Lake Erie Stories

by Chad Fraser

  Beall, in his journal, succinctly describes his first meeting with Thompson: “Immediately on my arrival in Canada I went to Col. Thompson at Toronto, and made application to start a privateer on Lake Huron. He informed me of a plan to take the Michigan (14 guns), and release the Confederate officers confined on Johnson’s Island. I immediately volunteered . . .”

  The Lake Erie raid would be a two-pronged strategy: Beall was to be responsible for organizing a raiding party at Sandwich that would procure a vessel to carry them to Sandusky Bay to attack the Michigan. The second part of the plan was already underway in Sandusky, right under the noses of the crew of the Michigan, and Beall immediately set off to judge things there for himself.

  Upon arriving in Sandusky, Beall immediately sought out his contact, the spy Charles Cole, who was staying at the West House, a five-storey hotel near the waterfront, with his “wife,” a woman variously known as Annie Davis or Emma Bison. Cole was posing as a wealthy oil baron, using generous amounts of Thompson’s money to ingratiate himself to the crew of the Michigan, especially the captain, J.C. Carter. He ultimately planned to arrange a party for the crew aboard the ship, as part of the “oil man’s” gratitude for the men’s service to the Union. The champagne, however, was to be drugged, and when the crew fell unconscious, so the plan went, Cole would send a signal to Beall, who would be waiting nearby with a raiding party in his hijacked vessel.

  During the summer of 1864, there were signs that Cole was having success. He wrote to Thompson in a letter that historian Charles E. Frohman later published in his 1965 book, Rebels on Lake Erie, that: “I have formed the acquaintance of Captain Carter, commanding United States steamer Michigan. He is an unpolished man, whose pride seems to be touched for the reason that, having been an old United States naval officer, he is not allowed now a more extensive field of operation.”

  With all seemingly going well on the Ohio side of the lake, Beall headed for Sandwich, where another surprise awaited him. His friend Bennet G. Burley, whom Beall had last seen during the privateering expedition on the Chesapeake, had managed to break out of captivity at Fort Delaware through a sewer that emptied into the Delaware River. Having thus gained his freedom, Burley showed even more bravado by choosing to join the Canadian operation, and when Beall arrived in Sandwich he found Burley there waiting for him. Beall must have been thrilled to have the experienced Burley at his side for what would surely be the pair’s toughest test yet. Naturally, Beall made Burley his second-in-command.

  The Taking of the Parsons

  Walter Ashley described the beginnings of the plot to take the Philo Parsons at Beall’s military trial, held in New York in January 1865 (the proceedings of which Bedinger Lucas included in his Memoir of John Yates Beall):

  On Sunday, the 18th of September, about six o’clock in the evening, I was onboard the steamboat Philo Parsons, in the cabin alone, at the boat’s dock in Detroit; she being a boat sailing from Detroit to the city of Sandusky, touching regularly at the Canadian port of Amherstburgh, and occasionally at Sandwich . . . Mr. Bennet G. Burley came aboard the boat, and inquired for Ashley. I told him my name was Ashley. He then said he intended to go down as a passenger, in the morning, to Sandusky; that three friends were going with him; and he requested that the boat stopped at Sandwich, a small town on the Canada side of the river below Detroit, and take on those three friends as passengers. I remarked that it was not customary for the boat to stop at Sandwich. He then asked it as a personal favour that the boat would stop and take on his friends. I then agreed, provided that he, Burley, would take the boat himself at Detroit, and let me know for sure that his friends would be ready to come on board at Sandwich . . . The next morning, being the 19th of September, the boat left Detroit at eight o’clock in the morning, with freight and passengers. As the boat was swinging away from the dock, Burley came to me and reminded me of my promise to stop the boat at Sandwich. At the time the boat left Detroit, Capt. S.F. Atwood was in command of her, but he stepped off at Middle Bass Island, where he resides. I told Capt. Atwood that the boat would have to stop at Sandwich, and he stopped and took these three friends of Burley at Sandwich.

  The three men picked up at Sandwich, whom Ashley described as “gentlemanly in their appearance,” paid their fare, stating they were “taking a little pleasure trip,” with no particular destination. Still, this was a relatively normal morning aboard the Parsons, save for the unusual stop at Sandwich. When describing the stop at Amherstburg, a short way downriver, however, Ashley’s testimony takes a slightly more suspicious tone:

  . . . twenty-five men got onboard there at Malden [Amherstburg], and they paid their fare also . . . all the baggage brought on board by the party was a very old trunk with cord, a rope, tied around it. It was taken in at the after gangway by two of the roughest looking subjects of the party; most of the party were roughly dressed in citizens’ dress.

  At this point Ashley thought he had taken on a group of “skedaddlers,” or men who had crossed into Canada in order to evade the draft and were now heading home. Such men were not uncommon passengers on the Philo Parsons’s cross-border route.

  From Amherstburg, the Parsons left the Detroit River and crossed the open lake to the small settlement at North Bass Island, then onward to Put-in-Bay, at South Bass Island, before proceeding to Middle Bass Island, and finally on to Kelleys Island, closer to the Ohio shore. It was while the boat was at Middle Bass that Captain Atwood disembarked to spend the evening with his family at his home on the island, leaving De Witt Clinton Nicols, the Parsons’s mate and Atwood’s son-in-law, to sail the rest of the way to Sandusky and back the next morning, when Atwood planned to rejoin the Parsons on its return trip to Detroit. Ashley remained on board to look after what he called “the affairs of the boat.”

  It was as the Parsons was leaving Kelleys Island, at approximately four o’clock, that the hijacking got underway. Ashley was standing at the door to the ladies’ cabin when he was approached by three of the men who had boarded at Amherstburg, each armed with pistols. Burley, who had been at the stern, rushed to join the attackers. Ashley recalled Burley’s simple words to him while testifying at Beall’s military trial: “Get into that cabin, or you’re a dead man.”

  Beall then started counting, and by the time he had gotten to three, Ashley was well inside the cabin. Burley and his men then locked the door and posted guards outside. Ashley’s testimony at Burley’s Canadian extradition trial in December 1864 (which was closely followed in the Toronto Globe) illustrates the rampage the clerk then witnessed through the ladies’ cabin window:

  From the cabin I observed the whole party gather round the old trunk; the cords were cut, the lid taken off and the whole party armed themselves with revolvers from the trunk; most of them had two revolvers each, and a belt around their waist with a revolver in it; some of them carried a hatchet . . . the prisoner [Burley] then with an axe smashed the luggage room door open; I do not know for what purpose . . . he then went forward and smashed the saloon door in the same manner . . . he had charge of the main deck, and for about an hour took charge of the vessel . . . he took charge of everything, and ordered the freight to be thrown overboard; the freight consisted of thirty tons of pig iron; I saw them commence to throw the iron overboard . . .

  Meanwhile, a similar scene was unfolding in the Parsons wheelhouse, where De Witt Clinton Nicols was at the controls. His testimony at Burley’s Canadian extradition trial neatly tells the story: “. . . I was in the pilot house when a man came up and said, ‘I am a Confederate officer; I seize this boat and take you prisoner; submit to what I demand, or if not there (showing a revolver) are tools to make you.’ I submitted and did as I was told.” That man, whom Nicols mistakenly thought had gotten on at Amherstburg, was none other than John Yates Beall.

  Once they had control of the boat, the Confederates shuffled the Parsons’s passengers, including Nicols, into the hold, where they could be easily monitored. Within thirty minutes, Beall’s men were in
complete control of the Parsons and were sailing directly for Sandusky Bay and the Michigan.

  But just as the men began to celebrate their early success, another problem presented itself; there was not enough wood aboard the Parsons to power the boat’s boilers for the seven to eight hours Beall estimated he would need. They would have to return to Middle Bass to take on more. With his quarry, the Michigan, nearly in sight, Beall angrily ordered the Parsons turned around.

  The Parsons had been at the dock at Middle Bass taking wood, her “crew” doing their best not to arouse suspicion, for about fifteen minutes when their problems were compounded even further: George Orr’s Island Queen, which was on its way to Toledo with a stop at South Bass Island, pulled in alongside to take on wood as well. With the increased activity on the dock that the Queen’s arrival attracted, it was getting more difficult for Beall’s men to hold their cover. Even worse, the Island Queen was carrying between forty and fifty Union soldiers who were returning to Toledo, plus several Middle Bass Islanders, for a total of one hundred passengers in all. There was no choice — Beall would have to seize the Island Queen or risk being overrun by the soldiers aboard her. George Orr describes what happened next:

  Photo courtesy of Lore of the Lakes

  The Island Queen, which was taken by Confederate operatives and partially sunk on Chickenolee Reef.

  Here the Queen was taken possession by the armed conspirators, who leaped aboard from the Parsons’ upper decks. The men comprising the crew and passengers of the Island Queen were compelled to go into the Parsons’ hold, while the ladies and children were all ordered into her upper cabins.

  Unfortunately, the taking of the Island Queen was not done without some bloodshed. According to Orr, “Engineer Henry Haines was ordered out of the engine room, and told that if he did not come they would shoot him. He refused and they shot him in the face, causing a flesh wound and filling his face with powder.” In order to disperse the crowd gathering on the dock, the Confederates fired indiscriminately into it, seriously wounding Lorenz Miller, a resident of Put-in-Bay.

  Beall was out of time. He had to get the Parsons away from the dock — immediately. He quickly ordered the passengers of both boats, save for Orr, the wounded engineer, and the Island Queen’s clerk, put ashore, under the condition that they not inform anyone of what had happened for twenty-four hours. (The passengers quickly violated this quaint convention of nineteenth-century warfare and set off by rowboat to tell the residents of nearby Put-in-Bay about the Confederate raiders. But by the time they got there, the danger had long passed.)

  Beall ordered the Island Queen taken in tow, and the two vessels lumbered away from Middle Bass, heading for Chickenolee Reef, just south of Pelee Island, in Canadian waters. There, a small group of raiders boarded the Island Queen, cut the steamer’s water feed pipe, and cast it adrift. It eventually came to rest on the reef, partially submerged in just under three metres of water.

  With the Queen conveniently disposed of, and Beall back in firm control of the situation, there were no more obstacles to be overcome. Beall ordered the Parsons to Sandusky Bay. With the time now around 10 p.m., the Parsons cut her engines three kilometres outside of the channel buoy, with the Michigan in uncomfortably close range. Beall had done all he could. All that remained now was the signal from Cole.

  It would not come. What Beall could not know was that an informant had somehow managed to get word through to Captain Carter about the plot to take his ship and, specifically, Cole’s role in it. There are numerous stories as to exactly how Cole was apprehended, but what is clear is that he and his “wife” had packed their bags, no doubt ready to make an escape to Canada, when Cole was captured and taken to the Michigan. Ironically, as Beall and his men were nose to nose with the Union gunboat in Sandusky Bay, Cole was likely aboard the Michigan — in the brig.

  A full thirty minutes had passed since the Parsons had arrived at Sandusky Bay and still the Michigan rode silently ahead at anchor. When word got out that Beall was considering making the attempt anyway, tensions reached a breaking point. Seventeen of the raiders were now convinced that such an action would be folly, and it was time to head back to Canada. When they expressed this opinion, Beall flew into a furious rage. But the men would not be moved. Finally, even the fanatical Beall realized he had no option. He would order the Parsons back to Canada, but not before each of the hijackers signed a sworn statement of what Beall described as their insubordination, which they proceeded to do on the back of a bill of lading.

  With this, the Philo Parsons sped back toward the Detroit River, her boiler being kept in a “tremendous heat,” according to George Orr, because the Confederates were burning old coal oil barrels that had been left aboard. During the return journey, Beall ordered the Confederate flag hoisted up the Parsons’s mast.

  It would be the only time the “Southern Cross” would fly above a vessel on the Great Lakes during the Civil War.

  When they reached Amherstburg at around eight o’clock in the morning, two of the raiders fled ashore in a small boat that had been taken from the Island Queen before she was scuttled. The next stop was Fighting Island, a small, uninhabited isle further up the Detroit River. There, Orr, the engineer, and the clerk were put ashore. Then, as Orr says, “they continued up the river to Sandwich, where, after removing the piano and other valuables, the Parsons was set adrift, but afterward picked up by a tug. The raiders then scattered into Canada as fast as possible.”

  Endgame

  With that, the Lake Erie raid came to its ignominious end. Cole, ironically, would be sent to Johnson’s Island for the duration of the war, and would be one of the last remaining prisoners at the facility before it was finally closed on September 5, 1865. He was sent to Fort Lafayette, in New York Harbor, where he was finally discharged five months later, on February 10, 1866.

  The presence of the Confederate agents on Canadian soil proved to be a major headache for the Canadian government in the months following the Lake Erie raid. Relations between Canada and the Union had been frosty for much of the Civil War, mainly because Northerners tended to view Canadians as Southern sympathizers, and the Lake Erie raid only further spread the Union belief that the colonies were a haven for Confederate spies and saboteurs. The September 22, 1864, Detroit Free Press captures this sentiment concisely:

  We trust, for the credit and reputation of our friends across the river, that this action of ferreting out and insuring punishment to the scoundrels will be vigorous and prompt. They do not and cannot be allowed to stand before the world as harborers of thieves and pirates.

  The Canadian authorities launched an extensive manhunt in the days following the raid, catching up with Burley in Guelph, Canada West (now Ontario), days after the events on Lake Erie, though they at first thought he was John Yates Beall. To the Crown’s further embarrassment, an illegal warrant was used in Burley’s arrest, forcing his release, after which he was quickly rearrested, specifically for being a member of the party that had attacked the Philo Parsons, and for stealing articles belonging to the crew. His case was front-page news in the Toronto Globe. The judge’s ultimate decision — to allow Burley’s extradition to the United States — was greeted with scorn by many Canadians, who saw the decision as caving in to pressure from the Union. Ironically, the entire legal ordeal would make absolutely no difference to Burley’s long-term fate. After being extradited from Canada, Burley was waiting for yet another trial at a jail in Port Clinton, Ohio, when he managed yet again to elude his captors. It happened on the afternoon of September 17, 1865, just days before the one-year anniversary of the Lake Erie raid. The sheriff took his family on a visit to the countryside, locking only the outside door of the jail as he left, leaving Burley, the only occupant at the time, with the run of the place. When the sheriff sent a man to give Burley his supper, he found the building empty, the sheriff’s keys missing, and the outside door unlocked. The only evidence Burley left behind was a note that read: “Sunday — I have gone
out for a walk — Perhaps (?) I will return shortly.”

  Burley crossed back into Canada before returning to his native Scotland a short time later. There, he would change the spelling of his name to “Burleigh” and go on to write several books — though he never did write a single word about his adventure on Lake Erie — and become a distinguished war correspondent for the London Daily Telegraph, covering, among other conflicts, the South African War (1899–1902) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). He died in London on June 17, 1914.

  For John Yates Beall, on the other hand, old habits proved difficult to break. He was finally arrested on December 16, 1864, at Dunkirk, New York, on the American side of Lake Erie, while trying to sabotage the railroad tracks used by freight trains travelling to Buffalo. His criminal trial took place in New York in January 1865; the outcome was never in doubt. He was found guilty of treason and sentenced to death by hanging at Fort Columbus, on Governor’s Island, between twelve and two o’clock on the afternoon of February 24, 1865. His remaining friends, including Bedinger Lucas, did their best to win a reprieve from President Lincoln, but it would not come. There has been conjecture in the years since that Lincoln’s refusal to grant Beall a reprieve was one reason why John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln, but this is based on a wide variety of speculative claims (including the spurious notion that Beall and Booth were cousins) for which there is no evidence.