ESCAPE OF ENTERPRISE

Part of our Navy’s upsizing for the War of 1812 was the strengthening of several schooners then in service.  Extra guns and extra crewmen were added, but at the cost of making the spritely schooners too heavy to run from larger British warships.  Indeed, by this date our celebrated schooners of the Barbary Wars, WASP, ARGUS, and VIXEN had already been overhauled and captured, and HORNET was too slow to escape the enemy blockade of New York.  Recognizing the vulnerability of these modified schooners, another of the class, ENTERPRISE, 16, was sent to the West Indies where she was to shun faster enemy warships and tackle only slow and lightly armed British merchant ships.  She sailed with RATTLESNAKE, 14, a former New England privateer recently brought into our Naval service.

Their cruise proved initially fruitful.  During the winter of 1813-14 ENTERPRISE and RATTLESNAKE encountered the British privateer Mars, 14, off Florida.  Privateers were armed civilian ships who cruised under permission of their government to capture enemy commercial shipping.  The sight of two American warships spurred half of Mars’ crewmen to take to the boats and escape to shore.  Mars’ master, however, boldly ranged up under the guns of LT James Renshaw in ENTERPRISE.  The American loosed a broadside that splintered the privateer’s hull and felled four of her remaining crew.  Without further convincing the privateer struck.  The American pair took two more prizes during their cruise while successfully avoiding stronger British warships.

But on this morning off South Carolina the luck of the pair ran out.  Sighted by a British frigate, they immediately split and headed separately toward shore.  The frigate took her chances with the slower and ungainly ENTERPRISE.  Through this day and the next, the frigate gained steadily on Renshaw.  Even under a full press of sail the overburdened schooner wallowed.  Renshaw ordered the loose gear and stores thrown over the side.  When that didn’t work, the schooner’s twelve 18-pounder carronades were jettisoned.  From time to time the frigate ranged close enough to lob a few shots at ENTERPRISE, but Renshaw managed to stay just out of reach until the two were becalmed on the morning of the 27^th.  Renshaw lowered his rowboats, hoping to kedge the schooner to safety.  But as he did a slight breeze freshened about the schooner.  For once the smaller ship had the advantage, she crept slowly out from under the frustrated and becalmed frigate.  She made Wilmington on 9 March, saved by luck of the breezes alone.

Recognizing that ENTERPRISE would continue to be outsailed and outgunned, she was anchored in Charleston as a guardship, where she remained for the rest of the war.  She was one of only two of her encumbered class to survive the war in American hands.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  28 FEB 26

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Cooper, James Fenimore.  History of the Navy of the United States of America, Vol. II.  Philadelphia, PA: Lea & Blanchard, 1840, pp. 175-76.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 2 “C-F”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, p. 355.

Roosevelt, Theodore.  The Naval War of 1812.  New York, NY: Da Capo, 1999, p. 208.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  ENTERPRISE’s other notable contribution during the War of 1812 had come a month before being sent south above.  She captured the British schooner HMS BOXER, 14, off Maine on 5 September 1813.

Following the stationing of ENTERPRISE in Charleston, Renshaw was transferred to command RATTLESNAKE.  Various historical sources report conflicting details as to the date and circumstances of the above encounter, and appear to confuse this event with a similarly harrowing chase of RATTLESNAKE under Renshaw later in 1814.

James Renshaw’s reputation in our Navy was less than sterling.  Regarded as a martinet who was unable to get on with superiors or his crewmen, CDORE Isaac Hull wrote of Renshaw upon learning of his appointment to command ENTERPRISE, “The ENTERPRISE, I presume, will not be very enterprising.”  In 1841, now commander of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, saw Renshaw brought before a Board of Inquiry for political favoritism.  He allegedly preferentially selected Democratic candidates for new hires and targeted Whig party employees for rebuke and dismissal.  The Board found Renshaw guilty of the charge, and he was relieved of command of the Brooklyn Yard.

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                                     CRUISE OF CSS TALLAHASSEE

One of the more successful efforts of the Confederacy during the Civil War was their campaign against Union commercial shipping.  CSS TALLAHASSEE was one such raider, a sleek and fast cruiser built in England as the cross-channel steamer Atalanta and transferred to Wilmington, North Carolina, in the summer of 1864.  Her five guns included an 84-pounder stern pivot that was mounted high enough to be identifiable in her silhouette.  Similarly, her two closely mounted stacks amidships made her readily recognizable.  Jefferson Davis’ nephew, CDR John Taylor Wood, CSN, was named her captain, and after several attempts to negotiate sand bars at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, Wood set to sea on 6 August 1864.

He coursed northward, where ship traffic near New York and New England would be heavy.  His success was remarkable from the start.  On August 11^th, 80 miles off Sandy Hook, New Jersey, he captured the brigs A. Richards and Carrie Estella, the schooners Sarah A. Boyce and Carrol, the bark Bay State, and the pilot boats James Funk and William Bell.  All except Carrol were rifled for medicines, food, instruments, charts, and other items of value, then burned.  Carrol was bonded as a cartel ship to carry the captured crews to New York.  On the 12^th, Wood captured five more, burning three.  On the 13^th he took the brig Lamont DuPont and the schooner Glenavon.

The same day, news of TALLAHASSEE’s raiding reached CAPT Hiram Paulding, commander of the New York Navy Yard.  He sent three ships in immediate pursuit.  These were quickly supplemented by Union Navy warships out of Hampton Roads and Boston.  Regardless, from 14-17 August Wood took 15 more defenseless freighters bound to or from New York.  Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles was furious as insurance rates for trans-Atlantic shippers began to rise.

Now with nearly a dozen Union warships on her tail, by 18 August, TALLAHASSEE was running short on coal.  CDR Wood shaped a course for Halifax where the American Consul, Mortimer M. Jackson, protested to Lieutenant Governor Richard G. MacDonnell the sale of any coal to the Confederate.  As a neutral port, Halifax was not thus constrained, although local authorities agreed to sell Wood only enough coal to make his homeport of Wilmington–60 tons.  Jackson also notified Welles, who dispatched LCDR George A. Stevens in USS PANTOOSUC from Eastport, Maine.  Stevens reached Halifax at 0600 on the 20^th to learn he had missed the raider by only seven hours.  He turned north anticipating Wood would next harass the fishing fleet in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

But Wood had turned south.  His coal still short, he ran the blockade into Wilmington on the 25^th.  In a fortnight’s cruising he had taken 31 freighters in a remarkably effective sortie.

Watch or more “Today in Naval History”  22 AUG 25

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Civil War Naval Chronology 1861-1865.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1961, pp. IV-103, IV-104, IV-105, IV-106, IV-108.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 5 “N-Q”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1979, p. 350.

Hearn, Chester G.  Gray Raiders of the Sea:  How Eight Confederate Warships Destroyed the Union’s High Seas Commerce.  Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1992, pp. 129-39.

Silverstone, Paul H.  Warships of the Civil War Navies.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989, p. 215.

Shingleton, Royce Gordon.  John Taylor Wood:  Sea Ghost of the Confederacy.  Athens, GA: Univ of Georgia Press, 1979, pp. 116-44.

Sweetman, Jack.  American Naval History:  An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present, 3^rd ed.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 2002, p. 78.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Despite Consul Jackson’s efforts, Wood actually purchased 120 tons of coal in Halifax–more than agreed, but still not enough to sustain further cruising.

Wood’s cruise indirectly led to the capture of seven subsequent blockade runners.  TALLAHASSEE had commandeered all the hard coal available in Wilmington before her cruise, leaving only softer bituminous coal for other runners, which produces half the speed and twice the smoke.

TALLAHASSEE was to escape the Wilmington blockade twice more for guerre de course raids, in October 1864 under the name CSS OLUSTEE and two months later in December 1864 as CSS CHAMELEON.

Both Hiram Paulding and John Taylor Wood survived the war.  In Paulding’s case he rose to the rank of RADM, which he held at his death in 1878.  Wood escaped the South at the end of the war believing he would be executed as a pirate and traitor.  He reached Halifax, where he became a prominent businessman for decades until this death after the turn of the century.

A “cartel ship” is used in time of war to exchange prisoners or carry messages between belligerents.  Under maritime law, the ship must not carry cargo, ammunition, or weapons, except a single gun for signaling.

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