A PLOT LAID
While here, six officers laid a plan to capture the ship when we were removed from the place, it being often rumored we were to be taken away. These six officers each selected ten others to act with them. No one else knew anything of the plot. I do not remember the names of the leaders. Captain Horton and myself were among the number selected.
About the 1st of March, rumors were rife that we were to be moved, and the plot was perfected as far as possible. The plan was to overpower the guard when at sea, take charge of the ship and run it to Nassau, or some other neutral port, in the West Indies. While here, some of the prisoners escaped from the hospital. Only one, however, made good and got safely away. Those recaptured were put in irons, cast into a foul dungeon, and cruelly treated.
CHAPTER XX
Back to Fort Delaware—Disappointment and
Great Suffering—Three Deaths and
Burials at Sea
About the 3d or 4th of March, I think it was, the soldiers guarding us said an order had been received from General Grant, "an autograph letter," they said, to take us to Norfolk; thence up James River to City Point, for exchange. This was joyful news, indeed, and with eagerness and high hopes the prisoners made preparations to leave that dismal place. The next day we boarded a small steamer and were off for Dixie, as all believed. We left many a poor comrade buried in the sand on that Tybee Island, victims of Yankee cruelty and hatred.
After taking on board the prisoners at Hilton Head, the ship was so heavily loaded that the captain refused to put to sea. All the prisoners were then transferred to the steamship Illinois, a larger and better boat, which sailed for Norfolk. So certain were all that an exchange would be effected, no effort was made to carry out the plan to capture the ship. The guards on the ship paid little or no attention to the prisoners; they virtually had the freedom of the ship, could go on deck at will, and could have taken possession without the loss of a single man. There was no gunboat escort.
On this trip up the coast there was a great deal of seasickness. There was no storm, but the ship rolled considerably. I was sick myself, and as I lay in a bunk down on the lower deck, looking out a small porthole at the huge billows, feeling very miserable, I made up my mind if anything happened to the ship, to just lay still and go down with it without making any effort to save myself. I remember one poor fellow who was suffering terribly, groaning and heaving as if trying to throw up his very "gizzard," when some one called out, "Give that man a piece of fat meat, it will help him." The sick man cried out in his agony, "O Lord God, don't talk about fat meat to me." Any one who has been sea-sick knows what an aversion the nausea produces to food, especially fat meat.
On the night of the 7th of March we dropped anchor at Norfolk, thinking of nothing but that the next morning we would steam up the historic James to City Point, and there be exchanged.
DISAPPOINTMENT AND GREAT SUFFERING
The next morning the ship weighed anchor, with many of us on deck in high spirits. Soon after getting under way, the ship was hailed by a gunboat, lying in Hampton Roads, with "Where are you bound?" The captain of the Illinois shouted back through his trumpet, "Fort Delaware." Oh, horror of horrors! our hearts sank within us; visions of exchange, of home and friends, vanished in a twinkling. Doomed to further incarceration in a detestable Yankee prison, when we had expected in a few short hours to be free and with friends! With hope, aye, certainly of relief, dashed to the ground, our feelings may be better imagined than expressed in words. The doom of the damned, "Depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire," can not be much worse. The Yankee guards on board the ship were at once on the alert, and with harsh and insolent commands, ordered and compelled, at point of bayonet, all the prisoners to get off the deck, and would not allow, after this, more than six or eight men on deck at a time; sentinels with loaded guns and fixed bayonets stood at the hatchways above us, and there was no chance to take the ship. One scoundrel threatened to shoot me as I stood at the foot of the ladder, with my hand on it, awaiting my turn to go on deck. He said to me in an insolent tone, "Take your hand off that ladder." I did so, then he said, "If you are an officer, why don't you dress like an officer?" I replied, "It is none of your business how I dress." Then he said, "Damn you, I will shoot you," bringing down his cocked gun on me, when I stepped back out of sight, thinking "discretion the better part of valor." How much the seventy men in the plot regretted not putting that plot into execution can never be told.