TUESDAY, May 14, 1861.
Two New Orleans gentlemen, who came overland from Pensacola yesterday, give such an account of their miseries from heat, dust, sand, and want of accommodation, in the dreary waste through which they passed for more than seventeen hours, that I sought out some other way of going there, and at last heard of a small schooner, called the Diana, which would gladly undertake to run round by sea, if permitted to enter by the blockading squadron.
She was neither clean nor neat-looking; her captain, a tall, wild-haired young man, had more the air of a mechanic than of a sailor, but he knew his business well, as the result of the voyage showed. His crew consisted of three men and a negro cook. Three gentlemen of Mobile, who were anxious to visit General Bragg’s camp, agreed to join me, but before I sailed I obtained a promise that they would not violate the character of neutrals as long as they were with me, and an assurance that they were not in any way engaged in or employed by the Confederate States’ forces. “Surely you will not have Mr. R—— hanged, Sir?” said the Mayor of Mobile to me when I told him I could not consent to pass off the gentleman in question as a private friend. “No, I shall do nothing to get Mr. R—— hanged. It will be his own act which causes it, but I will not allow Mr. R—— to accompany me under false pretences.” Having concluded our bargain with the skipper at a tolerably fair rate, and laid in a stock of stores and provisions, the party sailed from Mobile at five in the evening of Tuesday, May 14, with the flag of the Confederate States flying; but, as a precautionary measure, I borrowed from our acting Consul, Mr. Magee, a British ensign, which, with a flag of truce, would win the favorable consideration of the United States squadron. Our craft, the somewhat Dutch build of which gave no great promise of speed, came, to our surprise and pleasure, up with the lights of Fort Morgan at nine o’clock, and we were allowed to pass unchallenged through a “swash,” as a narrow channel over the bar is called, which, despite the absence of beacons and buoys, our skipper shot through under the guidance of a sounding-pole, which gave, at various plunges, but few inches to spare.
The shore is as flat as a pancake—a belt of white sand, covered with drift logs and timber, and with a pine forest; not a house or human habitation of any sort to be seen for forty miles, from Fort Morgan to the entrance of the harbor of Pensacola; cheerless, miserable, full of swamps, the haunts of alligators, cranes, snakes, and pelicans; with lagoons, such as the Perdida, swelling into inland seas; deep buried in pine woods, and known only to wild creatures and to the old fillibusters,—swarming with mosquitoes. As the Diana rushed along within a quarter of a mile of this grim shore, great fish flew off from the shallows, and once a shining gleam flashed along the waters and winged its way alongside the little craft—a monster shark, which plowed through the sea pari passu for some hundred yards leeward of the craft, and distinctly visible in the wonderful phosphorescence around it, and then dashed away with a trail of light seaward, on some errand of voracity, with tremendous force and vigor. The wretched Spaniards who came to this ill-named Florida must often have cursed their stars. How rejoiced were they when the Government of the United States relieved them from their dominion! Once during the night some lights were seen on shore, as if from a camp fire. The skipper proposed to load an old iron carronade and blaze away at them, and one of the party actually got out his revolver to fire, but I objected very strongly to these valorous proceedings, and, suggesting that they might be friends who were there, and that, friends or foes, they were sure to return our fire, succeeded in calming the martial ardor on board the Diana. The fires were very probably made by some of the horsemen lately sent out by General Bragg to patrol the coast, but the skipper said that in all his life-long experience he had never seen a human creature or a light on that shore before. The wind was so favorable and the Diana so fast, that she would have run into the midst of the United States squadron off Fort Pickens had she pursued her course. Therefore, when she was within about ten miles of the station she hove to, and lay off and on for about two hours. Before dawn the sails were filled, and off she went once more, bowling along merrily, till with the first flush of day there came in sight Fort M’Rae, Fort Pickens, and the masts of the squadron, just rising above the blended horizon of low shore and sea. The former, which is on the western shore of the mainland, is in the hands of the Confederate troops. The latter is just opposite to it, on the extremity of the sand-bank called Santa Rosa Island, which for forty-five miles runs in a belt parallel to the shore of Florida, at a distance varying from one and a quarter to four miles. To make smooth water of it, the schooner made several tacks shoreward. In the second of these tacks the subtle entrance of Perdida Creek is pointed out, which, after several serpentine and reëntering undulations of channel, one of which is only separated from the sea for a mile or more by a thin wall of sand-bank, widens to meet the discharge of a tolerably spacious inland lake. The Perdida is the dividing line between the States of Alabama and Florida.
The flagstaff of Fort M’Rae soon became visible, and in fainter outline beyond it that of Fort Pickens and the hulls of the fleet, in which one can make out three war steamers, a frigate, and a sloop-of-war, and then the sharp-set canvas of a schooner, the police craft of this beat, bearing down upon us. The skipper, with some uneasiness, announces the small schooner that is sailing in the wind’s eye as the “Oriental,” and confesses to have already been challenged and warned off by her sentinel master. We promised him immunity for the past and safety for the future, and, easing off the main sheet, he lays the Diana on her course for the fleet.
Fort M’Rae, one of the obsolete school of fortresses, rounds up our left. Beyond it, on the shore, is Barrancas, a square-faced work, half a mile further up the channel, and more immediately facing Fort Pickens. A thick wood crowns the low shore which treads away to the eastward, but amid the sand the glass can trace the outlines of the batteries. Pretty-looking detached houses line the beach; some loftier edifices gather close up to the shelter of a tall chimney which is vomiting out clouds of smoke, and a few masts and spars checker the white fronts of the large buildings and sheds, which, with a big shears, indicate the position of the Navy Yard of Warrington, commonly called that of Pensacola, although the place of that name lies several miles higher up the creek. Fort M’Rae seems to have sunk at the foundations; the crowns of many of the casemates are cracked, and the water-face is poor-looking. Fort Pickens, on the contrary, is a solid, substantial-looking work, and reminds one something of Fort Paul at Sevastopol, as seen from the sea, except that it has only one tier of casemates, and is not so high.
As the Oriental approaches, the Diana throws her foresail aback, and the pretty little craft, with a full-sized United States ensign flying, and the muzzle of a brass howitzer peeping over her forecastle, ranges up luff, and taking an easy sweep lies alongside us. A boat is lowered from her and is soon alongside, steered by an officer; her crew are armed to the teeth with pistols and cutlasses. “Ah, I think I have seen you before. What schooner is this?” “The Diana, from Mobile.” The officer steps on deck, and announces himself as Mr. Brown, Master in the United States Navy, in charge of the boarding vessel Oriental. The crew secure their boat and step up after him. The skipper, looking very sulky, hands his papers to the officer. “Now, sir, make sail, and lie to under the quarter of that steamer, the guardship Powhatan.”
Mr. Brown was exceedingly courteous when he heard who the party were. The Mobilians, however, looked as black as thunder; nor where they at all better pleased when they heard the skipper ask if he did not know there was a strict blockade of the port. The Powhatan is a paddle steamer of 2,200 tuns and 10 guns, and is known to our service as the flag-ship of Commodore Tatnall, in Chinese waters, when that gallant veteran gave us timely and kindly proof of the truth of his well-known expression, “Blood is thicker than water.” Upon her spar-deck there is a stout, healthy-looking crew, which seems quite able to attend to her armament of ten heavy 10-inch Dahlgren columbiads, and the formidable 11-inches of the same family on the forecastle. Her commander, Captain Porter, though only a lieutenant, commanding, has seen an age of active service, both in the navy and in the merchant steam marine service, to which he was detailed for six or seven years after the discovery of California. The party were ushered into the cabin, and Captain Porter received them with perfect courtesy, heard our names and object, and then entered into general conversation, in which the Mobilians, thawed by his sailorly frankness, gradually joined, as well as they could. Over and over again I must acknowledge the exceeding politeness and civility with which your correspondent has been received by the authorities on both sides in this unhappy war.
Though but little beyond the age of forty, Captain Porter has been long enough in the navy to have imbibed some of those prejudices which by the profane are stigmatized as fogyisms. Until the day previous he had, he told me, felt disposed to condemn rifled cannon of a small calibre as “gimcracks,” but had been rapidly converted to the “Armstrong faith” by the following experiment: He was making target-practice with his heavy gun at a distance of some 2,600 yards. At anything like a moderate elevation the experiment was unsatisfactory; and, while his gunners were essaying to harmonize cause and effect, the charge and the elevation, he bethought him of a little rifled brass plaything which Captain Dahlgren had sent on board a day or two before his departure. To his astonishment the ball, after careering until he thought “it would never stop going,” struck the water 1,000 yards beyond the target, and established a reputation he had never believed possible for a howitzer of 6lb. calibre carrying a 12lb. bolt. He observed that the ancient walls of Fort M’Rae would not resist this new missile for half an hour.
If it comes to fighting, you will hear more of the Powhatan and Captain Porter. He has been repeatedly in the harbor and along the enemy’s works at night in his boat, and knows their position thoroughly; and he showed me on his chart the various spots marked off whence he can sweep their works and do them immense mischief. “The Powhatan is old, and if she sinks I can’t help it.” She is all ready for action; boarding-nettings triced up, fieldpieces and howitzers prepared against night boarding, and the whole of her bows padded internally, with dead wood and sails, so as to prevent her main deck being raked as she stands stern on toward the forts. Her crew are as fine a set of men as I have seen of late days on board a man-of-war. They are healthy, well fed, regularly paid, and can be relied on to do their duty to a man. As far as I could judge, the impression of the officers was that General Bragg would not to expose himself to the heavy chastisement which, in their belief, awaits him, if he is rash enough to open fire upon Fort Pickens. As Captain Porter is not the senior officer of the fleet, he signaled to the flag-ship, and was desired to send us on board.