“Terror of the Chesapeake”
18-23 SEPTEMBER 1863
“TERROR OF THE CHESAPEAKE”
John Yates Beall was born New Year’s Day, 1839, on a farm in Walnut Grove, Virginia (now West Virginia). His dreams of studying law seemed to come true when he was admitted to the University of Virginia, however the death of his father in 1856 necessitated his return to the family farm. Decades of political and social strife before the Civil War engendered in him a passion for the southern cause. This led him, at the outbreak of fighting, to join Bott’s Grays–Company G of the 2nd Virginia Volunteer Infantry. But a chest wound he received in a skirmish in the Shenandoah Valley left him unfit for further service. An undaunted Beall turned to the Confederate Navy, to whom he proposed a brazen plan to harass Union shipping on the Great Lakes. Wary of angering England, however, Confederate authorities balked. But they did appoint Beall as an Acting Master, CSN. Beall then relocated to Mathews County, Virginia, on the western Chesapeake shore with 20-odd men and two oared sail launches, one black and one white, Raven and Swan.
Beall used these boats on the night of 18-19 September to ferry 18 men across the Chesapeake to Virginia’s Eastern Shore. They coursed around Cape Charles and up the Atlantic coast to a point near present-day Wachapreague Inlet. Here they discovered the anchored civilian schooner Alliance. Under the cover of darkness and a heavy squall this morning, they swept aboard and overpowered the few shocked crewmen. Armed with revolvers, they similarly took the schooners J.J. Houseman, Samuel Pearsall, and Alexandria over the next two days. When the latter three were found to be “in ballast,” their sails were set, their helms lashed, and they were headed, crewless, in the direction of the open sea. They took Alliance underway to return to Milford Haven, Mathews County, in an attempt to land her cargo of sutler’s goods valued in today’s equivalent at $200,000. But upon reaching the bar at Milford Haven, Alliance was spotted by the Union gunboat USS THOMAS FREEBORN. A few shots spurred Beall to ground the freighter, fire her, and destroy all of her cargo. The capture of Beall’s second-in-command, Acting Master Edward McGuire, resulted in the escapade’s full revelation.
Now known as the “Terror of the Chesapeake,” Beall was captured on 15 November and held in Fort McHenry, Baltimore, until being exchanged in May 1864. He immediately returned to vexation, traveling to Lake Erie with plans to free Confederate POWs held on Johnsons Island near Sandusky, Ohio. This plot failed and led to Beall’s re-capture (in civilian clothes). He was tried at Fort Columbus, Governor’s Island, New York, and hanged as a spy on 24 February 1865, six weeks before the surrender at Appomattox.
Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 25 SEP 24
CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
Baker, W.W. Memoirs of Service with John Yates Beall, CSN (reprint of 1910 release). Staunton, VA: Clarion Pub., 2013, pp. 3-34.
Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Civil War Naval Chronology 1861-1865. Washington, DC: GPO, 1961, pp. III 140-41.
Report of Acting Rear-Admiral Lee, U.S. Navy, dtd. 30 Sep 1863. IN: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of Rebellion, Series I, Vol 9, North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, from May 5, 1862 to May 5, 1864. Washington, DC: GPO, 1899, p. 206.
Report of Captain Gansevoort, U.S. Navy, dtd. 28 Sep 1863. IN: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of Rebellion, Series I, Vol 9, North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, from May 5, 1862 to May 5, 1864. Washington, DC: GPO, 1899, pp. 203-04.
Report of Lieutenant-Commander Gillis, U.S. Navy, dtd. 27 Sep 1863. IN: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of Rebellion, Series I, Vol 9, North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, from May 5, 1862 to May 5, 1864. Washington, DC: GPO, 1899, pp. 204-05.
Robinson, William Morrison, Jr. The Confederate Privateers. Reprint of 1928 publication, Columbia, SC: Univ of South Carolina Press, 1994, pp. 221-25.
Sweetman, Jack. American Naval History: An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present, 3rd ed. Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 2002, p. 73.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: Milford Haven was an active shipbuilding center for a century before the Civil War. Milford Haven today is but a map-dot, forgotten except as the location of a US Coast Guard station.
“Master” was not a standard officer grade in that day, rather a title in both civilian and Naval usage to denote someone with the training and experience to conn a ship. Beall’s full Navy title was Master-Not-in-Line-of-Promotion, a rank that banned him from command of a commissioned vessel and withheld prize money from any captures. He could, however, draw government stores, recruit sailors not otherwise subject to conscription, and procure ships at his own expense to operate under official auspices. He was, effectively, a privateer.
The gear Beall salvaged from Alliance included the ship’s charts and nautical instruments–items in short supply and highly coveted in the south. Of the three schooners cast adrift, crewless, from Wachapreague Inlet, history records the fate of only one. Samuel Pearsall was corralled on the open sea by the civilian schooner F.F. Randolph and returned to port.
