Sailor Jack, the Trader

by Harry Castlemon

If you have read “Marcy, the Blockade-Runner,” you will remember that the Sabine was under the command of men who did not intend to remain prisoners a minute longer than they were obliged to; that the rebel banner had no sooner been hoisted at the peak in the place of their own flag, than they began laying plans to haul it down again, and that the captured brig was in the hands of the prize crew not more than twelve hours. Captain Semmes could not burn her as he would have been glad to do, for it so happened that she had a neutral cargo on board. The sugar and molasses with which her hold was filled were consigned to an English port in the island of Jamaica, and if he had destroyed it by applying the torch to the Sabine, the rebel commander would surely have brought his government into trouble with England. That was something he could not afford to do, so he determined to take his prize into the nearest Cuban port, in the hope that the Spanish authorities would permit him to land the cargo and sell the brig for the benefit of the Confederate government. There is every reason to believe that he would have been disappointed, for Spain was too friendly to the United States to give aid and comfort to her enemies; but before the matter could be put to the test the Sabine’s men, with Jack Gray at their head, quietly overpowered the rebel prize crew that had been put aboard of her and filled away for Key West, which was the nearest Federal naval station. When they arrived there they turned their five prisoners over to the commandant and set sail for Boston, taking with them the valuable cargo that ought to have gone to Jamaica. When off the coast of North Carolina they had a short but rather exciting race with Captain Beardsley’s privateer Osprey, on which Marcy Gray, Sailor Jack’s brother, was serving as pilot; but the Sabine was too swift to be overhauled, and her skipper too wide-awake to be deceived by the sight of the friendly flag which their pursuers gave to the breeze in the hope of alluring the defenceless merchantman to her destruction.

How the brig’s owners accounted for the cargo of molasses and sugar they so unexpectedly found on their hands Jack Gray neither knew nor cared, for his first and only thought was to reach home and see how his mother and Marcy were getting on. In this the master of the Sabine stood his friend by securing for him a berth as second officer on board the fleet schooner West Wind, which, while claiming to be an honest coaster, was really engaged in a contraband trade that would have made her a lawful prize to the first Federal blockader that happened to overhaul and search her. Jack knew all about it and understood the risk he was taking; but he accepted the position when it was offered, because he could not see that there was any other way for him to get home. Although the schooner’s cargo was consigned to a well-known American firm in Havana, the owners did not mean that it should go there at all. They intended that it should be run through the blockade and sold at Newbern. Captain Frazier explained all this to Jack, and though the latter did not believe in giving aid and comfort to the enemies of the Old Flag, he not only accepted the position of second mate and pilot of the West Wind, but also invested two-thirds of his hard-earned wages in quinine, calomel, and other medicines of which the Confederacy stood much in need, and sold them in Newbern so as to clear about twelve hundred dollars. But it wasn’t money that Jack Gray cared for just then. He wanted to see his mother and Marcy.

The enterprise was successful. Captain Frazier ran down the coast without falling in with any of the blockaders, Sailor Jack took the schooner through Oregon Inlet without the least trouble, the Confederates were ready to pay gold for her cargo, and then Captain Frazier loaded with cotton for Bermuda, while his pilot, with one of the West Wind’s foremast hands for company, set out for home on foot. We have told how he came like a thief in the night and aroused his brother by tossing pebbles against his bedroom window, and what he did during the short time he remained under his mother’s roof. We have also described some of the exciting incidents that happened when Marcy took him out to the blockading fleet in the Fairy Belle—how they ran foul of Captain Beardsley’s schooner as they were passing through Crooked Inlet, and were afterward hailed by a steam launch, whose commanding officer would have given everything he possessed if he could have brought that same schooner within range of his howitzer for about two minutes—but they found one of the cruisers, the Harriet Lane, without much trouble and Sailor Jack remained aboard of her, while Marcy filled away for home. And we may add that the latter never heard from his brother again until he read in the papers that his vessel had been captured at Galveston.

Bright and early the next morning, after a short interview with Captain Wainwright, the commander of the Harriet Lane, Jack Gray was shipped with due formality and rated as “seaman” on the books of the paymaster, who ordered his steward to serve him two suits of clothes and the necessary small stores. Ten minutes afterward, having rigged himself out in blue and tossed his citizen’s suit through one of the ports into the sea, Jack was working with the crew as handily as though he had been attached to that particular vessel all his life. Of course he had never been drilled with small-arms or in handling big guns; but being quick to learn, his mates never had reason to call him a lubber, nor was he ever sent to the mast for awkwardness or neglect of duty.

The Harriet Lane had been built for the revenue service, and was considered to be the finest vessel in it. She was small, not more than five hundred tons burden, but she was swift; and if a suspicious craft appeared in the offing, the Lane, oftener than any other steamer, was sent out to see who she was and what business she had there. Consequently the life Jack led aboard of her was as full of excitement and active duty as he could have wished it to be. Much to Marcy’s regret she took no part in the fight at Roanoke Island. Not being intended for so heavy work, she remained outside to watch for blockade runners, and so Marcy never had a chance to see how his brother looked in a blue uniform.

Not long after that they were still farther separated. For weeks there had been rumors that the government intended to make an effort to recapture some of the ports on the Gulf of Mexico that had been seized by the Confederates; but whether New Orleans, Galveston, or Mobile was to be taken first, or whether the Lane was to have a hand in it, nobody knew. The last question was answered when all the vessels that could be spared from the Atlantic blockading fleet, Jack’s among the number, were ordered to report to Flag-officer Farragut at Ship Island in the Gulf of Mexico. On the way they picked up a large fleet of mortar schooners which had been ordered to rendezvous at Key West, and reached their destination six weeks in advance of the army of General Butler, which was to co-operate with them in the capture of New Orleans. But the time was not passed in idleness. They ran down to the mouths of the Mississippi, and worked a full month to get their vessels over the bar into the river. They found but fifteen feet of water there, while many of the fleet drew from three to seven feet more, so that, when they had been lightened almost to the bare hull, the tugs had to pull them through a foot or more of mud. It was tiresome and discouraging work, but the same patience, determination, and skill that carried Flag-officer Goldsborough safely through the gale at Hatteras enabled Farragut to overcome the obstructions at the mouths of the Mississippi, and on the 8th of April five powerful steam sloops, two large sailing vessels, seventeen gunboats, and twenty-one mortar schooners were fairly over the bar and ready for business. But three more weary weeks passed before active operations were begun, during which Farragut and Butler met at Ship Island and decided upon a plan of operations, and the river up to the forts was carefully surveyed, so that the Union commanders, by simply looking at the compasses in their binnacles, could tell how far off and in what direction each fort and battery lay, and how they ought to elevate and train their guns in order to reach them. Of course the rebels were not idle while these surveys were being made, and protested against them with every cannon they could bring to bear upon the boats and men engaged in the work; but “in spite of all dangers and difficulties the surveys were accomplished and maps prepared showing the bearing and distance from every point on the river to the flagstaffs in the forts.”

On the morning of the 17th the rebels began the fight in earnest by sending down a fire-raft that had been saturated with tar and turpentine; but a boat which put off from the Iroquois towed the raft ashore, where it burned itself out, doing no harm to anybody. Then the mortar schooners took a hand and pounded Fort Jackson with their thirteen-inch shells until they set it on fire and destroyed all the clothing and commissary stores it contained. Then the barrier which extended straight across the river from Fort Jackson, and was formed of dismantled vessels securely anchored and bound together with heavy chains, was cut, and Farragut was ready to perform the feat that made him famous the world over and placed him where he rightfully belonged—at the head of our navy. He ran by the forts with the loss of but a single vessel, the Varuna, which was the swiftest and weakest in the squadron. Having been built for a merchantman she was not intended for such work as Farragut put upon her, but she won the honors of the fight before she went down, having helped sink or disable six of the rebel fleet, any one of which was fairly her match.

The Lane took no part in this fight, but remained behind to guard Porter’s mortar schooners, which dropped down the river as soon as Farragut’s boats had passed the forts and closed with the Confederate fleet which came gallantly down the river to meet them.

“But our position was one of great danger, and we knew it,” said Sailor Jack at this point in his narrative. “There were at least fifteen vessels in the rebel fleet, two of which, the Louisiana and Manassas, the former mounting sixteen heavy guns, were the main reliance of the enemy, and supposed to be able to deal with us as the Merrimac dealt with the Cumberland in Hampton Roads. But we never saw the Louisiana until the thing was over, although we afterward learned that she had been assigned an important position in the fight. The other iron-clad was on hand, and began operations by shoving a fire-raft against the flagship, which ran aground in trying to escape from her. But instead of coming on down the river and destroying our mortar fleet, as she could have done very easily, for such wooden boats as the Lane could not have stood against her five minutes, she rounded to and went back after Farragut, who ordered the Mississippi to sink her. She didn’t succeed in doing that, but she riddled the Manassas with a couple of broadsides, set her on fire, and let her float down the river with the current. I tell you I was frightened when I saw that ugly-looking thing bearing down on us. We opened fire on her, and in a few minutes she blew up and went down out of sight.”

Shortly after this, Jack went on to relate, one of the most important and impressive incidents of the seven days’ fight took place on board the Harriet Lane. When Porter received a note from Flag-officer Farragut stating that he had passed the forts in safety, destroying the Confederate flotilla on the way, and was on the point of starting for New Orleans, and suggesting that possibly the forts might surrender if summoned to do so, Porter sent a boat ashore to see what the rebels thought about it; and the answer was that they didn’t acknowledge that they had been whipped yet. Although the forts had been battered out of shape by the shower of heavy shells that had been rained into them, the garrisons could still find shelter in the bomb-proofs, and if it was all the same to Porter they would hold out a while longer. But the men who had to fight the guns did not look at it that way. They were ready to give up, for they knew they would have to do it sooner or later; and when Porter began another bombardment, which he did without loss of time, the men began deserting by scores, and the next day the rebel commander hauled down his flag.