Floating Hospital, Daniel Webster.
Cheeseman’s Creek, April 30, ‘61.
The sail down the Potomac to Acquia Creek, where we anchored for the night, was extremely pretty. Just as we started the little gunboat “Yankee” passed up, bringing, all on a string, five rebel craft she had just taken in the Rappahannock.
Late in the afternoon we passed the stone fleet, eight boats all ready to sink in the channel, in case the Merrimac should try to run up the Potomac. The rebels having taken up all the buoys, we had to come to anchor at dark. Sunday, the first day, was gone. As for us, we had spent it sitting on deck, sewing upon a Hospital flag fifteen by eight, and singing hymns to take the edge off this secular occupation. It is to be run up at once in case we encounter the Merrimac. Just as we anchored, a chaplain was discovered among the fifty or sixty soldiers on board–men returning to their regiments, and in half an hour we got together for service and an unprepared discourse exhorting the Sanitary Commission to works of charity! The contrabands all came in and stood in a row, so black, at the dark end of the cabin, that I could see nothing but eyes and teeth; but they sang heartily and everybody followed them.