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Description
In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln ordered the blockade of southern ports. A fleet of aged whale ships loaded with stone was sent to Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina, and sunk at the mouths of the harbors in an unsuccessful attempt to block them. Melville's poem, "The Stone Fleet," written in the voice of an old sailor, mourns the loss of the vessels. Its embittered final words damn those who ordered the death of the ships and pronounce the entire enterprise an utter failure. Melville's note to the poem states: "All accounts seem to agree that the object proposed was not accomplished. The channel is even said to have become ultimately benefited by the means employed to obstruct it." The following examines the accuracy of Melville's assessment and investigates the conception and execution of the plan. It considers the strategic results and monetary and diplomatic costs. Concurrently it reveals Melville's ties to several of the ships and his interest in their fate. (1) The sinking of the Stone Fleet is a brief episode in a long conflict, so why did it resonate so profoundly for Melville? Perhaps Melville saw himself in the old ships sunk and lost, "And all for naught" (31).
Lincoln's 1861 blockade order attempted to stop the importation of medicines and war material and the exportation of cotton, especially to England. Gustavus V. Fox, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, thought it possible to obstruct the entrances of Savannah and Charleston by sinking vessels in their channels. He was supported by Professor A. D. Bache, Superintendent of the United States Coast Survey. (2)
On October 17, 1861, Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy, issued orders to the purchasing agent in New York:
The Department is desirous of obtaining twenty-five old vessels, of not less than 250 tons each, for the purpose of sinking on the bar at Savannah. You are authorized to obtain suitable vessels.., in the manner following:
1. Purchase the twenty-five vessels, after suitable examination, as secretly as possible, before any knowledge is obtained that [the] Government is in the market....
4. Have a pipe and valve fitted under skillful direction, so that after anchoring in position the water can be readily let into the hold.
5. Load them with blocks of granite to utmost extent, considering their safe transit down the coast.
6. Leave one anchor and chain on board ready for use and such sails and gear as are necessary to sail them to their destination. (3)
All but one of the 25 vessels bought under Welles's direction were old whale ships from New Bedford and New London. (4) At first the order for secrecy was maintained, and there was some mystery as to why the vessels were being purchased. The sale of the Timor was reported in the New Bedford Whalemen's Shipping List, and Merchants' Transcript: "Sale of Ships.--Ship Timor, 280 tons, which has lain in port at Sag Harbor, since her return from a whaling voyage in May 1859, was sold October 28th, to Mr. Chapel, of N. London, said to be agent for parties in Boston. Terms private." (5) The Timor, like many whale ships, had continued whaling long after it had become aged. By the second half of the nineteenth century, whaling was no longer very profitable. Rather than build new ships, old ships were refitted and sent back to sea. When profits plummeted after the discovery of petroleum in Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859, vessels such as the Timor lay in port. The ship owners must have considered the buying of such ships for the Stone Fleet a godsend.
Prices paid ranged from a low of $1,650 for the Tenedos, mentioned by Melville, to a high of $5,000 for the Courier, (6) averaging $3000 per ship in 1861. Vessels mentioned in Melville's poem include the Kensington ($4,000), the L. C. Richmond ($4,000), the Leonidas ($3,050), and the William Lee ($4,200) (Woodman 256, 258). The second Stone Fleet consisted of 20 vessels, bought and assembled a month later.
The vessels were brought to New Bedford and stripped of any fittings of value, retaining only the sails necessary to make the trip south, no chronometer, and one anchor with its chain. The cargo of rock in their holds came from stone walls torn down by farmers. (7)
The shipping articles issued to the skippers of the whale ships read: "From the port of ... New Bedford ... under orders for a port on the coast of the United States not south of Key West, there to leave the vessel and be returned free of expense to this port. Term of service not to exceed three months; wages guaranteed for one month." (8) There were nine men assigned to each barque and 10 to each ship, as well as a captain, two mates, and a cook, making a crew of 13 or 14 for a vessel of 200 tons or more. (9) One would usually find a crew of 16 to 20 manning vessels of this size. Undermanning was only one of the many dangers faced by the Stone Fleet. The decrepit vessels were fitted out with a single set of worn sails, sailing into the North Atlantic, one of the world's roughest oceans, in winter. The heavy and dangerous cargo of stones could shift and break through the hulls in rough water.
The first fleet of 25 sailed from New Bedford on November 20, 1861. The New Bedford newspaper, The Daily Mercury, noted: "We have not of course been blind to what has been transpiring immediately under our eyes for the past month. But, requested by the agents of the Government to make no allusion in our columns to the facts, that the Navy Department was engaged in the purchase of vessels, and fitting them for an expedition to... |
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