Bayonets, Balloons & Ironclads: Britain and France Take Sides With the South

by Tsouras, Peter G.

  At the same time farther to the north, Longstreet’s assaults broke through the defenses west of Yorktown. Weiztel was barely able to save his men behind the fortifications of Yorktown as most of Longstreet’s two divisions surged south. All he could do was take the enemy under fire with the guns of the fort before they disappeared into the woods. More than twenty thousand Confederates were about to show up at the Second Battle of Big Bethal within a few hours. Weitzel could only watch them in silent rage. He could see from beyond the woods the puffs of rifle fire from his lone cavalry regiment, as Col. Benjamin F. Onderdonk’s 1st New York Mounted Rifles tried to delay the onrushing Confederates.

  Longstreet was informed quickly of the stalemate at Big Bethal and switched his brigades to the west at Halfway House. West of the constricted area in which the battle was being fought was a six-mile stretch of open fields bisected by the Northwest Branch of the Back River arising from the swamps Black Kiln Creek. South of the river, the two Union cavalry regiments were the only Union force in Longstreet’s way. They had deployed to cover the ford just below the mill a few hundred yards south of the bridge over the river. Elsewhere the banks were marshy, though occasionally they would have thirty to fifty feet of solid ground easily bridgeable with timbers.14

  Before long men from the 1st New York Mounted Rifles, mostly wounded, began drifting back across the ford describing how their boys were up against the two detached Virginia cavalry regiments of Lomax’s Brigade. Lee had chosen them to reinforce Longstreet because some of the men from the 5th and 15th Virginia Cavalry had been recruited from the James Peninsula and nearby Northern Neck. They were invaluable now in using every well-known fold in the ground, trail, and copse to steadily push Onderdonk’s men back. They needed every bit of local guile because Onderdonk’s men were armed with Sharps repeaters. They had been recruited as mounted rifles, paid for their own weapons, and thereby packed a much heavier punch than other cavalry regiments armed with only the older Sharps single-shot carbine.

  The New York men began filtering back now by platoons and companies, splashing across the river to take up positions behind the makeshift defenses already thrown up by the other two cavalry regiments. They could see the puffs of black gunpowder smoke not too far off showing where the last of Onderdonk’s men were still fighting. Then firing stopped, and the last company came galloping down to the river and splashed across the ford. The last man was their colonel, who conspicuously turned his horse on the riverbank to fire one last round at the enemy before spurring the animal across.

  As senior officer he took command of all three cavalry regiments and would gladly have stood off three enemy brigades if they tried to force the ford. The cavalry breechloaders and repeaters gave him a considerable firepower advantage. Longstreet was not about to make it that easy for him, though. The enemy cavalry departed to the west while Confederate infantry columns now appeared. Artillery batteries wheeled into place and immediately opened fire. The first rounds passed over the men crouching behind their quickly dug, shallow holes to land among the horses behind held in the rear. For every three men in the firing line, a fourth was holding their horses. Into this shell after shell exploded, killing and panicking man and beast. Then the guns shifted to the cavalrymen along the bank. Onderdonk realized that he could not hold against the guns and the heavy infantry assault that was moving toward the ford. He sent a messenger galloping to Brig. Gen. Stevens fighting in the woods and swamps.

  Stevens was pleased that he had stopped the enemy cold, a strange term now that the woods were burning. It had been a dry spring, and fighting had set the pine straw and dry leaves afire. Flames raced up the pines to consume their crowns in searing explosions. The men on both sides drew back, dragging the wounded where they could. Where they couldn’t shrieks keened above the roar of the fire. Nature had come to his aid, he thought, until the messenger thrust Onderdonk’s dispatch into his hand. It read, “Large infantry force supported by artillery is attacking. I can no longer hold your flank. I can delay while you withdraw.” Now Stevens was faced with the most difficult of all maneuvers—to break contact and retreat in the face of a determined and skillful enemy. His first action was to send the messenger on with his own order to the Newport News brigade to retreat to Hamilton.

  Stevens walked down the firing line giving his orders and shouting to his boys that the Good Lord had barred the enemy’s way with fire to protect their flanks as he had done to save the Israelites from the Egyptians. It was just the margin they needed as he began pulling them out. In an hour, save for the rearguard, they were crossing the bridge over Southwest Branch of the Back River and filing into the landward defenses of Fortress Monroe, a line of earthworks that stretched from the river two miles to an inlet on off the bay. Onderdonk was as good as his word and had held the ford as long as he could, which was long enough. The Confederate infantry forced the ford, but Onderdonk’s cavalry delayed until Lomax’s cavalry appeared from the west where they had made a makeshift bridge. Their charge in the Union right finally collapsed the cavalry’s organized opposition and turned it into a rout. Longstreet’s artillery caught them again as they were streaming over the bridge clogging it with dead and dying horses and men. Lomax’s regiments crashed into the bunched survivors who had not been able to cross. A few men with the presence to jump off their horses and pick their way over the bridge escaped. The rest were cut down or captured. To the east the Confederate brigades cut off the retreat of the Newport New brigade. Only a few hundred men were able to make it to Hamilton. The rest surrendered. Thus ended Second Big Bethal, a shattering Union defeat that now put the landward side of Fortress Monroe under Confederate artillery fire and hung a hideous fate over the fifteen thousand contrabands trapped outside its walls. For with the Confederate forces came the slave catchers to return them to their masters.15

  MONTREAL RAILWAY STATION, 2:45 P.M., SATURDAY, APRIL 16, 1864

  If Wolseley had spies across the border so did Sharpe in reverse. It did not take long for them to begin relaying information that most of the Montreal Field Force had been given marching orders to entrain at Montreal. The Irish were very helpful in this and very well placed, not in the chambers of high council but in the laundries and stables where a keen eye and ear can learn just as much.

  The news of the American raids on the British Isles, especially the seizure of Dublin and the declaration of the Irish Republic, had stunned all of Canada. Without a shot being fired in North America, the British population there suffered a paralytic crisis in confidence. If the Americans could do what France, Spain, and Russia never could, then the pillars of their world suddenly trembled. It dawned on the Anglo-Canadians that they really could lose this war in a replay of the American Revolution when the peace agreed to by the Crown forced their Tory or Loyalist ancestor to abandon their homes and migrate to Canada in the first place. This time there was nowhere else to go if the Stars and Stripes waved from Halifax to Montreal.

  For the French Canadians the prospect that their British overlords would surrender them as readily as their French ones had in 1763 at the end of the Seven Years War was suddenly a reality.16 More than one decided it was time to hedge their bets. For them adjusting to new overlords was something they had practiced for almost a hundred years already.

  None of this affected Hope Grant’s decision to fight it out. If anything, the news that Lee was dispatching Longstreet to drive the Americans out of their redoubts at Norfolk and Fortress Monroe made it imperative. Simultaneous operations against the Americans at opposite ends of their country would seriously stress them. They could not be strong everywhere. He quickly dispatched the fourteen thousand men of his 2nd Division and the Guards Brigade to reinforce Hastings Doyle at Portland. He also ordered a dozen more Canadian battalions to reinforce him. All in all, it would give Hastings almost forty thousand men. He had no doubt that his remaining division could fend off any attempt by Sickles and his corps to threaten Montreal.

  To underline his priorit
y he sent Wolseley off to support Doyle. To his infinite distress, his wounds bound him to his headquarters in Montreal. As Wolseley took his leave, Grant drove the point home. “Joe, we’re rolling for the whole pot. Give them a bloody nose, and we make it through another year. Victories, Joe. Governments like victories.” He willed himself to recover; he would not miss the coming battle for the world.

  There was more than one man in Montreal who would not miss the coming fight for all the world. Martin Hogan was one of them. He had volunteered to be a nurse in the American prisoner hospital on the outskirts of the city. The British fed and cared for their prisoners far better than either the Union or the Confederacy. So it was a rare man who left a warm, well-fed barracks to carry on among the gangrene and death, and the British were eager for any volunteer with no questions asked.

  If the barracks had been well-fed, they had also been well-guarded and had not yielded a single crack to Hogan’s guile. The hospital could be no worse and probably a damn sight better with so much coming and going amid the tension of death and suffering. There his guile fell on fruitful ground. Security was not a priority for the Royal Medical Corps. “God bless ‘em,” said Martin under his breath. What security there was to the camp was a single Canadian sentry all of fifteen years old, a boy really without a beard and gangly like a colt who stood with a rifle almost as tall as he was by the hospital doors.

  Hogan walked into an alcove where white smocks for medical personnel lined a wall on pegs. He snatched one and threw it on. As he walked out he picked up a clipboard and a pencil. The pencil he stuck behind his ear, and seemingly without a care in the world he walked out of the hospital, his eyes intent on the papers attached to the clipboard, and right past the oblivious guard.

  A few blocks away into the town Hogan concluded another change of coat was prudent. The opportunity staggered past him, a Canadian volunteer with too much good cheer. Hogan clapped a friendly hand on his shoulder, suggested they stop for another drink, and guided him to an alley. A few minutes later, the scout emerged with a new scarlet coat and shako. Feeling rather pleased with himself, he walked around a corner and right into the arms of the Provost Guard. They were rounding up strays, put Hogan with a half-dozen forlorn volunteers and marched them to the train station where the reinforcements for Doyle were loading. That afternoon he was heading east coincidentally on the same train as Wolseley.

  SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, 2:22 P.M., SATURDAY, APRIL 17, 1864

  Sam Clemmons had the bar captivated with his story of a jumping frog. He was in rare form, so rare, indeed, that he kept a room full of San Franciscans indoors on a gloriously clear and sunny day. He was winding the final punch line when the sound of cannon from the bay was heard. He improvised a line: “Ah, even our Russian friends appreciate the story.” A certain relief went through the audience; San Francisco had been worried when the Russian squadron had left, especially since there had been no word of their whereabouts since their prize crews had brought a dozen captured British ships to the bay. Now their return would reestablish the security of the city. But the sound was different from the normal salutes fired by the Russians when passing the fort at the entrance to the bay and the return salutes. It was growing into a continuous roar. His story fell flat as every head turned to the doors of the saloon.

  Minutes seemed to pass as no one moved. The spell was broken when the doors burst open and someone ran into to shout, “The British! The British are attacking the forts!” The saloon emptied in seconds as everyone rushed into the street. The roar of the cannonade was now plain to hear. A pall of smoke could be seen rising from the Golden Gate. People ran to rooftops and balconies to watch as the Royal Navy’s frigates sailed back and forth pounding the great masonry fort at the narrows of the Golden Gate.

  What no one could hear or see in San Francisco that day were the hundreds of long boats pushing out from two dozen transports on the lower seaward side of the San Francisco Peninsula. The British had gambled on the weather, low odds indeed at this time of year when the coast was often fogbound in the San Francisco Bay area of which Sam Clemmons someday would write that the coldest winter he had ever spent was one summer in San Francisco. It took a large dose of Nelson’s luck. The Royal Navy had discovered once more that acceptance of bold risk more than anything else was the surest way to summon Nelson’s ghost. Its reward was a fine, sunny day.

  It took great skill at handling boats to get them through the heavy surf, but the British tars were up to it. Of the scores of boats only two were capsized, spilling their crews and red coated passengers into the cold 50-degree water, some to die of hypothermia before they could be fished out, a deadly payment for the expedition’s good luck. From those that landed first, British infantry sped up the rising beach to the high ground and looked down beyond into dunes and scrub. San Francisco beckoned only a few miles beyond. Over the next few hours five thousand men from five British regiments and accompanying artillery and engineers had been put ashore. By late afternoon they were marching on San Francisco, whose only defenses faced the sea.17

  HEADQUARTERS, PORTLAND FIELD FORCE, PORTLAND, MAINE, 3:49 P.M., WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20, 1864

  Wolesely’s single eye scanned the report to find its essence, then carefully reread it to absorb the totality of it. He shook his head in admiration. Hope Grant had been right. The Americans could not be strong everywhere. The American VI Corps had quickly departed Kennebunk to return to the Army of the Potomac. The odds had suddenly become tolerable.

  It was clear that Lee had poked a very sharp stick in the American eye. Dispatches just arrived from the army’s liaison with the Royal Navy’s blockade force in the Chesapeake reported that Fortress Monroe was tightly invested by Longstreet and under relentless attack by the navy. Meade was trying to bring Lee to battle, but the grand master of war had dodged and sidestepped him time and time again as the days melted away. Wolseley could have wished for more information from the spy ring in Washington, but it recently had gone quiet. He did not like that. He would have to goad them into action.

  SS VASA IN THE SKAGGERACK, 8:55 P.M., APRIL 20, 1864

  Dahlgren leaned against the railing and drank in the cool Scandinavian spring. The ship was passing through the strait separating the North from the Baltic Seas, with Denmark on their right and Sweden on their left. It had been five days since his companions and he had been plucked out the water, near death from thirst, by the Vasa. Looking back, it seemed like a miracle. When the fog had lifted, he steered out of the banks and the protection of the British fishing fleet in a hopeless attempt to reach Denmark before they all succumbed. A squall had given them enough water to slake immediate thirst. Kolya hung on, poor boy, humming something about a bumblebee.

  It had appeared as a small smoke trail to the northwest, by all odds another British warship. His sail could not match the speed of the ship’s engines as the distance closed. Eventually the ship’s outline became visible, and there were no gunports picked out in white paint. He put the smack on an intercept course; again, the odds were still that it was a British ship. Captivity, after all, was better than an ignominious, unknown death at sea. The ship was just over a quarter mile away when Dahlgren made out its colors—blue and yellow.

  He let go the rudder, painfully rose, and began waving his arms and shouting. Feodor and Collins looked at him as if he had gone mad, but the Russian took the rudder and kept the smack on course. Dahlgren pointed to the coming ship. Feodor kept on the course. The ship came about as the smack nearly collided with it. An old man, with a rich white beard and the authority of a captain, shouted down at him in Swedish. Dahlgren had enough of his grandfather’s language to invoke the first law of the sea and beg aid to the distressed. Commands bellowed in Swedish. A cradle dipped over the side, and Dahlgren and Feodor lifted Kolya into it. He then sent the other two up the rope ladder and followed. With one leg it was a painful process until Feodor’s strong hand reached under his arm to haul him up.

  He found a doctor work
ing on Kolya already, the captain standing over them. Dahlgren hobbled over to him and saluted. The man saw him drag his leg. His blue eyes suddenly widened, and a torrent of Swedish burst out. Dahlgren could only shake his head and mumble in very broken Swedish that he did not understand. The captain switched to English. “You are Colonel Ulrich Dahlgren?”