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.