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

by Tsouras, Peter G.

  With the lead two frigates smashed and blocking his way and his orders to maintain line ahead now manifestly irrelevant, Captain George Hancock, C.B., of the next frigate, HMS Immortalité, sought out the nearest American ship, the frigate Powhatan, steamed right through her fire to come right up to her at ten yards.11 Immortalité was a big, new, and well-armed screw steam frigate with a heavier broadside than the older sidewheel steamer Powhatan, whose ten Dahlgrens could still knock Hancock’s own ship into matchsticks.12 Hancock had in the year prior to the war, been detailed by the commander of the Royal Navy’s North American and West Indies Station to coordinate repairs for the British ships at American navy yards where he had gleaned every bit of information he could on the Dahlgren guns for which he gained a most healthy respect. He knew that if he was to have a chance against the Powhaten’s guns, he had to get in close and inflict a crippling shot right off.

  Powhatan’s larboard sidewheel disintegrated, its great arms flapping broken on the water while the starboard wheel kept churning turning the ship in a circle. Hancock just rammed her rather than follow as his gunners kept up the relentless gutting of the American ship. He was the first man to board Powhatan and led the fight up to the quarterdeck where he found the American captain dead besides the shattered wheel and its fallen helmsman.

  The rest of the British division led by HMS Dauntless made a hard turn to larboard to bring itself parallel with the American ships and bring their guns to bear. It was then that wrenching shudders ran through HMS Wyvern and Hector. The torpedoes attached to their iron hulls detonated, and the sea gushed inside.

  Only the balloon gun crews, their eyes skyward, noticed then the line of aeroships coming in from the west.

  SACO, MAINE, 12:30 P.M., SATURDAY, MAY 7, 1864

  Wosleley looked at his pocket watch on the picket line to the east of Saco. As it read 12:30, he snapped it shut, turned on his heel, mounted, and rode back into town. Colonel Denison had not come back. He must now act without whatever information he could have brought.

  His orders were quick and decisive. Within minutes the 1st Division was set in motion to prepare to march west. He reviewed what he knew. A strong enemy force believed to be Sherman’s XI Corps was pushing the 2nd Division back onto Saco and the XII Corps remained south of Biddefield observing his own force that was now getting in marching order. He then reviewed what he did not know and that was what was going on to his east. If XII Corps was still just across the river, then what had swallowed up all his scouts? There had been reports of militia swarming the area. That could explain the missing scouts. He was not completely satisfied with that answer, but since Doyle had seen fit to throw away his cavalry brigade as a rear guard, he had no speedy way to find out. Yes, speed was the answer. He must strike the enemy pressing in from the west with such speed shock that if their XII Corps should somehow cross the river and threaten his rear, he would be able to turn on it and defeat it as well. In any case, British soldiers were fighting and dying, and his place was with them.

  The order of march had the 12th Brigade in the lead. Grant had promoted McBean of the 78th (Highland) Foot to command the brigade, and now he rode with him as the troops marched out of Saco. “McBean, strike them hard again and again. We don’t have a whole day to pound each other like Wellington at Waterloo.”

  “Aye, General, me bonny boys will give them the cold steel.” He turned as the Highlanders strode by, their kilts flowing around their knees. They were glad to have the kilts back as the warm spring weather had sent their trews back into storage. The pipers were playing the cocky “The Drunken Piper.” McPeak laughed out loud and said to himself, “Aye, there’s me brave laddies.”

  In a half hour they were passing through a growing crowd of wounded men making their way back to the field hospitals. Dead men and wounded who could go no further were scattered on the side of the road. Most of these were Canadians, but there was a sprinkling of men from three British regiments.13 The sound of fighting flared quickly coming their way, then a flood of fleeing men blocked the road. A Canadian field officer raced up to McPeak and screamed that the 2nd Sherbrooke Brigade had collapsed and that they must retreat. McPeak waved him off, saying, “Tsk, tsk, man, we just got here!” He threw the 78th and 73rd Foot on either side of the road into the fields that bordered thick woods with the 26th Foot and the Canadian 17th Levis Battalion behind them and gave the command to fix bayonets. The sound of twenty-five hundred bayonets fitting into their muzzle slots made a brief rattle and suddenly stopped. McPeak rode up to the 78th’s pipe major. “McLeod! Play me ‘Scotland the Brave,’ man.” The pipes skirled the bold air, and when the pipers paused as it reached that special crescendo, the battalion filled it with a resounding shout of “Hoy!” the challenge of one host to another across the havoc of war. On the other side of the field, more than one man born to the heather felt the tears running down his face.

  “The Brigade will advance!”

  ANDERSON STATION, VIRGINIA, 12:35 P.M., SATURDAY, MAY 7, 1864

  The Old Snapping Turtle they called him, Maj. Gen. George G. Meade. It was not a term of endearment. He had the sharpest tongue in the army and did not care who felt its edge.14 Today he was snapping at everyone within range, particularly his commanders, demanding to know why they could not quicken the pace. Particularly lacerated at this moment was his V Corps commander, Maj. Gen. Gouverneur Warren. Warren was a military engineer, a profession for careful men with a good eye for detail. It was this good eye that grasped on the first day of Gettysburg that the critical Little Round Top was undefended. It was his warning that saved the hill and some say the battle.

  As a corps commander he was too careful, always making sure that everything was in order and every danger prepared for before he moved. He had not the alacrity of a killer’s instinct. His corps was slow. The Army of the Potomac had made good hard-marching time to catch up with Lee with I Corps in the lead the day before. This morning V Corps took the lead and the pace of advance slowed perceptibly. Unpleasant as he was to those around him, Meade was an excellent soldier who knew how to move with alacrity. An engineer himself, he had been able to avoid the temptation to become obsessed with time-consuming precision when speed was required.15

  Now he was talking to Warren in a voice that carried down the marching column that was passing. “I’ve seen glue run up a tree in January faster than this corps is moving, General!” Warren did not appreciate the audience that was grinning as it marched by; his pride was the touchy sort, but he was smart enough not to argue with Meade when he was in this state. The troops enjoyed it immensely, though.

  Meade did not leave it at that. He rode down the column giving each brigade and division commander a piece of his mind. Not surprisingly, the column picked up its pace.

  CHESAPEAKE BAY, 12:39 P.M., SATURDAY, MAY 7, 1864

  Cushing lead the bombing run on board the aeroship Stephen Decatur with John Paul Jones, George Washington, and Andrew Jackson in line behind. He thought it a splendid sight, the scores of warships wreathed in smoke, some on fire, others sinking, but most still fighting it out. He watched as a heavily listing British ironclad suddenly went over onto its side then began to settle by the stern. Men were swarming the water around it or in boats trying to get as far away as possible before the undertow sucked them down with it. He would learn later that it was HMS Hector whose wound had been inflicted by the submersible Dolphin. HMS Wivern was also settling, its hull torn open by Shark’s mine. USS Powhatan was a funeral pyre, and monitor Passaic was dead in the water, another kill scored by Captain Cowles and the Prince Albert. HMS Defence was afloat but all her starboard guns had been silenced by Lehigh and Patapsco. She fell out of line unable to bring any guns to bear and fighting fires raging through her wrecked gundecks as ammunition exploded.

  The battle had moved on out several miles closer to the entrance to the bay. The British ironclad force had been reduced to Warrior, the useless Defence, Prince Consort, heavily listing Royal Sovereign, and
Prince Albert, with ship-of-the line Edgar, and supported by the second division of three frigates and three corvettes. The first division, except for that fighting devil Immortalité, had been wrecked by the overwhelming firepower of the big American frigates.

  All semblance of maintaining line ahead was gone, as ships were now locked in individual duels. Slugging it out with these twelve British ships were the ironclads New Ironsides, Dictator, Tecumseh, Onondaga, Manhattan, Monadnock, Patapsco, and Leghigh. The British ships had suffered far more damage. Their exposed masts and rigging and the greater vulnerability of their armor belts and turrets against the crushing 440-pound shot and 400-pound shells of the American 15-inch Dahlgren guns had begun to tell. The forward turret of Prince Consort had been smashed open, and she had been holed repeatedly, putting great strain on her wooden frame. Prince Albert had not gone untouched either. One of its four turrets had been holed and jammed shut. She was taking water from a hit at the water line. The heavier USS Dictator, pride of John Ericsson, closed in to finish her off, but one of her boilers burst driving the men out of the engine compartments. She slowly fell out of line. Warrior was being beaten to death by New Ironsides and Monadnock. That monitor’s turrets were almost solid masses of dents, testimony to the accuracy of British gunnery, yet they were still fighting, the men almost deaf from the constant clanging impact of shot and shell, testimony to the inferior striking power of British guns. HMS Edgar edged in to take some of the pressure off Admiral Hope’s flagship and steamed right into the guns of Monadnock. Her double turrets fired four huge shells to explode inside the multiple decks of the great ship.

  The British frigates and corvettes were engaging the last three ironclads getting the worst of it. None of their guns could do more than dent the turrets, and the Americans were keeping too close to let them fire downward at their vulnerable decks. Already frigate Pylades and corvette Rattlesnake had fallen out of line so badly damaged by the American 11- and 15-inch guns. Narcissus kept up a steady but ineffective fire despite her wounds as the blood ran down the scuppers and flames licked through the splintered holes in her gun decks.

  Most of the anti-balloon guns on the British ships had already been smashed or their exposed crews swept away when Cushing led his aeroships in for their strike. Their priority targets were the ironclads, and so they flew over the frigates and corvettes at the tail of the column. Cushing came down to three hundred feet in the “Barbary Pirate” and released his rack of explosive bronze shell bombs16 mixed with incendiaries onto Prince Consort. Half fell into the sea behind her, but the others fell perfectly down the deck in a ripple of explosions and billowing flame.

  John Paul Jones’s target was HMS Royal Sovereign, and its aim was even better than Cushing’s. Soon that ship’s upper deck was a mass of wreckage and fire. George Washington entirely missed Warrior, her bombs all falling to the larboard of the ship. Andrew Jackson followed, released too soon onto Defence only to see half the bombs fall into the sea and the other half hit Forte’s bow, disintegrating it and the foredeck and sending incendiaries spilling fire down its wooden decks. Aboard corvette Pylades a midshipman Pulver ran up to the abandoned 20-pounder Armstrong balloon gun, shoved off the dead gunner draped over it and swiveled it on its mount directly in the path of oncoming Andrew Jackson. He jumped back and pulled the lanyard. Its incendiary shell punched through the sky and right into the aeroship’s hydrogen-filled balloon. For a split second nothing happened, then a jet of blue-orange flame spurted from the rent fabric of the balloon, which spasmed in a pulse of incandescent fire and collapsed slowly onto itself. The compartment beneath plummeted downward trailing the burning balloon until the entire mass crashed into the sea in loud hiss.

  ONE MILE NORTH OF THE HANOVER ACADEMY, 1:15 P.M., SATURDAY, MAY 7, 1864

  All it took was one last charge by the 6th Virginia Cavalry, and what was left of Wilson’s cavalry division gave way. Private James Faulkner found himself alone as he rode up pistol in hand to take the surrender of three dismounted enemy who held their rifles butt end up. A dozen other Yankees had run for the woods twenty yards away. Out of nowhere Stuart himself rode up waving his black-plumed hat and his blue eyes flashing. He had outrun his staff to be at victory’s spear tip and reached over to shake Faulkner’s hand. Faulkner was awed not only by Stuart the man but in the sense of triumph that radiated from him as he said, “We’ve got the damned Yankees on the run again!” He knew Lee was watching. He had done it, broken through. Already the 6th Virginia was mopping the last of the Yankees that had not hightailed it away, and his couriers were galloping to find Longstreet.

  He stood up in the saddle to get a better look just as one of the fleeing Yankees reached the woods, turned, and fired. Stuart flew back in the saddle, leaned over, his plumed hat falling into the dust, said, “I am shot,” and fell to the ground. Faulkner flew from his horse to rush to Stuart’s side, but the general was already dead as he fell into Faulkner’s arms. The three prisoners did not need to think. They bolted for the woods.

  Stuart’s death at the critical moment would cost precious time that Lee did not have. Suddenly, the reins of Lee’s cavalry arm went slack. His staff caught up with him, and at the sight of him on the ground cried out in anguish. The most conspicuous was Captain Heros von Borke, known as the Giant in Gray, for his six feet four inches and huge sword. He was a Prussian officer who had left the 2nd Brandenburg Dragoons to come and fight for the Confederacy and had been commissioned and assigned to Stuart’s staff where he became a good friend and confident of the cavalier cavalryman. Now, his Prussian stoicism was undone. He would be the one to inform Lee. It was minutes before anyone thought to tell Hampton that the command had devolved on him or Lee that the man whom he loved as a son had fallen. Time seemed to freeze for the Army of Northern Virginia at that very moment that the army needed to ride on its flowing back to safety.

  Into this suspended animation rode Sheridan with Merritt’s Reserve Brigade. Sheridan had come across a steady stream of wounded on the road, then more and more hale men, and finally someone who could tell him that Wilson’s Division had been fought out and scattered. He arrived to drive off the scattered 6th Virginia and dismount his regiments to take up positions from which their repeaters could do the most damage.

  Lee was enormously relieved when Stuart’s courier arrived to announce that the enemy cavalry had been broken. He could see himself from his observation post in the small steeple of Hanover Academy how Wilson’s troopers seemed to melt away. He ordered his corps commanders to hurry their troops forward with all speed. His first brigade would be coming up to go into battle to support Longstreet shortly. Ever since he had dispatched his favorite corps commander to the James Peninsula, he had said that without the First Corps was like going into a fight with only one boot on. He had hardly sent those orders when he saw through his glass a large force of Union cavalry sweeping forward and scattering Stuart’s disorganized regiments. Horse artillery dashed up, unlimbered, and began firing quickly.

  It was then that the giant Prussian climbed up onto the viewing platform under the steeple to bring the news of his friend’s death.17 Lee had that great balance of character and will to let him plough through those moments that would stun other men, but even he was shaken. He turned pale, and for long moments he could not speak, and when he did he could only say, “I can scarcely think of him without weeping.”18

  So lost was he in grief in that steeple platform that for a few moments he did not notice the brigades of Maj. Gen. A.P. Hill’s Third Corps flowing on either side of the Hanover Academy.

  THREE MILES WEST OF SACO, MAINE, 1:25 P.M., SATURDAY, MAY 7, 1864

  The Highlanders passed scattered bands of the 1/39th Foot falling back dragging many wounded with them, a look of desperation in all their grimed faces. Then they came upon the dead of the 39th where they had fallen marking where the firing line of the regiment had been. Most of the 39th lay there still. Now Highlanders began to fall, first a few then dozens with
each step, not here and there, but whole squads. Seeing the carnage, McPeak stood up in his stirrups and shouted, “Seventy-Eighth! Take them at a run! Charge!” The men roared “Cuidich ‘n Rhi!” in response and bounded forward. The 73rd Foot on their flank also shouted and raced forward not to be outdone by the Scotties as did the 26th Foot and the Canadian battalion behind them.

  Two hundred yards away a mass of blue infantry stood firing; between the regiments sections of coffee mill guns chattered, and over them all shells flew at the oncoming Highlanders. It was the 2nd Division of XI Corps, regiments from Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, many of whose men had fought and beat the British at Claverack the year before. Doyle’s brigades had melted away in the face of their firepower already today. Now they shook their fists as they fired, shouting for the enemy to come on. Their Spencers fired and fired, their sound a symphonic counterpoint to the click-bang machine hammer of the coffee mill guns. Maj. Gen. John A. Logan rode behind the first rank of regiments waving his hat. “Come on, you Limey bastards, you want another taste!” He had already driven back Doyle’s brigades, and the smell of victory was heady.

  The 78th and 73rd raced into a storm of lead no men had ever faced before, but the last of them just kept coming with the 26th Foot and the 17th Levis Battalion. Somehow McPeak had come through unhurt; he had scrambled from his dying horse to join the 26th charging past him and joined them. The Americans had just kept firing. In a charge, one side or the other would lose its nerve before the two closed upon each other. Either the charging men would lose their will to continue in the face of a steady fore, or the defender could lose his nerve in the face of a determined attacker. The only times when two groups pitched into each other with the bayonet was when one side could not get out the way.