Before we leave the month of January, here's one more story from 150 years ago. The Union wanted to blockade the southern coast, but Charleson Harbor proved particularly difficult because of its many entrances. A fleet of
twenty-five old whalers near the end of their usefulness, sailed on 2 November
1861, and blundered its way down the coast. The ships had been rigged to sink upon command. A couple of the whalers ran aground
while others were already leaking by the time they reached South Carolina. Only sixteen ships went on to
Charleston, where on 20 December, the "Stone Fleet"finally sank into
the main shipping channel just off Morris Island on the south side of the
harbor. Five staggered lines of three or four ships each settled into the sand,
some with masts still showing above the waves. An
observer for Harper's Weekly
reported:
But it was, in fact, a wasted effort,
for there was more than one channel into the harbor. Blockade runners simple
shifted their efforts to the north side of the harbor and came into Charleston
through Moffitt's Channel between Rattlesnake Shoals and the shore of Sullivan's
Island. A second "Stone Fleet" of twenty vessels arrived on 20
January 1862, and, within the week, these had similarly settled into Moffitt's
Channel. Still, illegal ships made their way into Charleston down the center of
the harbor through the Swash Channel. Charles Cawley described the scene as the
whalers "disappeared like phantom ships" and chided the citizens of
Charleston for "complaining of this imaginary peril." Marchand also analyzed the attempt:
"Though an imaginative innovation, it was to prove a disastrous failure.
Underwater currents disturbed the sunken rockpiles, and the strategic fallout
to the endeavor was the elimination of 27 ships." This move, on the first anniversary of South
Carolina's secession, elicited only scorn from Robert E. Lee. In a letter to J.
P. Benjamin, the Confederate Secretary of War, he wrote:
If you'd like to know more, A Scratch with the Rebels is now on sale in Kindle edition for only $2.99. Or borrow it for free if you are a Kindle Prime member. |
