From Sail to Steam: Recollections of Naval Life — Chapter VII, Part 2

Drayton's successor was one of the senior lieutenants of the fleet, George B. Balch, late the first of the _Sabine_ frigate.

His services in saving the people of the _Governor_ have already been mentioned.

He still survives in venerable old age; but Drayton, who later on was with Farragut at Mobile, being captain of the flag-ship _Hartford_ and chief of staff at the time of the passage of the forts, was cut off prematurely by a short illness within six months after hostilities ended.

Balch remained with us till the _Pocahontas_ returned North, ten months later.

He was an officer of varied service, and like all such, some more, some less, abounded in anecdote of his own experiences.

A great deal that might be instructive, and more still that is entertaining, is lost by our slippery memories and the rarity of the journal-keeping habit.

I remember distinctly only two of his stories.

One related to a matter which now belongs to naval archaeology,--"backing and filling in a tideway," by a ship under sail.

In this, in a winding channel, the ship sets towards her destination with the current, up or down, carrying only enough canvas, usually the three topsails, to be under control; to move her a little ahead, or a little astern, keeping in the strength of the stream, or shifting position as conditions of the navigation require.

Backing is a term which explains itself; filling applies to the sails when so trimmed as to move the vessel ahead.

Sometimes a reach of the river permits the sails to be braced full, and she bowls along merrily under way; anon a turn comes where she can only lie across, balanced as to headway by the main topsail aback.

Then the smallest topsail, the mizzen, has a game in its hands.

The ship, as she drifts up or down, may need to be moved a little astern, more or less, to avoid a shoal or what not; and to do this the sail mentioned is braced either to shake, neutralizing it, or to bring it also aback, as the occasion demands.

This rather long preamble is perilously like explaining a joke, but it is necessary.

Balch had seen a good deal of this work in China, and he told us that the Chinese pilot's expression, if he wanted the sail shaken, was "Makee sick the mizzen topsail;" but if aback, he added, "Kill him dead."

I wonder does that give us an insight into the nautical idiom of the Chinese, who within the limitations of their needs are prime seamen.

By the time I got to China, two years after the War of Secession, steam had relieved naval vessels from backing and filling.

I once, however, saw the principle applied to a steamer in the Paraguay River.

We were returning from a visit to Asuncion, and had a local pilot, who was needed less for the Paraguay, which though winding is fairly clear, than for the Parana, the lower stream, which finally merges in the Rio de la Plata and is constantly changing its bed.

We had anchored for the night just above a bend, head of course up-stream, for the tide does not reach so far.

The next morning the pilot was bothered to turn her round, for she was a long paddle steamer, not very handy.

He seemed to be in a nautical quandary, similar to that which the elder Mr. Weller described as "being on the wrong side of the road, backing into the palings, and all manner of unpleasantness."

The captain watched him fuming for a few minutes, and then said, "Is there any particular trouble on either hand, or is it only the narrowness?"

The pilot said no; the bottom was clear.

"Well," said the captain, "why not cast her to port, and let her drift till she heads fair for the turn below?"

This was done easily, and indeed was one of those things which would be almost foolishly simple did we not all have experience of overlooking expedients that lie immediately under our noses.

Balch's other story which I recall was at the moment simply humorous, but has since seemed to me charged with homely wisdom of wide application.

He had made a rather longish voyage in a merchant-steamer, and during it used to amuse himself doing navigation work in company with her master, or mate.

On one occasion a discussion arose between them as to some result, and Balch in the course of the argument said, "Figures won't lie."

"Yes, that's all right," rejoined the other, "figures won't lie, if you work them right; but you must work them right, Mr. Balch."

I was too young then to have noted a somewhat similar remark about statistics; and I think now, after a pretty long observation of mankind, its records and its statements, that I should be inclined to extend that old seaman's comments to facts also.

Facts won't lie, if you work them right; but if you work them wrong, a little disproportion in the emphasis, a slight exaggeration of color, a little more or less limelight on this or that part of the grouping, and the result is not truth, even though each individual fact be as unimpeachable as the multiplication table.

After the capture of Port Royal, and the establishment there of the naval base, and until the arrival of monitors a year later, operations of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, as it was styled, were confined to blockading.

This took two principal forms.

The fortifications of Charleston and Savannah being still in the hands of the enemy, and intact, these two chief seaports of that coast were unassailable by our fleet.

Even after Fort Sumter had been battered to a shapeless heap of masonry, and Fort Pulaski had surrendered, neither city fell until Sherman's march took it in the rear.

But the numerous inlets were substantially undefended against naval attack;

and for them the blockade, that tremendously potent instrument of the national pressure, the work of which has been too little commemorated, was instituted almost universally within.

Even Fort Pulaski, before its fall, though it sealed the highway to Savannah, could not prevent the Union vessels from occupying the inside anchorage off Tybee Island, completely closing the usual access from the sea to the town.

During the ensuing ten months there were very few of these entrances, from Georgetown, the northernmost in South Carolina, down to Fernandina, in Florida, into which the _Pocahontas_ did not penetrate, alone or in company.

I do not know whether people in other parts of the country realize that these various inlets are connected by an inside navigation, behind the sea islands, as they are called, the whole making a system of sheltered intercommunication.

The usefulness of this was reinforced by the numerous navigable rivers which afford water roads to the interior, and gave a vessel, once entered, refuge beyond the reach of the blockaders' arm, with ready means for distribution.

Such a gift of nature to a community, however, has the defects of its qualities.

Ease of access, and freedom of movement in all directions, now existed for foe as it had for friend, and the very facility which such surroundings bestow had prevented the timely creation of an alternative.

Deprival consequently was doubly severe.

It thus came to pass that, by a gradual process of elimination, blockade in the usual sense of the word, blockade outside, became confined to Charleston and its approaches.

It is true that much depended on the class of vessel.

It was obviously inexpedient to expose sailing-ships where they might be attacked by steamers, in ground also too contracted for manoeuvring; and two years later I found myself again blockading Georgetown, in a paddle steamer from the merchant service, the size and unwieldiness of which prevented her entering.

Moreover, torpedoes had then begun to play a part in the war, though still in a very primitive stage of development.

But in 1862 there was little outside work except at Charleston.

The very reasons which determine the original selection of a port--facility for entrance, abundant anchorage, and ease of access to the interior for distribution and receipt of the articles of commerce--determine also the accumulation of defences, to the exclusion of other less favored localities.

All these conditions, natural and artificial, combined with the Union occupancy of the other inlets to concentrate blockade-running upon Charleston.

This in turn drew thither the blockaders, which had to be the more numerous because the harbor could be entered by two or more channels, widely separated.

There was thus constituted a blockade society, which contrasted agreeably with the somewhat hermit-like existence of the smaller stations.

The weather was usually pleasant enough--many Northerners now know the winter climate of South Carolina--so during the daytime the ships would lift their anchors and get more or less together; the officers, and to a less extent the crews, exchanging visits.

Old acquaintanceships were renewed, former cruises discussed, "yarns" interchanged; and then there was always the war with its happenings.

Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Shiloh, the _Monitor_ and _Merrimac_ fight, the capture of New Orleans by Farragut, all occurred during the stay of the _Pocahontas_ upon the blockade in 1862. Our news was apt to be ten days old, but to us it was as good as new; indeed, somewhat better, for we heard of the first reverses at Shiloh, and by the hands of the _Merrimac_, by the same mail which brought word of the final decided victory.

Thus we were spared the anxiety of suspense.

Even the disasters about Richmond were not by us fairly appreciated until the ship returned North, when the mortification of defeat was somewhat solaced, and the tendency to despondency lessened, by the happiness of being again at home; in my case after a continuous absence of more than three years, in the _Congress_ and _Pocahontas_.

Talking of despondency, I had an odd experience of the ease with which people forget their frames of mind.

While Burnside was engaged in the movements preceding Fredericksburg, I was in conversation with a veteran naval officer at his own house.

Speaking of the probable outcome of the operations in progress, which then engrossed all thoughts, he said to me, "I think, Mr. Mahan, that if we fail this time, we may as well strike"; the naval phrase "strike the colors" being the equivalent of surrender--give up.

I dissented heartily; not from any really reasoned appreciation of conditions, but on general principles, as understood by a man still very young.

More than two years later, when the war had just drawn to its triumphant close, I again met the same gentleman.

Amid our felicitations, he said to me, "There is one thing, Mr. Mahan, which I have never allowed myself to doubt--the ultimate success of our just cause."

After all, it was very natural.

When you are cold, you're cold, and when you're hot, you're hot; and if you are indiscreet enough to say so to some one who feels differently, he remembers it against you.

What business have you to feel other than he?

If, with the thermometer at zero, I chance to say that I wish it were warmer, I am sure of some one, a lady usually, bursting in upon me when it is ninety-five, with the jeer, "Well!

I hope, now, _you_ are satisfied."

I recall distinctly the long faces we pulled when we reached Philadelphia on our return, and realized, by the withdrawal of McClellan's army to Washington, the full extent of our disasters on the Peninsula; my old commodore might then have found some to say, Amen.

But this did not keep our hats any lower when we chucked them aloft over Vicksburg and Gettysburg, and forgot that we had ever felt otherwise.

Vicksburg and Gettysburg, by the way, and their coincidence with the Fourth of July, have furnished me with a reminiscence quite otherwise agreeable.

The ship in which I then was spent that Fourth at Spithead, England.

We dressed ship with multicolored signals, red, white, and blue, at every yard-arm, big American ensigns at the three mast-heads and the peak, presenting a singularly gay and joyful aspect, which could profitably be viewed from as many points as Mr. Pecksniff looked at Salisbury Cathedral.

At noon we fired a national salute, all the more severely punctilious and observant, because by the last mail things at home seemed to be looking particularly blue.

The British ships of war, though I fear few of their officers then were other than pleased with our presumed discomfiture, dressed likewise, as by naval courtesy bound, and also fired a salute.

The _Times_ of the day arrived from London in due season, and had improved the occasion to moralize upon the sad condition to which the Republic of Bunker Hill and Yorktown was reduced: Grant held up at Vicksburg,[10] Lee marching victoriously into Pennsylvania, no apparent probability of escaping disaster in either quarter.

The conclusion was couched in that vein of Pecksniffian benevolence of which we hear so much in life.

"Let us _hope_ that so much adversity may be tempered to a nation, afflicted with evil as unprecedented as its former prosperity; and this will indeed be the case if America ...

is led on this day of festivity, now converted into a day of humiliation, to review past errors, and to consider that, if her present policy has led her so near ruin, in its reversal must lie the only path that can conduct her to safety."

I

wonder, if there had been a cable, would that editorial have been headed off.

It was not.

"And there it stands unto this day, To witness if I lie."

It was bitter then to my taste; but sweet were the chuckles which I later had, when the actual transactions of that anniversary came to hand.

Whatever their sympathies, the British naval officers during that stay in British waters had no difficulty in paying us all the usual personal attentions; but a particular incident showed for our susceptibilities a nicety of consideration, which could not have been exacted and was very grateful at the time.

We were at Plymouth, under the breakwater, but some distance from the inner anchorage, when a merchant-vessel lying inside hoisted a Confederate flag at her mizzen mast-head.

We saw it, but of course could do nothing.

It was a clear case of intended insult, for the ship had no claim to the flag, and could only mean to flaunt us.

It flew for perhaps an hour, and then disappeared.

The same day, and not long afterwards, a British lieutenant from a vessel in the harbor came on board, and told me that he had had it hauled down, acting in place of his captain, who was absent.

The communication to me, also momentarily in command, was purely personal; indeed, there was nothing official in the whole transaction, nor do I know by what means or by what authority he could insist upon the removal of the flag.

However managed, the thing was done, and with the purpose of stopping a rudeness which, it is true, reflected more upon the port than upon us, for I think the offending vessel was British.

Very many years afterwards I had occasion to quote this, when, during the Boer War, on the visit of a British squadron to one of our seaside resorts, a resident there thought to show American breeding by hoisting the Four-Color.

In the late winter of 1863-64 I again met this officer and his ship in New Orleans.

In conversation then he told me he did not believe the Union cause could succeed; that he, with others, looked to see three or four nations formed.

In the same month of 1863 this anticipation would not have surprised me; but in 1864 it did, although Grant had not yet begun his movement upon Richmond.

Blockading was desperately tedious work, make the best one could of it.

The largest reservoir of anecdotes was sure to run dry; the deepest vein of original humor to be worked out.

I remember hearing of two notorious tellers of stories being pitted against each other, for an evening's amusement, when one was driven as a last resource to recounting that "Mary had a little lamb."

We were in about that case.

Charleston, however, was a blooming garden of social refreshment compared with the wilderness of the Texas coast, to which I found myself exiled a year or so later; a veritable Siberia, cold only excepted.

Charleston was not very far from the Chesapeake or Delaware, in distance or in time.

Supply vessels, which came periodically, and at not very long intervals, arrived with papers not very late, and with fresh provisions not very long slaughtered; but by the time they reached Galveston or Sabine Pass, which was our station, their news was stale, and we got the bottom tier of fresh beef.

The ship to which I there belonged was a small steam-corvette, which with two gunboats constituted all the social possibilities.

Happily for myself, I did not join till midway in the corvette's stay off the port, which lasted in all nearly six months, before she was recalled in mercy to New Orleans.

I have never seen a body of intelligent men reduced so nearly to imbecility as my shipmates then were.

One of my captains used to adduce, as his conception of the extreme of isolation, to be the keeper of a lightship off Cape Horn; a professional conceit rivalling the elder Mr. Weller's equally profound recognition of the connection between keeping a pike and misanthropy.

We off Sabine Pass were banished about equally with the keeper of a turnpike or of a remote lightship.

We ought, of course, to have improved the leisure which weighed so heavily on our hands; but the improvement of idle moments is an accomplishment of itself, as many a retired business man has found out too late.

There is an impression, derived from the experience of passengers on board ocean steamers, that naval officers have an abundance of spare time.

The ship, it seems assumed, runs itself; the officers have only to look on and enjoy.

As a matter of fact, sea officers under normal conditions are as busy as the busiest house-keeper, with the care to boot of two, three, four, or five hundred children, to be kept continually doing as they should; the old woman who lived in the shoe had a good thing in comparison.

Thus occupied, the leisure habit of self-improvement, other than in the practice of the calling, is not formed.

At sea, on a voyage, the vicissitudes of successive days provide the desultory succession of incidents, which vary and fill out the tenor of occupations, keeping life full and interesting.

In port, besides the regular and fairly engrossing routine, there are the resources of the shore to fill up the chinks.

But the dead monotony of the blockade was neither sea nor port.

It supplied nothing.

The crew, once drilled, needed but a few moments each day to keep at the level of proficiency;

and there was practically nothing to do, because nothing happened that required either a doing or an undoing.

Under such conditions even a gale of wind was a not unwelcome change.

Although little activity was required to meet it, it at least presented new surroundings--something different from the daily outlook.

After a very brief period, it became the rule to ride out the storms at anchor; and I remember one of our volunteer officers, who had commanded a merchant-ship for some years, saying that he would have been spared a good deal of trouble, on occasions, had he had our experience of holding on with an anchor instead of keeping under way.

It was, however, an old if forgotten expedient, where anchorage ground was good--bottom sticky and water not too deep.

In the ancient days of the French wars, the British fleets off Brest and Toulon had to keep under way, but that blockading Cadiz, in 1797-98, used to hold its position at anchor, and under harder conditions than ours; for there the worst gales blew on shore, whereas ours swept chiefly along the coast.

A standing dispute in the British navy, in those days of hemp cables, used to be whether it was safer to ride with three anchors down, or with one only, having to it three cables, bent together, so as to form one of thrice the usual length.

The balance of opinion leaned to the latter; the dead weight of so much hemp held the ship without transmitting the strain to the anchor itself.

She "rode to the bight," as the expression was; that is, to the cable, curved by its own weight and length, lying even in part on the bottom, which prevented its tightening and pulling at the anchor.

What was true of hemp was yet more true of iron chains.

The _Pocahontas_ used to veer to a hundred fathoms, and there lie like a duck in fifty or sixty feet of water.

I remember on one occasion, however, that when we next weighed the anchor, it came up with parts polished bright, as in my childhood we used sometimes to burnish a copper cent.

This seemed to show that it had been scoured hard along a sandy bottom.

We had had no suspicion of the ship's dragging during the gale, and I have since supposed that it may have started from its bed as we began to heave, and so been scrubbed along towards us.

The problem of maintaining the health of ships' companies condemned to long months of salt provisions, and to equally depressing short allowance of social salt for the intellect, which reasonable beings crave, has to be ever present to those charged with administration.

Nelson's "cattle and onions" sums up in homely phrase the first requirement; while, for the others, his policy during a weary two years, in which he himself never left the flag-ship, was to keep the vessels in constant movement, changing scene, and thereby maintaining expectation of something exciting turning up.

"Our men's minds," he said, "are always kept up with the daily hopes of meeting the enemy."

As the Confederacy had practically no navy, this particular distraction was debarred our blockaders; but in the matter of food, we in the early sixties had not got beyond his prescription for the opening years of the century.

The primitive methods then still in vogue, for preserving meats and vegetables fresh, accomplished chiefly the making them perfectly tasteless, and to the eye uninviting; the palate, accustomed to the constant stimulant of salt, turned from "bully" (bouilli) beef and "desecrated" (dessicated) potatoes, jaded before exercise.

Like liquor, salt, long used in large measures, at last becomes a craving.

I have heard old seamen more than once say, "I must have my salt;" and I have even known one to express his utter weariness of the fresh butter France sends up with its morning coffee and rolls.

So we on the blockade depended more upon the good offices of salt than upon those of tin cans, for giving us acceptable food;

the consequence being, with us as with our British forebears, a keen physical demand for "cattle and onions."

In one principal respect our supplies differed from theirs--in the profusion of ice afforded by our country.

Our beef, therefore, came to us already butchered, while theirs was received on the hoof.

Many of my readers doubtless will recall the adventures of Mr. Midshipman Easy, when in charge of the transport from Tetuan with bullocks for the fleet off Toulon.

Onions--blessings on their heads, if they have any--came to both us and our predecessors as easily as they were welcome.

I have sometimes heard the plea, that Nature is the best guide in matters of appetite, advanced for indulgences which, so construed, seemed to reflect upon her parental character; but there can be no such doubt concerning onions to a system well saturated with salt.

When you see them you know what you want; and a half-dozen raw, with a simple salad dressing, were little more than a whetter on the blockade.

Would it be possible now to manage a single one?

VIII