by Terry Smyth
That afternoon, a troop of Union mounted infantry led by Major Andrew Verne Emen Johnston – known to his men as ‘Ave’ Johnston – rides into Centralia. Told of the murders, Johnston sets off in pursuit of Bloody Bill. He soon catches up with the guerrilla band, and orders his men to dismount and form a battle line. The 155 Union troops outnumber Anderson’s men, but their muzzle-loading rifles are no match for pistols when the mounted guerrillas charge their line. The bluecoats’ first volley kills several of the guerrillas but they are quickly overrun and, in the end, 123 Union soldiers lie dead, Ave Johnston among them.
History will call this atrocity the Centralia Massacre. History will also take note of the young guerrilla who shot and killed Ave Johnston. His name is Jesse James.
It’s October now, and although the Shenandoah is clipping along nicely in fine weather and feeling the first welcome lifts of the south-east trade winds, the first officer’s cabin still contains a broken-hearted rebel and a shrine to the girl he left behind.
‘I spent most of the day in my rooms, reading the Services for the day and reading the letters of my darling Pattie,’ Whittle writes. ‘Oh, how awful it is that there seems to be no prospect of my ever being able to ask her to be mine. When I asked before I had a profession to support us, but how changed! I have lost all and have to commence again, with a dark future. Oh, how I love that girl! Oh, how sad and heartbreaking to give up hope of her being mine.’7
Whittle is also haunted by fears that the damned Yankees have murdered his silver-haired father, a commodore in the Confederate Navy, as well as his sisters and brothers. Why he might imagine such a thing, he doesn’t say, and in time he’ll find his fears were unfounded.
Whittle’s diary entry for Sunday 8 October, reveals the depth of his self-pity: ‘One year ago today, I sailed in this ship from London. It has been a year of constant anxiety and Labour from then till now. And to have such a sad, inglorious, pitiable and miserable end is truly heartbreaking.’8
Whittle’s low spirits appear to have become widespread. Even though, with the trade winds now in her favour, the ship is making more than 200 miles (320km) a day, below decks dissent is festering. The mildest slight, the smallest grievance, becomes a cause for open hostility. Stripped of their identity and purpose, the officers have lost their old camaraderie, which has given way to petty spite, malicious rumour and suspicion. Relations are so toxic that when the Captain sends champagne to the wardroom when the ship recrosses her outbound route, three of the officers walk out.
Master’s Mate Cornelius Hunt is accused – behind his back – of having a secret stash of several hundred dollars taken from a Yankee whaler, and fingers are pointed in all directions when sailmaker Henry Alcott reports that someone has forced open his sea chest and stolen his opera glasses.
Lieutenant Whittle, whose dismay at such ructions distracts him from pining for Pattie, tells us, ‘I determined to have a search as this is one of very many instances of theft. I had the berth deck cleaned and overhauled each bag, but did not find the thief.’9
It has to be supposed that the ugliness that’s infected the wardroom has found its way to the topgallant forecastle. The crew could hardly fail to notice the conflicts among their officers, and it doesn’t help that the ship hasn’t been resupplied for more than five months, and food and water are running low.
While it’s likely there have been lapses in discipline among the crew as a result of the officers’ distractions, there’s no record of Lieutenant Whittle tricing anyone up during the remainder of the voyage. Perhaps, amid mutinous rumblings, he didn’t dare, or maybe he simply couldn’t be bothered any more.
The collapse of morale even shows in the Shenandoah herself. Above and below decks she’s looking increasingly dirty, disordered, unloved. Just when it seems the melancholy ship can’t get any more miserable, as she crosses the equator, scurvy breaks out among the crew. Unfortunately, Assistant Surgeon Fred McNulty, whose affection for the bottle has grown more and more fervent in recent weeks, can no longer perform his medical duties. When he’s not abusing someone or trying to pick a fight, he’s stumbling about like a drunken sailor (because that’s what he is) or sitting slumped in a stupor.
On Tuesday 10 October, Lieutenant Whittle is informed that McNulty is on a wild binge. He finds him in a drunken rage, abusing Captain’s Clerk (and Melbourne recruit) John Blacker. Whittle offers to help McNulty to his cabin, whereupon McNulty pulls a gun on him and threatens to shoot him. Whittle snatches the gun away and reports the incident to the Captain, who orders McNulty confined to his quarters.
The next day, as the ship enters the North Atlantic, Waddell tells Whittle to cancel McNulty’s confinement if he is sober. Whittle does so.
The matter doesn’t end there. Lieutenant Whittle is summoned by the Captain, who has just had a conversation with Fred McNulty. It seems the Assistant Surgeon told the Captain he had not been drunk; that his harsh language to John Blacker was a response to Blacker using insulting language about the Captain; and that he had not threatened Whittle with a pistol but had merely intended to show it to him.
‘I at once sent for two officers who sustained me in saying that he was drunk,’ Whittle writes. ‘I learned from two sources that the quarrel between himself and Mr Blacker originated in his own abusive language and that Mr Blacker said nothing of the Captain, and taking everything in connection I conclude that he tried to make it appear to the Captain: first, that he was a partisan of his; and second, that my report about his being drunk and drawing the pistol was an act of cruelty on my part. I made up my mind that my report should not be so treated or considered, for his every ground was false.’10
With Lieutenant Scales as a witness, Whittle confronts McNulty, who denies he was drunk, but in the next breath admits that he was. Whittle then asks him why he didn’t tell Captain Waddell the truth, to which he replies, ‘Well, didn’t I?’
‘No!’
McNulty repeats the claim he made to the Captain that he was not brandishing the pistol in a threatening manner. When Whittle refutes this, he says, ‘Well Sir, when we get onshore there is a way to settle things.’11
The next day, McNulty sends Whittle a note formally challenging him to a duel: ‘Sir, I demand an explanation and withdrawal of the language you applied to me in the presence of Lieutenant Scales last evening. Should the demand appear extravagant, such other satisfaction as is looked for between gentlemen is expected at your earliest convenience.’12
The formal challenge is delivered by McNulty’s second, Sidney Smith Lee, who Whittle considers ‘the only man in the mess with whom I am not on good terms’.13
Whittle’s note in reply declares, ‘Under the circumstances I have to accede to your demand for such satisfaction as you desire. As the ship is not a place where such a thing can be settled, as soon as we get on shore, full satisfaction will be given you.’14
In the United States Navy, the rules of duelling were included in the midshipman’s handbook until duelling by officers was banned in 1862. Southerners, however, still hold to The Code of Honour: Rules for the Government of Principals and Seconds in Duelling, set down in 1838 by John Lyde Wilson, a former governor of South Carolina.
The Code of Honour is similar to the 1777 Irish Code Duello, accepted world-wide as the official rule book, but also allows a challenger to post a public notice to disgrace a man who refuses to fight.
The Code Duello prescribes what is an acceptable form of apology on the part of the person challenged in order to avoid a duel without dishonour; the correct etiquette for delivering a challenge – never at night, rather with a cooler head next morning; the proper procedure for duelling with pistols and with swords; and the types of wounds acceptable for honour to be satisfied. Although the object is not to kill but to satisfy honour, deaths are not uncommon.
If Whittle and McNulty ever met on the field of honour, we’ll never know. Whittle’s journal and his later writings make no mention of it, so either the duel never
happened or William Whittle won.
On Monday morning, the general seemed to have rallied a little. Doctor Madison tried to cheer him, saying he should hurry up and get well because Traveller had been in the stable a long time now and needed exercise. That afternoon, though, he took a turn for the worse. He didn’t seem to notice his family gathered around his bed, and called out, ‘Tell Hill he must come up!’
Last night, while he slept, a fire was lit in the hearth and Colonel Johnston sat by him in the dark.
This morning, those with him clearly heard him say, ‘Strike the tent!’
Those were the last words he would ever speak. At 9.30am on Wednesday 12 October 1870, Robert E. Lee died.15
The Royal Navy announces that it will soon be equipped with a weapon of mass destruction – the self-propelled torpedo. Invented by a Royal Navy engineering officer, the torpedo contains a charge of up to 10,000 pounds (4535kg) of gunpowder, and travels 20 feet (6m) below the surface at a speed of 600 feet (180m) a second, with a range of up to 1800 yards (1645m). The weapon’s means of propulsion and other details are being kept secret as yet.
‘The greatest advantage of this invention,’ says Sydney’s Empire, ‘is that it can be as effectively used by the slowest or by the fastest vessels, and even by fixed forts and batteries facing the sea.
‘The great objection to this invention is that it is absolutely and irresistibly destructive, so that the combined fleets of the whole world could be destroyed in an hour.’16
On the ‘birthday of the Shenandoah’ – the anniversary of when, on 14 October 1864, the Sea King met the Laurel at Madeira and the last Confederate raider was born, William Whittle writes:
Since this day 12 months ago, how many changes have we gone through. Then we were all rejoiced at and proud of having an opportunity of serving our country; alas, how changed; now, we are plunged into the most heart-breaking despair of having no country to serve.
Oh, God! Give us strength and faith to resign ourselves to thy will. To me, the day is more dead in as much as it is the birthday of the dearest being on earth to me. This day 22 years ago my darling Pattie was born.
Most solemnly do I invoke God’s blessing upon her. Oh God, guard, rule and lead her I humbly pray, and grant that I may yet be able to call her mine own. It is the fondest wish of my heart, next to seeing my country free. Are not both hoping without hope? It would appear so, but the same hand which afflicts can bless and aid. At dinner today, I filled my glass with port wine and silently drank her health.17
Getting good or bad news from A to B in 1866 is a matter of patience, hope and luck. Mail delivered by steamship across the Atlantic between, say, Liverpool and San Francisco takes about 10 days. Mail between San Francisco and Sydney takes about the same, while mail between Britain and Australia can take from 60 to 70 days, depending on the weather and the route taken. The telegraph has brought instant communication wherever a wire can be strung between two places, but there will be no trans-atlantic telegraph cable until 1866, no cable connecting Australia to the rest of the world until 1872, and no ship-to-shore radio until 1907.
And yet, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, a man is flying a kite on a copper wire, Benjamin Franklin-style, from a mountain top. It is October 1865, and the man is Mahlon Loomis, a Washington DC dentist who, like Ben Franklin before him, is fascinated by the natural wonder of electricity.
Loomis has come to the Blue Ridge for a bold experiment. He believes the earth is surrounded by an electromagnetic field he calls the ‘electric sea’, and that the power of that force can be used to send a signal from one place to another without the need for wires. Loomis called his discovery the ‘aerial telegraph’. Later, others will call it wireless telegraphy or radio. No-one has tried this before. It is 30 years before the invention of radio will be credited to the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi.
To test his theory, Loomis has an associate fly a second kite from a mountain top 14 miles (22.5km) away. The wire from one kite is attached to the ground through a telegraph key. The other kite’s wire is grounded through a galvanometer to measure electrical current. With the kites acting as antennae, Loomis taps the telegraph key. The galvanometer registers a response. It works!
Loomis is convinced that his invention could revolutionise communications by ‘causing electric vibrations or waves to pass around the world, as upon the surface of some quiet lake one wave circlet follows another from the point of the disturbance to the remotest shores, so that from any mountain top upon the globe another conductor, which shall pierce this plane and receive the impressed vibration, may be connected to an indicator which will mark the length and duration of the vibration; and indicate by any agreed system of notation, convertible into human language, the message of the operator at the point of the first disturbance.’18
Mahlon Loomis’s discovery could have changed the world as early as 1865, including the ways the world waged war or attempted to avoid it. But, like many people ahead of their time, he was ignored, dismissed as a crank, decried as a fraud. Later duplications of his experiments would prove that he did indeed transmit radio signals as he had claimed, but it was all too late for this pioneer. He died in 1886, a broken man, poor, unsung and all but forgotten.
Consider how different this story might have been if the world had listened to the inventive dentist. James Bulloch could have let Captain Waddell know the war was over, and Pattie could have told William Whittle that, pirate or not, she’d still marry him.
Chapter 22
‘All hands to bury the dead’
‘I give our noble old vessel about 15 more days to land us safely in some English port,’ writes William Whittle on Sunday 22 October, ‘after having borne us over upwards of 50,000 miles of water on the most wonderful and eventful cruises ever made. What will become of us after we get there, God alone can tell. For myself, I have little or no faith in the existence of honour among nations when that honourable course may clash with interest.
‘Oh God, never were any men in such a terrible situation of suspense and misery!1
The Shenandoah’s executive officer is still in the doldrums, but at least he makes no mention of Pattie.
During the day, they pass several ships heading south, and, as is now the standard practice, avoid contact with them. That night, they cross the Tropic of Cancer into the North Temperate Zone, and the sun obliges by dropping the temperature to a bracing 59 degrees Fahrenheit (15°C).
It has now been 112 days since the men of the Shenandoah last sighted land, and 195 days since last they stepped ashore.
On 25 October, 500 miles (805km) south-east of the Azores, comes a cry from the masthead that had once brought a rush of joy but now brings a feeling of dread. ‘Sail ho!’
On the horizon, from the look of her masts and sails, she’s most likely a steamer. That means she could be a Federal cruiser, and, what’s worse, she has clearly spotted the Shenandoah.
Changing course would be a dead giveaway, so the crew try to slow the Shenandoah down by lowering the propeller and throwing out a drag, hoping to put more distance between her and the mystery ship. It doesn’t work.
This could be the end for the last Confederate raider, yet, as the sun sets, her master is moved to quote Byron:
Slow sinks, more lovely ere his race be run,
Along Morea’s hills the setting sun;
Not, as in northern climes, obscurely bright,
But one unclouded blaze of living light,
O’er the hush’d deep the yellow beam he throws.2
After nightfall, Waddell sends a lookout to the masthead. The news is not good. The ship is a man-of-war for sure, and she’s no more than three miles (4.8km) away. There’s nothing for it now but to put up steam and turn south under cover of darkness.
It’s a risky manoeuvre but it works. By 9pm, when the moon rises, their nemesis is nowhere to be seen. She was the US warship Saranac, and she had just missed the last chance to capture the notorious pirate ship
Shenandoah.
Two of the Shenandoah’s crew are desperately ill. Seaman William Bill, a Hawaiian also known as Bill Sailor, is dying of syphilis, his body covered in ulcers. Marine Sergeant George Canning, who joined in Melbourne, is bedridden, suffering from what he claims to be a festering gunshot wound to the lung, received at the Battle of Shiloh while aide-de-camp to Confederate General Leonidas Polk.
Several weeks earlier, Canning told Midshipman John Mason that he had a wife in Paris, somewhere in the Saint-Germain district. He asked Mason if he would be kind enough send her his belongings if he died. Mason agreed, and Canning told him he would write down the address. He never did.
William Bill passes away peacefully in his hammock on Thursday 26 October, and his body is prepared for burial at sea first thing next morning. This is not indecent haste. Superstitious sea dogs fear that if a dead sailor is left on board too long, his ghost can conjure a storm.
On Friday morning, the entire ship’s company, apart from the moribund Sergeant Canning, assemble on the poop deck at the call, ‘All hands to bury the dead!’ William Bill’s body, sewn into a canvas shroud made from his own hammock – with the last stitch through the nose, to make sure he’s dead – and draped in a Confederate flag, is placed on a plank.
The Captain reads from the Bible, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.’3 Then, ‘We commit the body of our brother William to the deep.’ At that, the marines fire a volley, the plank is lifted and the corpse slides over the rail and into the sea.
Four days later, Canning dies and is dropped over the side with all due ceremony. The cause of death is listed as ‘phthisis’, a now archaic term for tuberculosis of the lung, which is probably closer to the truth than Canning’s claimed war wound.
