THREE DEATHS AND BURIALS AT SEA
While on the way up the coast to Fort Delaware, the suffering among the prisoners was greatly intensified. The sick and disabled especially were downcast, and in utter despair; a more miserable set of men were perhaps never seen on board a ship. The floor of the lower deck was covered with vomit, which sloshed from side to side as the ship rolled back and forth.
Gloom and despair sat like a black pall on every face. Before Fort Delaware was reached, three officers died and were buried at sea. I witnessed one of the burials. The body was sewed up in a blanket with a cannon ball at the feet, then placed on a plank, feet foremost, which was pushed out over the side of the ship and the plank tilted up, when all that was mortal of the poor fellow slid off, and dropped into the sea, many feet below, to rest in a watery grave until the final roll call at the Judgment Day, "when the sea shall give up its dead."
Seventy-five sick were taken from the ship to the hospital, and many more were hardly able to walk, but the hospital was full. We disembarked at Fort Delaware on the 12th of March, 1865.
It was said the reason we were not exchanged, was that upon the arrival of the prisoners at Hampton Roads their condition was so horrible the Yankees did not want the Confederate authorities and the world to know their condition, hence they were shipped back to Fort Delaware.
That the exchange was ordered by General Grant I here present proof from the same volume of "War Records," before quoted from, on page 417, where will be found the following:
"City Point, Va., March 21, 1865.
"Brigadier-General Mulford, Commanding General: I do not know what has been done with the officers at Fort Pulaski; I sent orders to have them delivered at Charleston. Before the order had been received, Charleston had fallen into our possession. I then sent orders to have them sent to the James River. Before that order was received, General Gilmore wrote to me that, having received my first order, which had been directed to General Foster, he had sent a flag to find the enemy to deliver the prisoners to. I have heard nothing since.
(Signed) "U. S. Grant,