Lord Monck had been concerned about Southern violations of British neutrality ever since the Confederate agents had appeared in the spring, petitioning—without success—to have five additional ships sent to patrol the Great Lakes. Personally, he was pro-Northern rather than neutral (or even pro-Southern like many Canadians), and was doing his best to discourage the Confederacy from sending its agents to Canada. In November 1863 he had foiled a Southern plot to attack the Federal prison camp on Johnson’s Island in Lake Erie off Sandusky, Ohio—successfully, though only temporarily, dampening the Confederates’ interest in launching raids from Canada against the North.3
During the summer, Commissioner Jacob Thompson had revived the plan to liberate the prisoners on Johnson’s Island. The days when almost any force could have taken the island were long past, but the prison was still an enticing prospect for the Confederates because its position in Sandusky Bay was close to the Canadian border. Sandusky itself was a minor town; Charles Dickens had paid a fleeting visit in 1842 and thought the place bleak and the population “morose, sullen, clownish and repulsive.”4 But to the fugitive slaves who escaped captivity via the “underground railroad” to Canada, Sandusky represented their last stop before freedom. The U.S. authorities had chosen Johnson’s Island for the opposite reason; without a boat, it was the last stop to nowhere.
The island’s prison was badly built and poorly maintained: its latrines lacked drainage and the barracks had no running water. But the suffering of the 2,500 Confederate prisoners had only really begun in the spring, when the War Department decreed that conditions should mirror those of Southern prisons; food parcels were confiscated, and prisoners were forbidden to supplement their rations except by capturing rats (which were, however, plentiful). These weak and diseased inmates were the men Jacob Thompson intended to use to bring terror to the United States’ northern border.
The iron-hulled gunboat USS Michigan had been patrolling Sandusky Bay since Monck’s exposure of the first Confederate plot against Johnson’s Island. Before then, it had been employed to make draft protesters in Detroit think twice before they rioted.5 The warship had never fired its guns and was too unseaworthy for deployment in battle, but since she was the only naval vessel on Lake Erie, whoever sailed her controlled the lake. In mid-July, Thompson believed he had found the right man to capture the vessel.
Twenty-seven-year-old Charles H. Cole was a mystery to everyone who knew him. He lied about his war record, hiding the fact he had been cashiered from the Confederate army in 1863 for dishonesty.6 He had never held a leadership role, and yet in July he managed to dupe Thompson into giving him $4,000 to investigate the various possibilities for seizing the Michigan.7 Cole used the money to treat his girlfriend to a luxurious holiday tour around the Great Lakes before finally settling down to business on August 11 and booking a room for “Mr. and Mrs. Cole” in one of Sandusky’s better hotels. The West House overlooked Sandusky Bay, offering its clientele an unobstructed view of Johnson’s Island and USS Michigan, which was usually anchored nearby. Cole’s reports to Thompson were sufficiently optimistic to elicit the order that he should spend whatever it took to bribe the officers or purchase the Michigan outright. “He thinks everything looks favourable and is sanguine of success,” Thompson told Clement Clay on August 13, 1864. Cole opened an account in one of the local banks, letting it be known that he represented an oil company from Pennsylvania, and began distributing his largesse among the Michigan’s officers. None responded to his cautious overtures. Even the captain, John C. Carter, who resented sailing around an empty lake while his peers were off chasing Confederate raiders, was beyond reach.
Cole wrote to Thompson in August telling him that he was ready to lead a team of Confederates to capture the vessel. The claim may have been nothing more than a maneuver to gain more time and funds. If so, he was caught out when Thompson not only ordered him to proceed but also sent him one of his best volunteers, John Yates Beall, late of Chesapeake Bay.8 Once he met Beall, Cole realized that his comfortable little setup was at an end. Beall had crossed into Canada hoping to start his own privateering operations on the Great Lakes, but he dropped the idea after hearing about the Johnson’s Island plan from Thompson. “I immediately volunteered,” wrote Beall, “and went to Sandusky, Ohio, to meet Captain Cole, the leader. We arranged our plans, and separated. Cole stayed at Sandusky. I came to Windsor to collect men, and carry them to the given point.”9
Map.20 British North America and the United States
Click here to view a larger image.
Beall remained in Windsor until the beginning of September, carefully working out the details of the plan with Thompson. He was overjoyed when Bennet G. Burley arrived after a difficult journey through the North. Burley’s British nationality meant he could purchase the equipment and weapons required without inviting suspicion, and Cole’s role was gradually reduced until his sole contribution was to arrange an evening of diversions for the Michigan’s crew.10 Some were to be entertained on shore, the rest plied with drink on the vessel. While Cole was intoxicating the crew, Beall and his team were to capture the local Sandusky ferryboat called the Philo Parsons and, on Cole’s signal, to sail alongside the Michigan and climb aboard. Then, with the element of surprise on their side, they would fire on the garrison guarding Johnson’s Island, blow open the walls, and release the prisoners.
On September 17, two days before the date appointed for the raid, one of Beall’s volunteers betrayed the group to the provost marshal of Detroit. Captain Carter of the Michigan was initially skeptical of the report, until he remembered that Cole had arranged a party for the Michigan’s crew at an inn on the outskirts of Sandusky. On the morning of the nineteenth, Carter sent a trusted officer to the West House hotel, who lured Cole onto the Michigan on the pretext of asking permission for the entire crew to attend the party. As soon as he was on the vessel, Cole was arrested and searched for papers. The documents Cole was carrying were not particularly revealing, but that did not stop him from confessing everything to Captain Carter. He also admitted that he had intended to abscond with Thompson’s money before carrying out the final part of the plan: to rescue the prisoners.11
In the meantime, Beall and Burley had boarded the Philo Parsons, fully confident that Johnson’s Island would be theirs by midnight. Burley persuaded the ferry captain to make an unscheduled stop at Sandwich, on the Canadian side of the river, to pick up three friends, one of whom he said was disabled; the ship’s clerk noticed that the disabled man was miraculously cured as soon as the vessel started moving again. At the next stop, another sixteen men climbed aboard, bringing a large wooden trunk with them. The Philo Parsons continued chugging quietly along its scheduled route until 4:00 P.M., when the trunk was opened and Burley handed out two dozen revolvers and hatchets. Within half an hour, all the passengers and crew were locked in the cabin. No one was hurt, although a few shots had been fired.
Beall and Burley congratulated themselves on a superbly run operation. All they had to do was drop off the prisoners on one of the deserted islands in the lake and wait for Cole’s signal to attack the Michigan. By 6:00 P.M. however, the plan was falling apart. Beall discovered from the engineer that there was no more wood, since it was company policy to take on only enough fuel for the scheduled trip. The raiders had no choice but to sail to the nearest fueling station, on Middle Bass Island. While they were there loading the wood, another ferry, the Island Queen, docked beside the Philo Parsons. Seeing the puzzled look on the captain’s face, Beall ordered his men to seize the steamer. The fight proved more difficult than expected; among the passengers were twenty-six Federal soldiers on an illicit jaunt. Vicious hand-to-hand fighting ensued between the soldiers and Confederates, and the Island Queen’s engineer was shot in the face. It was thirty minutes before the last man surrendered.
With his strong sense of chivalry, Beall refused to allow the passengers to be molested. One turned out to be carrying $80,000 in his baggage, which he offered
to share with Beall in exchange for his life. The Confederate haughtily explained that he was conducting a rescue mission, not a robbery, and all property was safe except for the ships themselves and their day’s takings, which were legitimate prizes. As soon as there was sufficient wood on board to restart the engines, Beall ordered the passengers off the boat, first exacting a promise from each one to keep silent for the next twenty-four hours.
It was 9:00 P.M. when the Confederates finally sailed within sight of the Michigan. She had changed position since the morning and was facing the prison; ominously, her gun ports were open and steam was rising from her funnel. The raiders waited for Cole’s signal. Burley’s anecdotes of previous raids failed to impress the worried men, and after an hour they began to argue that they should turn back. None of them knew Beall or Burley well enough to risk their lives in what increasingly appeared to be a compromised mission. Beall pleaded and threatened without success. The ringleader of the mutineers explained they had nothing against him—they even admired him—but they were not prepared to die for him. When Beall asked if they were willing to put their opposition down in writing, they not only agreed, but all seventeen signed their names. The statement declared the mission to be hopeless: “We … take pleasure in expressing our admiration of the gentlemanly bearing, and courage of Captain Y. Bell [sic] … but … we cannot by any possibility make it a success, and having already captured two boats, we respectfully decline to prosecute it any further.”12
Beall and Burley had little choice but to abort the mission. When the sun rose on Tuesday, September 20, 1864, the Philo Parsons lay partially submerged a few miles from Windsor. The Confederates had stripped her of everything valuable, including three mirrors and the piano from the saloon. Beall was already on his way to the northern wilds of Ontario; Burley went east to hide out with friends in Guelph, near Toronto.
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The legation in Washington informed Lord Monck of Beall’s raid by coded telegram. Anxious to forestall Northern accusations of connivance or indifference, he ordered the Canadian Rifles stationed at Windsor to provide all possible assistance to the U.S. authorities. Lord Lyons had been at Spencer Wood, the governor-general’s official residence in Quebec, for only two days, and the news from Lake Erie so depressed him that he retired to bed with a crushing headache. The unwelcome discovery that there was a large number of houseguests also staying had already put him in a delicate state. He did not reappear for twenty-four hours.
Lyons roused himself for an excursion to Chaudière Falls, but he remained apart from the group and left them wondering when he failed to appear at the picnic lunch. Their suspicion that he was avoiding them was close to the mark. He would have stayed away from dinner, too, if he could have done so without offense. Just before the gong, there was a savage encounter between a house cat and a lapdog belonging to one of the guests. “With difficulty the animals were quieted, and we went in to dinner,” recorded Lord Monck’s sister-in-law, Frances Monck, whose husband, Colonel the Hon. Richard Monck, was the governor-general’s brother and military secretary. “Lord L.’s amusement was great; he went on all the evening alluding to the battle.”13
Feo Monck, as she was always known, was a force of nature, though a gentle one, who was perpetually missing trains, losing hats, and spilling anything hot and full to the brim. She was intelligent, too, though it could be difficult to tell behind the endless little dramas that punctuated her day. Feo and Lyons soon discovered that they shared the same dislike of hot weather, cold weather, exercise, and boats, and thereafter, as his attachés observed, he was a changed man. Sheffield and Malet had always assumed that Lord Lyons disliked women, but around Feo he revealed a hitherto unknown repertoire of after-dinner songs and became a tireless raconteur of hilarious anecdotes from the annals of diplomatic history. The more Feo laughed at his puckish comments, the wittier he became. “If you could hear Lord L.’s odd, grave, inquiring way of saying these things you would laugh as much as I am now laughing,” she wrote in her letter journal after they had spent a week exploring the majestic rivers of Quebec.
By the time the house party visited Shawinigan Falls, the second-highest waterfall in Canada after Niagara, Lyons had thrown off the last traces of reserve, removing his boots and stockings and splashing about the shallow rocks like a child. “Lord L. has travelled much, but he says he never saw a more exquisite view than that day,” recorded Feo. “When we had feasted our eyes on the Falls, and picked leaves, we went to our grand lunch laid on a table made with boards by the servants and boatmen. The sun was burning hot and the day perfection.” During the long journey home “we talked and sang, and Lord L. repeated poetry.”14
Lyons could not be so free when they visited Montreal and Niagara Falls. “We are to go to Cataract House at Niagara on the American side,” wrote Feo, “as the Confederate people are met at the Clifton House [on the Canadian side], and Lord L. does not wish to seem to watch them.”15 For once, Lyons’s caution made things worse; it would have been better if he had made a great show of watching them, thus sending a clear message to Jacob Thompson and his cohorts that their illegal operations in Canada would not be tolerated. But he was struggling both physically and mentally; only Feo Monck and the attachés knew how much he had dreaded his return to Washington. During one of their final excursions, he persuaded her to hide with him instead of meeting a deputation of local worthies who had gathered to greet their boat. “He gave me his arm,” wrote Feo, “and we ran off out of the ship, and got into a cab without waiting for any of them,” leaving the mayor standing disconsolately on the wharf. As the date of his departure on October 12 drew near, Lord Lyons became increasingly reckless and led Feo into all sorts of scrapes. On an outing to Lake Ontario they climbed up a steep ledge overlooking the lake, ignoring the prominent danger sign, and “we stood there,” recalled Feo, “clinging to the railing till we saw a policeman coming, and were so afraid of being scolded that we jumped down and ran away!”16
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Rose Greenhow had arrived at Halifax on September 6, 1864, and had been forced to wait for nearly three weeks while the Condor recoaled and took on supplies before she could begin the final part of her journey to Wilmington, North Carolina. Two more passengers were joining her: Lieutenant Wilson, whose parole she had obtained from Charles Francis Adams, and the Confederate commissioner James Holcombe, who had decided that he did not wish to participate in Thompson’s or Clay’s operations. The long delay until the Condor’s departure on September 24 was enough time for the U.S. consul in Halifax to learn the names of the passengers and the ship’s destination. As soon as the vessel steamed out of the harbor, he sent a telegram to Washington warning the Navy Department to ready the fleet at Wilmington. When the Condor reached Cape Fear in the small hours of October 1, every available blockader was waiting.
A storm was brewing as the vessel approached the Carolina coast. The roiling sea favored the Condor, and Captain Hewett was able to slip past the first line of blockaders. But as they approached New Inlet—the closer of the two entrances to Cape Fear River—Hewett saw that the sheer number of blockaders crowding around the entrance would make it impossible for him to escape detection. USS Niphon was the first to spot the Condor, and at 3:30 A.M. the chase began. The Niphon plowed through the waves, firing her guns in a steady roll. The Condor’s passengers cowered beneath the deck listening to the explosions above their heads. Suddenly, the ship lurched hard to starboard and crashed to a stop. The pilot had mistaken the wreck of the Night Hawk, which had been chased down the previous night, for a Federal ship and turned hard to avoid it, hitting a sandbank in the process.
The Condor was close enough to Fort Fisher for its guns to afford her some protection against the Niphon. Captain Hewett thought he might still be able to make the final dash in a few hours, once the tide had lifted his ship off the bar, but he could not guarantee that it would hold against the pounding of the waves, or that the rest of the fleet would not join the Niphon. Rose Green
how and James Holcombe both became hysterical. She was carrying dispatches from Mason and Hotze for Richmond, as well as £2,000 in gold, the entire profit from her book, and was rapidly becoming panic-stricken at the thought of being a Federal prisoner again.17 Since the shore was only a few hundred yards away, she begged Captain Hewett to let down a rowboat. Holcombe added his pleas. At first Hewett refused, but when two sailors volunteered to row, he relented.
Rose, Holcombe, Wilson, and the Condor’s pilot clambered with great difficulty into the rolling boat with the oarsmen. Rose had left everything behind on the ship except a copy of her book, the dispatches, and the money, which was in a pouch secured by a heavy chain. As they neared the surf, a wave flipped the boat over, spilling the passengers into the water. The men were able to swim to the surface and cling to the side of the boat, but Rose never reappeared. An hour later, the tide brought the rowboat in, allowing the battered and exhausted survivors to hobble onto the beach. Captain Hewett and his crew were rescued at dawn, although the Condor was left stuck in the sand.
Rose’s body was found in the morning by Thomas Taylor, an English blockade runner who had gone down to the beach to supervise the salvage operation of his own vessel.33.2 He had her remains carried to Fort Fisher, where the commandant’s wife, Mrs. Lamb, prepared it for transportation to Delaware. The following day, October 2, Wilmington gave Rose a state funeral: church bells tolled as her flag-draped coffin led an immense cortege headed by representatives from the Confederate War Department, the army, and the navy. Mindful that she was being buried without her family present, the president of the Soldiers’ Aid Society preserved Rose’s hair for her daughters, “in case we ever hear from them.”19
A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War Page 81