John Bell - Rebels on the Great Lakes: Confederate Naval Commando Operations Launched from Canada, 1863-1864

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Cover

Rebels on the Great Lakes

Confederate Naval Commando Operations Launched from Canada 18631864

JOHN BELL

Dedication

For my two youngest grandsons,

Aidan William Bell in Gunning Cove, Nova Scotia

and Finnegan James Rowe, in Richmond, Virginia.

These men were not burglars, or pirates, enemies of mankind, unless hatred and hostility to the Yankees be taken as a sin against humanity, a crime against civilization. 1

John Yates Beall (1864)

Contents

Acknowledgements

The preparation of this book could not have been completed without the generous assistance of numerous people in Canada and the United States. I particularly want to thank the following individuals: Marcel Barriault, Peter DeLottinville, Colonel Bernd Horn, lizabeth Mongrain, Pierre Ostiguy, Natasha Rowe, Kathleen Wall (McCord Museums), and Michel Wyczynski. I would also like to acknowledge the assistance that I received from various staff members of Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa and the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond.

Introduction

Despite its relatively small size and limited resources, the Confederate States Navy (CSN) made a very significant contribution to the overall Confederate war effort during the American Civil War.[1] Much of the success of the Souths naval strategy can be attributed to the farsightedness of Stephen R. Mallory, the Confederate secretary of the navy, who recognized the importance of confronting the formidable Union Navy, which had imposed a blockade on Confederate ports, with technical surprise.[2] Mallorys commitment to technological innovation encouraged the development of not only ironclads and commerce raiders, but also revolutionary forms of submarine warfare, including the extraordinary CSS Hunley , recently raised from Charlestons harbour.[3]

The Confederate Navys willingness to innovate in its struggle against a vastly superior enemy was not restricted to technological developments. It also extended to other tactical and strategic initiatives. Starting in 1862, Mallory, who was, of course, aware of the success of Confederate cavalry raiders and partisans in various theatres of the war, became increasingly supportive of the idea of applying asymmetric guerilla tactics to naval warfare, creating amphibious commando forces that could seriously harass Union shipping and the blockading fleets and perhaps even seize enemy warships.[4]

Not surprisingly, the commanders of these new forces were drawn from among the navys younger officers, men who were eager to see action and win promotion through meritorious conduct in combat. John Taylor Wood, who went on to become probably the most prominent Confederate naval commando leader (he was sometimes referred to as the Horse Marine), spoke for this younger generation when he wrote, promote for fighting; otherwise the Navy never can be kicked into vitality.[5]

While the Confederacys overall naval effort had a strong international dimension, which involved blockade-running to and from various British ports (including colonial cities such as Halifax and Saint John), the procurement and construction of ships in the United Kingdom, and the cruising, throughout the worlds oceans, of predatory commerce raiders such as the CSS Alabama , the Souths naval commando operations were, by their very nature, mostly restricted to American waters. However, there were a few such incidents in British North American waters, the most notable and ambitious of which occurred on the Great Lakes in 186364.[6]

The lure of the Great Lakes for the planners of Confederate naval commando operations derived from two realities. First, as a result of the Rush-Bagot Agreement of 1817, North Americas inland seas were, from a naval standpoint, largely demilitarized.[7]

In fact, by the time of the Civil War there was only one real warship on the Great Lakes, the USS Michigan , launched in 1843. Second, in 1862 the Union established a prisoner-of-war depot for Confederate officers on Johnsons Island, located in Sandusky Bay, Ohio. Eventually protected by the Michigan , the Lake Erie camp would come to house several thousand prisoners and would thus become a tantalizing target for the South, which increasingly suffered from devastating manpower shortages.

In many respects, the template for the Confederate operations launched on the Great Lakes was what one of the key participants, Robert D. Minor of the Confederate States Navy, called the old St. Nicholas game, a reference to one of the earliest naval commando actions of the Civil War.[8]

This unsigned caricature of a Confederate Gorilla was featured on a Union postal envelope intended to ridicule the Confederacys reliance on guerillas and other irregular forces. Both sides used such envelopes, known as patriotic covers, to give expression to popular support for their respective war efforts. Some covers were rather primitive, but others, such as this example, featured quite sophisticated iconography. [New-York Union Envelope Deport ( sic ), circa 1861, authors collection]

On June 28, 1861, a joint group of more than two dozen Confederate Army and Navy commandos seized the sidewheel steamer St. Nicholas , which plied the waters between Baltimore and Georgetown, DC. The commando force had boarded the vessel at various points disguised as passengers. In fact, one of the operations leaders, Richard Thomas, had come aboard in drag, dressed as a French lady. Once under the command of the Confederate Navy officer George N. Hollins, the St. Nicholas steamed to the Virginia shore, where the commandos rendezvoused with a party of CSN officers and a detachment of Tennessee infantry. The captured vessel then headed up the Potomac in search of the USS Pawnee . Failing to find the U.S. warship, the St. Nicholas made her way to Chesapeake Bay, where the Confederates quickly captured three American vessels a brig and two schooners. (Robert D. Minor took charge of one of the schooners, the Mary Pierce .) The St. Nicholas then escorted her three prizes up the Rappahannock River into the Confederacy. This incident was celebrated in the South and would inspire even more daring operations, including the subsequent Confederate activities on the Great Lakes.[9]

Although the events of the Confederacys three daring naval expeditions launched from Canada against Johnsons Island remain largely unknown in the two countries that border the largest group of freshwater lakes in the world, some of the players (both major and minor) in these forgotten historical dramas on the Great Lakes did make more indelible marks in history.

Among their number were a Scotsman who became the first prime minister of Canada, a famous American actor who assassinated a U.S. president, another Scotsman who emerged as one of the most celebrated British war correspondents of the Victorian era, a blockade-runners captains clerk who became a priest and one of Americas most-beloved Catholic poets, the fighting son of the fiery abolitionist John Brown, a great Confederate naval hero who became a respected Halifax merchant, a noted Canadian artist who taught spy craft to Confederate operatives, and the scion of a prominent Toronto family who co-founded the nationalist Canada First movement and later emerged as one of Canadas greatest military theorists and who, after having supported the Southern rebellion, played a role in suppressing the Northwest Rebellion.

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