ALUMNI PROFESSOR OF HISTORY
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA
WHOSE GENIUS FOR THINGS HISTORICAL INSPIRED ME WITH A DESIRE TO CONTRIBUTE SOME REMINISCENCES OF A STRANGE TRAFFIC THROUGH A BELEAGURED CITY TO THE HISTORY OF THE LOWER CAPE FEAR.
"Some night to the lee of the land I shall steal,
(Heigh-ho to be home from the sea!)
No pilot but Death at the rudderless wheel,
(None knoweth the harbor as he!)
To lie where the slow tide creeps hither and fro
And the shifting sand laps me around, for I know
That my gallant old crew are in Port long ago—
Forever at peace with the sea!"
The Song of the Derelict.
Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae.
FOREWORD.
About twenty-five years ago I wrote for the Southport Leader a series of stories of the Cape Fear blockade from my personal experiences as a participant in the blockade runners Advance, Eugénie, North Heath, Lilian, Susan Beirne, and finally in the Alonzo, which greatly interested the Cape Fear pilots who had taken part with me in this hazardous service and were found entertaining by some other readers. Later, in the year 1901, I contributed at the request of Chief Justice Walter Clark for his admirable North Carolina Regimental Histories an account of my personal adventures and observations in the North Heath, Lilian, and Susan Beirne, in the capacity of purser, or paymaster, at the age of seventeen and a half years, and as prisoner of war on the Keystone State and the Glaucus, Federal cruisers, and later prisoner of war in Fort Macon and in Fortress Monroe.
Again, in 1914, I wrote in the Cape Fear Chronicles at some length on this interesting phase of Cape Fear history, in the form largely of personal reminiscences, which have been most generously commented upon by eminent writers and historians; and now, at the end of the skein, I have endeavored, in this unpretentious little volume, to reveal some secrets of old ocean which it has kept hidden in its bosom for more than half a century. I have desired to refrain from repetition, but in several instances it was unavoidable. This compilation of new stories and twice-told tales is now presented in more portable form than in the original bulky volumes. The title, Derelicts, is general, but much space has been given to blockade runners destroyed or left as derelicts along the Cape Fear coast during the War between the States. Some space has also been given to a few sea tales not dealing directly with derelict ships.
The Northern Navy doubtless contributed more than any other arm of the Federal forces to the final defeat of the Southern Confederacy, and this was because the South at the beginning of hostilities did not possess a single ship of war.
A dozen such ships as the ironclad Merrimac, which type originated in the South during the war and later revolutionized the navies of the world, could probably have entirely destroyed the Federal fleet of inefficient ships in the second year of the war, raised the blockade, and compelled the recognition of the Great Powers. The errors of the Confederacy were numerous, but its failure to buy or build promptly an efficient navy proved irremediable and fatal. "Yet with its limited resources," says Chief Justice Clark in concluding his history, "the Confederacy was on the very eve of success, but some unexpected fatality intervened. At Shiloh within half an hour of the capture of the Federal Army with Grant and Sherman at its head, a single bullet, which caused the death of Albert Sidney Johnston, changed the history of the continent. At Chancellorsville, one scattering volley, fired by mistake of his own men, took the life of Stonewall Jackson, when, but for that fatality, the capture of Hooker and his whole army was imminent. The unexpected humiliation of the Federal Government in surrendering Mason and Slidell to British threats avoided a war with that power, and, with it, the independence of the South, which would have come with the command of the seas, within the power at that time of Britain's fleet. If Stuart's cavalry had been on hand at Gettysburg, or even a competent corps commander, to have held our gains of the first two days, in all human probability the war would have ended in a great Southern victory at that spot. Had Mr. Davis, when he sent his commissioners to England to negotiate a loan of $15,000,000 acceded to the pressure of foreign capitalists to make it $60,000,000, not only would the Southern finances not have broken down (which was the real cause of our defeat) and the Southern troops have been amply supplied, but European Governments would have intervened in favor of Southern independence ere they would have suffered their influential capitalists to lose that sum."