American marksmanship, that the broadsides cut the rigging and tore away the upper part of her bulwarks. One shell did, indeed, pass through and through the Florida near the water-line, to explode beyond her, but it did her no material damage. She passed in clear. The remarks which all the writers on the subject make about the narrow margin of luck in the time fuse of that one shell are not adapted to increase one’s respect for the ability of the gunners. ”

“ Eventually it became apparent that no dashing exploit could restore Confederate supremacy there, and their hope was dying, when two flatboat-builders living at Edward’s Ferry, on the Roanoke River, offered to build an ironclad, somewhat on the plan of the Merrimac, that should be able to navigate the shoal waters of the Sound and yet be invulnerable to the shot of the Union gunboats. Because the water at Hatteras Inlet was too shoal for any of the Union ironclads to pass, it was reasonable to suppose a well-built craft could clear the Union wooden gunboats from the waters of North Carolina. ”

“ Barriers appeal to the unlearned mind, but they have never obstructed a fleet that was commanded by a determined man. Rafts of big cypress logs were built and anchored in line, and then chain cables taken from the Pensacola Navy Yard were stretched from trees on the Fort Jackson side over these supporting rafts to heavy anchors buried on the east side. Before Farragut arrived the floods of spring and the accumulation of driftwood had broken the barrier, but it was renewed by substituting schooners in place of the rafts where the current was heaviest. ”