TWENTY YEARS AT SEA OR LEAVES FROM MY OLD LOG-BOOKS BY FREDERIC STANHOPE HILL BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1893 Copyright, 1893, By FREDERIC STANHOPE HILL . All rights reserved. The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. TO MY WIFE, TO WHOSE SUGGESTION THE PUBLICATION OF THESE EPISODES IN A BUSY LIFE IS MAINLY DUE, I dedicate this book....

In the old days, fifty years ago, when I first went to sea, it was the custom in fine weather, in most ships, after supper had been leisurely discussed and pipes lighted, for both watches to gather on the forecastle deck to listen to the yarns of some old tar, or to join in one of the many ballads with a rattling chorus, in which the exploits of Dick Turpin, Claude Duval, or some other dashing knight of the road were set forth in glowing terms and endless verses. Many an evening, when a boy, I h

It was a blazing hot morning of the first week in September, 1842. The sun was pouring down with the fierce heat that so often marks the departing days of our Northern summers, and the evil smells in the filthy gutters of the southern section of Brooklyn were more than usually noxious. A Knickerbocker ice-wagon had stopped at the corner beer saloon, and the sturdy, blue-shirted driver was carrying in a great block of ice, while the children of the tenement overhead were picking up the fragments

When I returned to consciousness I could not at first imagine where I was, but the creaking and groaning of the ship as she labored in the heavy seaway and the abominable smell of bilge water soon brought me to a realizing sense of the fact that I was in my hammock in the steerage. After some mental effort I recollected that I had been thrown from the tub in which I had been sitting on deck, though how or why this had happened I could not understand. But I was too deathly seasick just then to ca

I had been kept so late by my kind entertainer that I found, by inquiry of the boat-keeper of a man-of-war cutter at the landing stage, that the Bombay’s boat with the liberty men had been gone for nearly an hour; and the coxswain, seeing my dilemma, called in a shore boat pulled by a couple of darkeys, who agreed to take me off to my ship for a few reis. As we neared the Bombay I saw evidences of unusual commotion on board, and observed a signal of distress hoisted in the mizzen rigging. We pul

The next voyage of the Bombay was to Mobile for a cargo of cotton, to be carried to Liverpool. It was the custom in those days for ships of any great size to discharge and take in their cargoes in the lower bay. The city is on the Mobile River, fully twenty-five miles above the entrance to the lagoon-like bay, cut off from the Gulf of Mexico by a narrow isthmus, upon the point of which the lighthouse stands. The Bombay came to Mobile in ballast, so there was no cargo to discharge, very much to o

The next three years of my life at sea were but a repetition of the first three months of my experience, with a slight change in the scene of the incidents and a natural increase in my knowledge of seamanship. For when I returned to Boston in the Bombay from Liverpool, at the end of my first year of probation, and the opportunity was again presented to me of going into the navy as midshipman, I declined the offer of my own free will. My views had changed during the past year, for I had learned h

In 1846, while the Mexican War was in progress, it was decided by President Polk, acting upon the advice of Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft, to send a volunteer regiment around Cape Horn to California for the occupation of that country, then a province of Mexico. In pursuance of this scheme a commission as colonel was given to a Mr. Thomas Stevenson, a well-known New York politician and a stanch Democrat, and he was authorized to raise and equip a full regiment of one thousand men, to be k

I did not long remain as second mate, for the very next voyage the chief mate was lost overboard one morning from the top of the poop-house. The watch were about to set the spanker, and Mr. Brown, who had the watch, was standing very imprudently to leeward of the boom, when the last turns of the gasket were thrown off and the gaff flying over struck him in the head with great violence and knocked him over the quarter-rail. The ship was at once hove to, and a boat was lowered, but nothing was see

We made an excellent run over to China after striking into the southeast trades, and sixty days after leaving the Admiralty Islands we anchored off Hongkong. I at once went on shore and reported to Russell & Sturgis, and learned that we had arrived in a good time. There were very few ships in port, teas were low in price and very good in quality, and the consignee said that he could secure me some very desirable chops at reasonable rates, and that if we had any room remaining after inves

In 1859, after seventeen years of almost continuous sea service, for during all that time I had never been on shore more than two months at any one time, I determined to abandon the sea and pass the remainder of my life on shore. The fact that I had just taken to myself a wife was, no doubt, a very potent factor in bringing me to this decision, which was strengthened by a favorable opportunity being presented just then for investing my savings in a safe commercial enterprise in Boston. So I fell

From the time of the Richmond’s arrival at the Bélize we found ourselves the object of deep interest to a black, snaky-looking steamer that fell into the way of coming down the river daily to take a look at us and see what we were doing. If she had confined her attentions to a mere reconnaissance it would not have so much mattered, but she frequently varied the monotony of this proceeding by throwing a rifle shot at us from a long range. We soon learned that this persistent and pestilent visitor

Early in March, 1862, while the Richmond was at Ship Island, where ten thousand troops had been brought together, Captain David Glasgow Farragut came out from New York in the United States steamship Hartford and took command of the West Gulf Squadron. On the 20th of the month Major-General Benjamin F. Butler and his staff arrived at Ship Island, in the transport steamer Mississippi, and on the 25th the fourteen hundred troops on board of her were landed, and General Butler established his headqu

When Flag Officer Farragut—soon to be made Rear Admiral for this night’s work—looked about him from the quarter deck of the Hartford that glorious morning of the 24th of April which had made his name immortal, he counted fifteen of the seventeen vessels in his three divisions that had started with him the night before to pass the forts. The Kennebec, as we learned later, had been disabled and had dropped back out of the fight; and the Varuna had run into a nest of rebel gunboats above the forts

In November, 1862, while we were lying off Baton Rouge in the Richmond, I was officially notified from Washington of my promotion to the grade of acting lieutenant. A week later I was ordered by Admiral Farragut to the command of the W. G. Anderson, then at the Pensacola Navy Yard. The Anderson, a beautiful clipper bark built in Boston for the Cape of Good Hope trade, had been lately purchased by the government. She had been fitted out as a cruiser, her decks strengthened to carry an armament of

It was Christmas morning, and very early on Christmas morning, for the sun, like a great ball of burnished copper, was just rising above the mist that hung low along the eastern horizon, gilding with the first flush of dawn the cold, gray clouds and shimmering on the crest of the waves that rippled in the freshening breeze. Under all sail and braced close to the wind, a war-ship is standing in for the land, where a long stretch of low sand hills is broken by the entrance to a bay, an ugly line o

About three months after my adventure in the bay, the doctor came to me one morning after quarters and reported that he had a number of cases on the sick list of a decidedly scorbutic character. This, he said, was mainly the result of a lack of fresh vegetables in the messes, as we had been neglected by the supply steamers for a long time. Since my late experience, I had made no further attempts at obtaining fresh beef on shore, so had come down to a salt-beef ration. The doctor said that it wou

But the good fortune that had thus far fallen to the lot of the Anderson was to take a turn, for we had not long returned to our station at Aransas when an affair occurred that was a decided damper upon the fun we had heretofore enjoyed in capturing prizes. One morning while the watch was washing down the decks the lookout at the masthead gave the always welcome “Sail ho!” and upon closer inspection the vessel in sight proved to be a small sloop hugging the shore to the northward and evidently r

The following spring the commodore ordered the Anderson to New Orleans to refit, and while there an official letter came to me from the Navy Department detaching me from the West Gulf Squadron and granting me two months’ leave of absence, with orders to report at the expiration of that time to the officer commanding at Cairo, Illinois, for service in the Mississippi Squadron, which was then under the command of Rear Admiral David D. Porter. On inquiry I found that I was one of the half dozen off

Early in September, 1864, after Admiral Porter had been transferred to the North Atlantic Squadron, I was ordered from the Benton to the command of the United States steamer Tyler, relieving Lieutenant Commander Edward Pritchett, who, in command of the Tyler, had also been in charge of the White River division of the Mississippi Squadron. The Tyler, like the Benton, was a ship with a history. She was one of the two steamers that had performed such excellent service at the battle of Pittsburg Lan

On the 9th of the following April, 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Virginia to General U. S. Grant, beneath the famous Appomattox apple-tree, and our long civil war was practically closed. For months afterward, straggling bands of Confederates would come riding down to the banks of the river on the Mississippi and Arkansas coasts, and, waving flags of truce, ask for confirmation of the news they had heard, that “the old man had surrendered.” The gunboats had been supplied wit