In particular I would like to praise Lt. Thadeous Harwell, who manned the bow gun and was foremost when the fighting became hand-to-hand. He was a brave and gallant officer, displaying the finest qualities of the Southern officer and gentleman, and he was tragically killed in the final moments of the fight. He will be missed.
In all, the Cape Fear suffered one coal passer, four seamen, and one officer, Lt. Harwell, dead, and seven wounded, one of whom it is thought will not survive his wounds.
After the forced abandonment of the Appomattox, my crew showed a laudatory desire to remain together. As a unit we traveled to Norfolk, and now take lodging at the naval shipyard. If it is necessary, for the need of the service, that we should be split up, then we are of course perfectly agreeable to that. But I would suggest that, since we are, as a crew, now well trained and used to working with one another, we might better serve if transferred as a whole to another vessel, if such a one is available. I await your pleasure in this matter, and have the honor to be,
Samuel Bowater
Lieutenant, Confederate States Navy
Hon. S. R. Mallory,
Secretary of the Navy, Richmond
Instructions from the Secretary of the Navy to Flag Officer Farragut, U.S. Navy, regarding the operations of the West Gulf Blockading
Navy Department, January 20, 1862
SIR: When the Hartford is in all respects ready for sea, you will proceed to the Gulf of Mexico with all practicable dispatch and communicate with Flag Officer W. W. McKean, who is directed by the enclosed dispatch to transfer to you the command of the Western Gulf Blockading Squadron.
There will be attached to your squadron a fleet of bomb vessels, and armed steamers enough to manage them, all under command of Commander D. D. Porter, who will be directed to report to you. As fast as these vessels are got ready they will be sent to Key West to await the arrival of all, and the commanding officers, who will be permitted to organize and practice with them at that port.
When these formidable mortars arrive, and you are completely ready, you will collect such vessels as can be spared from the blockade and proceed up the Mississippi River and reduce the defenses which guard the approaches to New Orleans, when you will appear off that city and take possession of it under the guns of your squadron, and hoist the American flag thereon, keeping possession until troops can be sent to you.
As you have expressed yourself satisfied with the force given to you, and as many more powerful vessels will be added before you can commence operations, the Department and the country will require of you success.
Destroy the armed barriers which these deluded people have raised up against the power of the United States Government, and shoot down those who war against the Union, but cultivate with cordiality the first returning reason which is sure to follow your success.
Very respectfully, etc.
Gideon Welles
Flag Officer D. G. Farragut,
Appointed to Command West Gulf Squadron
37
We cannot, either with cotton or with all the agricultural staples of the Confederacy put together, adopt any course that will make cotton and trade stand us as a nation in the stead of a Navy.
— Commander Matthew F. Maury, CSN
A cold front rolled through Yazoo City, foul weather out of the north. Robley Paine pulled the collar of his heavy coat up around his face, felt the scraggly growth of ill-tended beard scrape on the cloth. He squinted into the wind, looked out across the water.
Yazoo City. The Yazoo River was tied up at one of the docks that jutted out from the trampled riverfront, a few miles west of the town. At the base of a series of low hills covered with a tangle of scrubby trees, coarse grass, the place where businesses that catered to the river traffic clustered. A few dilapidated machine shops, some carpenters, blacksmiths, boiler shops, they gave service to the great fleet of vessels which, in the days before the birth of the Anaconda, would come upriver to load cotton from Yazoo City’s wharfs.
Paine looked upriver. He could see part of the town itself from where he stood on the Yazoo River ’s hurricane deck, the brick buildings and perfectly parallel roads, the bare trees like skeletal hands. The river looked as if it came to an abrupt stop right at the town’s waterfront. In fact it made a hard turn left at Yazoo City, a bend of nearly 170 degrees, as if the river had been rushing right for the town and had deflected off the waterfront, bounced back in the direction from which it came.
It was a dead time. February in Yazoo County had never been a bustle. Too cold for Southern blood to do much, nothing to be done in the cotton fields, no bales piling up on the wharf for transport to the cotton mills of the North, and England.
It was even more dead now. Most of Yazoo County’s young men were off to war, commerce quashed by the blockade.
The Anaconda was circling, Robley could feel it, as if it was breathing down his neck. New Orleans would be next. Farragut was in command of the Western Gulf Blockading Squadron. He had big steam frigates. He had mortar scows.
The forts to the north, Fort Henry, now Fort Donelson, on the Tennessee River, fallen to Grant. The Union gunboats would push down the Mississippi River, and Farragut would hit New Orleans, and the head and the tail of the serpent would move toward one another, down the Father of Waters.
Robley Paine shook his head. Can’t think on that, can’t think on that … He let his mind wander down that route and it would dead-end in a brilliant red rage. The Anaconda closing in, and he was sitting on a river gunboat—just the thing that the Confederates needed to hold the snake off—and he could get no help in running the thing. Letter after letter with no response, gold sent out with an utter lack of discretion, but neither patriotism nor greed seemed to move anyone to help him in his quest.
He climbed down from the hurricane deck, down to the side deck and down the brow to the dock. It was a Tuesday morning, but there seemed to be no one around. He unhitched his horse and led it over to a step from which he could mount. His old wound ached too much now to allow him to put a foot in the stirrup and swing himself up.
He rode slowly into town, and as he approached he began to see people, who waved to him, bid him good day. Yazoo City was not the paradise he had dreamed of; there were no mechanics and carpenters and engineers and sailors who swarmed to help him, to fight the Yankee. But neither was it New Orleans, den of iniquity. He was known here. Respected. The people of Yazoo City thought he was mad—he could see that, he was not delusional—but still they treated him with the deference and respect that the name Paine warranted in that county.
He rode down the main street, stopped at the post office, and slid off his horse. With teeth clenched against the pain he climbed the granite steps, pushed the door open.
“Mr. Paine, good day,” the postmaster called out.
The first time Robley had shown up there, six weeks before, he had seen the fear in the man’s eyes. Robley seemed to inspire fear these days, but he did not care.
The postmaster told him then, coughing, hemming, stammering, that they had run out of room in the box, that he had sent all of the Paines’ mail down to Paine Plantation.
Robley did not care about that. That was before he began writing to Secretary Mallory, before he had begun shipping gold for railroad iron and guns and shells, before his real work had commenced. That mail was the detritus of the dead, something that had relevance once, when he was alive, but it meant nothing now, like Katherine’s dresses, which, he imagined, still hung in her wardrobe.