QUEEN’S CREEK RAID

Evasion by a Confederate blockade runner was no small embarrassment to the Union ships whose job it was to isolate the South.  And when a small cutter was observed running goods up the Piankatank River in Virginia, the screw steamers USS WESTERN WORLD and USS CRUSADER were sent to find her.  WESTERN WORLD was a 440-ton, 178-foot screw steamer purchased by the Union Navy and commissioned 3 January 1862.  On this date she was just out of refit in Philadelphia, assigned to the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron to patrol the Chesapeake Bay from Fortress Monroe to the mouth of the Piankatank (between the York and Rappahannock Rivers).  Too large to enter the Piankatank’s smaller tributaries, WESTERN WORLD’s skipper, Acting Master Samuel B. Gregory, sent Acting ENS Joseph S. Cony with a boat party.  Cony, two junior officers, and 24 men boarded two of WESTERN WORLD’s launches, and at 1000 this morning, they pushed off from Hill’s Bay (near modern Milford Haven Coast Guard Station) in the direction of Queen’s Creek.  Here, the offending cutter and another schooner were thought to be lying.

The 70-ton schooner proved the easier task.  She was found above Bells’ Mills with running rigging aloft, but no sails bent.  Though she had been scuttled to prevent her capture, Cony found her otherwise in good order and attempted to move her.  She was fast however, and Cony’s party set her ablaze.

Now seeking the smaller cutter, Cony’s men next pulled up a branch of Queen’s Creek.  Here they found another schooner, about half the size of the first, this one also aground with her masts cut away.  Her hull proved intact, and hoping now to re-float her, Cony deployed his men in a protective skirmish line.  Yet again, this schooner was found to be stuck fast, having been beached at high tide.  She, too, was fired lest she be repaired and pressed back into service by the Rebels.

Meanwhile the skirmishers had been busy.  Instructed to allow no one to pass, they had attempted to stop a man who happened by.  He spurned their challenge and escaped into the woods.  Chase him they did, but without luck.  He turned out to be Carter Hudgins, a bitter secessionist and Lincoln-hater who had earlier reported several of his neighbors for expressing Union sympathies–neighbors who were now in a Richmond prison!  Locals warned Cony that Hudgins would likely return to thrash the Yankee interlopers.  But concern over Hudgins was shortly superseded by the discovery of a well-hidden cutter up a nearby branch.  The single-banked, six-oar craft was the one for whom Cony’s party searched.  Taking her in tow, Cony turned downstream and despite Hudgins’ threats, returned safely to WESTERN WORLD.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  12 MAY 23

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 8 “W-Z”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1981, p. 235.

“Report of Acting Ensign Cony, U.S. Navy, regarding expedition in search of schooner in Queen’s Creek.  IN: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 9; North Atlantic Blockading Squadron from May 5, 1863, to May 5, 1864.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1899, p. 5.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Cony rose to the rank of Acting Master by the end of the war.  However, he was lost at sea on 10 February 1867 when the civilian merchant ship he commanded burned and sank off Cape Hatteras.  Cony is remembered with the Fletcher-class destroyer CONY (DD-508) of WWII and Korean Conflict service.

The post Queen’s Creek Raid appeared first on Today in Naval History.