ST. NICHOLAS Hijacking
28-29 JUNE 1861
ST. NICHOLAS HIGHJACKING
At 1600 on Friday, June 28th, the civilian steam packet St. Nicholas left Baltimore on her regular run to three stops in the District of Columbia. She carried her usual fare of freight as well a several passengers bound for Washington and Georgetown. But at 0100 this night, she was observed by the steamer Diamond State, to leave her usual midnight stop at Point Lookout, Maryland, in great haste–curiously headed south!
Earlier on June 19th the newly commissioned CDR George N. Hollis, CSN, had met the Confederate Secretary of the Navy, Stephen R. Mallory in Richmond. He received a draft of $1000 and was introduced to a “Colonel Thomas,” who also traveled under the alias “Zarvona.” Thomas was a Maryland resident who sympathized with the South and had made arms purchases in the North to be smuggled to Rebel forces. Col. Thomas agreed to purchase arms for Hollis and meet him at Point Lookout, where Hollis planned to capture St. Nicholas. He would then use her to capture the Union Navy gunboat PAWNEE, from whose decks CDR James H. Ward commanded the newly formed Potomac River squadron.
When St. Nicholas called at Point Lookout on the night of 28-29 May, several innocent-appearing passengers boarded. One woman brought several large millinery trunks. The passengers were actually Hollis’ party dressed in civilian clothes; the woman was Col. Thomas himself, dressed as a woman; and the trunks bore arms. A few minutes after St. Nicholas cast off, the trunks were thrown open, Hollis grabbed a Sharps rifle and two pistols, and ran to the wheelhouse. Here the captain refused to pilot the packet into the Coan River, but the task was accomplished, nonetheless. Meanwhile, Hollis learned from Baltimore newspapers on board to his dismay that CDR Ward had been killed in a raid on Mathias Point. Worse, all the Union gunboats on the Potomac had been withdrawn to Washington for Ward’s funeral.
Undaunted, Hollis landed his legitimate passengers and headed into the Chesapeake. Here he captured the brig Monticello, bound for Baltimore with a load of Brazilian coffee. The coffee was diverted to the Rebel Army while Hollis next captured the schooners Margaret and Mary Pierce, one of whom carried ice from Boston. This was diverted to the Confederate hospitals in Fredricksburg, but not before the profit-minded Yankee skipper shocked Hollis by proposing that he be “freed,” obtain another schooner in Boston, be “captured” again by Hollis, and the two split the proceeds!
St. Nicholas was purchased by the Confederate Navy and placed in service as the gunboat CSS RAPPAHANNOCK. However, the gunboat served only a year, being burned to prevent capture in April 1862.
Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 5-6 JUL 22
CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
“Capture of the Steamer St. Nicholas, June 29, 1861.” IN: Woods, Robert H. Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 4, Operations in the Gulf of Mexico from November 15, 1860, to June 7, 1861; Operations on the Atlantic Coast from January 1 to May 13, 1861; Operations on the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers from January 5 to December 7, 1861. Washington, DC: GPO, 1896, pp. 549-55.
Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Civil War Naval Chronology 1861-1865. Washington, DC: GPO, 1961, p. I-18.
Silverstone, Paul H. Warships of the Civil War Navies. Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989, p. 243.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: The Confederate Navy paid Hollis and his men $45,000 for St. Nicholas and her cargo. Unlike today, profits from the sale of captured vessels went to the captain and crew of the capturing ship, rather than solely to the Confederate government.
James Harmon Ward was a prescient officer whose loss was keenly felt. He had, on his own initiative, sought the approval of Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles for the creation of a “flying squadron” of shallow draft gunboats that could police the movement of men and matériel across the Potomac to the Confederacy. He was hit in the abdomen with a mini-ball on 27 June while aiming a deck gun at Mathias Point and died an hour later. He had been in command of his Potomac Squadron only seven days. He is the namesake of WARD (DD-139), the destroyer that sank a Japanese mini-sub at the entrance to Pearl Harbor early on the morning of 7 December 1941 (as well as Fort Ward in Alexandria).
The District of Columbia was originally plotted as a square. In fairness to its border states, it was drawn to encompass both a Maryland city (Georgetown) and a Virginia city (Alexandria) as well as the land that would become the city of Washington. However in 1846, the citizens of Alexandria petitioned to be returned to the State of Virginia, creating the notch in DC’s southwest corner that is still evident today.
