Fighting Father and Son
15 JANUARY 1865
FIGHTING FATHER AND SON
CAPT Benjamin Franklin Sands, USN, came from a military family, having 11 relatives and descendants with military service. His combat tours during the Mexican War were bracketed by duty of a more scientific nature. He served in the Bureau of Charts and Instruments of the Naval Observatory in the years before the Civil War, commanding coastal survey expeditions and inventing an instrument for deep sounding. By the outbreak of the Civil War, he was a respected officer and hydrographer. That war necessitated his return to combat, commanding the sidewheel steamer USS Fort Jackson of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron from 1863-65. By this time, his 19-year-old son, James Hoban Sands, had entered the Navy as well and was serving as an Ensign aboard the screw sloop USS Shenandoah. January of 1865 found father and son participating in the Union Navy effort to close the last remaining port open to the Confederacy, Wilmington, North Carolina.
That Union effort involved reducing Fort Fisher, the bastion guarding an entrance to the Cape Fear River, upon which Wilmington is situated. Despite weeks of campaigning to this date the fort and its garrison were still intact. Today’s undaunted Union plan called for a ground frontal assault under naval bombardment.
The elder Sands stood his warship in a line of battle off the fort at 0900 this morning and opened a shot and shell barrage with his 100-pounders and IX-inch gun. Meanwhile, at 0948, LT Smith W. Nichols, XO of Shenandoah, led a storming party of 68 Marines and bluejackets ashore. The younger Sands guided one of Nichols’ launches. Shenandoah’s storming party joined the ground assault and stepped off on a perilous charge of the fixed fort defenses. Through a hail of bullets and shells they advanced, Sands and the Shenandoah party reaching the outer stockade wall that provided some shelter from the enemy’s fire. Here they found themselves pinned, returning what fire they could, hoping the bombardment by his father and the rest of the Union flotilla might be effective.
For the rest of this day, Sands and his men hunkered behind the outer stockade wall. At sunset, the cramped and exhausted assault party began a withdrawal. Still under enemy fire, Sands, Nichols, and Bo’sun James H. Polley rallied their men. Through the dedication and industry of Sands, the Shenandoah party reached safety. None from Shenandoah lost his life this day, only 7 were wounded. Sands organized the evacuation of the wounded, then turned to help other injured men. Shenandoah’s skipper, CAPT Daniel B. Ridgely, relayed to RADM David D. Porter that Sands, “deserved the highest praise for his zeal and energy shown throughout.”
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Cogar, William B. Dictionary of Admirals of the U.S. Navy, Vol 1 1862-1900. Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989. p. 157.
Cogar, William B. Dictionary of Admirals of the U.S. Navy, Vol 2 1901-1918. Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1991, pp. 247-48.
“Report of Captain Ridgely, U.S. Navy, commanding U.S.S. Shenandoah.” IN: Rawson, Edward, George P. Colvocoresses and Charles W. Stewart. Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 11: North Atlantic Blockading Squadron from October 28, 1864, to February 1, 1865. GPO, Washington, DC, p. 539.
“Report of Captain Sands, U.S. Navy. commanding U.S.S. Fort Jackson.” IN: Rawson, Edward, George P. Colvocoresses and Charles W. Stewart. Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 11: North Atlantic Blockading Squadron from October 28, 1864, to February 1, 1865. GPO, Washington, DC, pp. 547-48.
“Report of Lieutenant Nichols, U.S. Navy, commanding assaulting party from U.S.S. Shenandoah.” IN: Rawson, Edward, George P. Colvocoresses and Charles W. Stewart. Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 11: North Atlantic Blockading Squadron from October 28, 1864, to February 1, 1865. GPO, Washington, DC, pp. 539-40.
Silverstone, Paul H. Warships of the Civil War Navies. Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989, pp. 42, 72.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: Father and son survived this battle, and Fort Fisher did fall. The elder Sands returned to his scientific work after the war, being promoted to RADM in 1871. James Sands remained in the Navy as well–also for duty in the hydrographic office of the Naval Observatory. He, too, was promoted to RADM and in his final tour, from 1905-1907, served as the 19th Superintendent of the Naval Academy.
Father and son Sands are two of but a handful of Navy officers to be honored with the naming of both a warship and a research vessel–the post-WWI Clemson-class destroyer Sands (DD-243), and the 1960s oceanographic research ship of the same name, (AGOR-6).
