From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life

by A. T. Mahan

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.

It thus came to pass that, by a gradual process of elimination, blockade in the usual sense of the word, blockade outside, became confined to Charleston and its approaches. It is true that much depended on the class of vessel. It was obviously inexpedient to expose sailing-ships where they might be attacked by steamers, in ground also too contracted for manœuvring; and two years later I found myself again blockading Georgetown, in a paddle steamer from the merchant service, the size and unwieldiness of which prevented her entering. Moreover, torpedoes had then begun to play a part in the war, though still in a very primitive stage of development. But in 1862 there was little outside work except at Charleston. The very reasons which determine the original selection of a port—facility for entrance, abundant anchorage, and ease of access to the interior for distribution and receipt of the articles of commerce—determine also the accumulation of defences, to the exclusion of other less favored localities. All these conditions, natural and artificial, combined with the Union occupancy of the other inlets to concentrate blockade-running upon Charleston. This in turn drew thither the blockaders, which had to be the more numerous because the harbor could be entered by two or more channels, widely separated. There was thus constituted a blockade society, which contrasted agreeably with the somewhat hermit-like existence of the smaller stations. The weather was usually pleasant enough—many Northerners now know the winter climate of South Carolina—so during the daytime the ships would lift their anchors and get more or less together; the officers, and to a less extent the crews, exchanging visits. Old acquaintanceships were renewed, former cruises discussed, "yarns" interchanged; and then there was always the war with its happenings. Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Shiloh, the Monitor and Merrimac fight, the capture of New Orleans by Farragut, all occurred during the stay of the Pocahontas upon the blockade in 1862. Our news was apt to be ten days old, but to us it was as good as new; indeed, somewhat better, for we heard of the first reverses at Shiloh, and by the hands of the Merrimac, by the same mail which brought word of the final decided victory. Thus we were spared the anxiety of suspense. Even the disasters about Richmond were not by us fairly appreciated until the ship returned North, when the mortification of defeat was somewhat solaced, and the tendency to despondency lessened, by the happiness of being again at home; in my case after a continuous absence of more than three years, in the Congress and Pocahontas.