CHERRYSTONE RAID

The strong Union presence in the Norfolk area by this date in the Civil War attracted the attention of local Rebels.  In fact, Confederate Navy CDR John Taylor Wood made himself notorious by staging a series of bold raids against Union activities in the Chesapeake basin.  Even after Wood was ordered further south in 1863, the remaining Tidewater Confederates continued their harassment.

Late on the evening of March 4^th CAPT Thaddeus Fitzhugh, the commander of Company F, 5^th Virginia Cavalry, “Lomax’s Brigade,” rounded up 13 of his men who were then on furlough, and in company with two Confederate Navy Acting Masters named Maxwell and Burley, pushed off from the Piankatank River in several open boats.  Through the night they rowed east across the Chesapeake Bay to Virginia’s Eastern Shore, their target being the Union telegraph station at Cherrystone Inlet.  They landed at 0400 this morning and overpowered Corporal Ozmon and the 6-man guardshack.  They found the commissary stocked with 600 barrels of pork and bacon, as well as flour, rice, molasses, beans, sugar, coffee, and bread.  This they destroyed, along with uniforms and cook stoves.  The Union telegraph operator, a Mr. Dunn, alerted by the commotion, burned his messages and threw his equipment into the bay before being captured.  Around dawn the Army tug AEOLA, who had been laying submarine cable nearby, unsuspectingly chugged up to Cherrystone Wharf.  The Rebels pounced upon her, quickly changing clothes into the dress of her crew, then disabling her machinery and setting her ablaze.  A second Army tug, Titan, likewise appeared and was similarly taken.  Having burned stores, wrecked the telegraph station, cut the submarine cable, requisitioned $2000 in cash, scuttled a schooner they found tied to the wharf, and killed all the horses in the station, Fitzhugh and his men chugged back across the Bay in TITAN.

Alarm spread through Union defenders in the area.  When word of the raid reached the commander of the Union’s Potomac Flotilla, CDR Foxhall A. Parker, he led a 5-gunboat detachment up the Piankatank River, where Titan was rumored to have fled.  On March 7^th, USS COMMODORE READ along with CURRITUCK, JACOB BELL, FUCHSIA and FREEBORN cruised 22 miles up the river as far as navigable to the town of Freeport.  Here they found the smoldering hulk of TITAN, burned to the waterline.  After lobbing a few shot through her machinery to insure her demise and recovering several open boats believed to have been used in the raid, Parker and his squadron returned.  None of the perpetrators were ever brought to justice.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  11 MAR 26

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Civil War Naval Chronology 1861-1865.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1961, p. IV-29.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 2 “C-F”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, p. 454.

“Report of Acting Rear-Admiral Lee, U.S. Navy, transmitting additional information.” dtd. 7 March 1864.  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, 1863, to May 5, 1864.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1899, pp. 527-28.

“Report of Acting Volunteer Lieutenant Hooker, U.S. Navy, Commanding First Division Potomac Flotilla, regarding chase of suspicious steamer.” dtd. 5 March 1864.  IN:  Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 5, Operations on the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers from December 7, 1861, to July 31, 1865.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1897, pp. 398-99.

“Report of CAPT Robert E. Duvall, Purnell Legion Maryland Cavalry,” dtd. 7 March 1864.  IN: The War of the Rebellion:  A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Vol XXXIII.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1891, p. 231.

“Report of CAPT Thaddeus Fitzhugh, Fifth Virginia Cavalry,” dtd. 5 March 1864.  IN: The War of the Rebellion:  A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Vol XXXIII.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1891, p. 232.

“Report of Commander Parker, U.S. Navy, commanding Potomac Flotilla, regarding expedition into Piankatank River and destruction of tug Titan.” dtd. 7 March 1864.  IN: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 5, Operations on the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers from December 7, 1861, to July 31, 1865.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1897, pp. 401-02.

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. 74.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Even in modern times, official Navy records mistakenly attribute this raid directly to CDR John Taylor Wood–so nefarious was his reputation in the Chesapeake area at the time.  But Wood’s biographer, Royce Gordon Singleton, has established that at the time of this raid Wood was in North Carolina, where he had attacked and destroyed the Union gunboat UNDERWRITER only a month before.

Cherrystone Inlet is on the bay side of the Eastern Shore, just west of the modern town of Cheriton, Virginia.

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