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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                                             25 SEPTEMBER 1899

                                     THE CAPTURE OF URDANETA

The autumn of 1898 saw the end of the Spanish-American war and the ceding of the Philippine Islands from Spain to the United States.  Militant Filipinos who had been struggling against Spanish colonial rule shifted their animosities toward their new stewards.  For the next four years the US countered this insurgent uprising–the Navy’s roles including patrolling inshore waters, providing gunfire support, and landing Marines at coastal and riverine jump-off’s.  It was during one such patrol that the 70-foot gunboat USS URDANETA ran aground in the Orani River on 17 September 1899.  Naval Cadet Welborn C. Wood and his eight-man crew worked for days at freeing their boat but had their efforts interrupted on the 25^th.  Insurgents discovered the stranded URDANETA and opened fire from the densely jungled riverbank.  Wood’s men sprang to action but found defense against an unseen enemy difficult.  Wood and half his crew were killed in the fire fight.  The survivors escaped overboard but were quickly captured.  URDANETA fell to the enemy, the only naval vessel to be captured during this “Philippine Insurrection,” as it was known in America.

Elsewhere, US Marines and Army soldiers found the land campaign an unwelcome departure from our past wartime experiences.  The outmatched enemy abandoned conventional tactics in favor of guerrilla warfare.  Enemy troops blended imperceptibly into the local populace.  Marine patrols might enter a rural village to the welcoming greetings of peasants working their rice paddies–only to be ambushed further down the road by these same peasant-insurgents.  Jungle patrols encountered booby traps with spring-loaded spears or poison-tipped arrows.  More than a few Marines fell victim to pungy pits lined with sharpened bamboo spears.  Random acts of terrorism became frequent.  On one Sunday morning, an American sentry playing solitaire was approached by an innocent looking street vendor selling eggs.  Before the sentry could look up however, he was decapitated by a machete the vendor had secreted under his produce.  Reports surfaced of American captives whose bodies were found hideously mutilated.  One corpse was discovered near an anthill, buried to the neck and covered in sugar.

Employing tactics we would face again in the 1960s Vietnam war–tactics that would later be formalized by Mao Tse Tung–Philippine nationalist leader Emilio Aguinaldo waged a campaign designed to dishearten the American public.  He hoped (in vain) for a Democratic victory in the 1900 American presidential election, judging candidate William Jennings Bryan to be more supportive of Philippine independence.  But unlike Vietnam, the Philippine Insurrection failed to outlast American public support.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  29 SEP 25

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 7 “T-V”.  GPO, Washington, DC, p. 421, 1981.

Karnow, Stanley.  In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines.  Ballantine Books, New York, NY, pp. 177-87, 1989.

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, pp. 101-02.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  URDANETA had been captured from the Spanish Navy during our 1898 war.  She was named by the Spanish in honor of Andres de Urdaneta (1498-1568), a friar and explorer credited with the second circumnavigation of the globe (after Magellan).  “Urdaneta’s route” across the Pacific from Luzon to Central America was used by Spain’s Manila galleons.  Urdaneta City in the Pangasinan Province of Luzon, near the Lingayen Gulf, also remembers the friar.  URDANETA was recaptured in 1900 and served off and on in survey work, patrols, and as a yard tug until 1916.  Her ultimate fate after 1916 is unknown.

          Cadet Wood is remembered with the WWII veteran Clemson-class destroyer USS WELBORN C. WOOD (DD-195). WOOD was later transferred to the US Coast Guard and ultimately to Britian, with whom she served as HMS CHESTERFIELD.

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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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