April 9, 1861; The New York Herald
(From the Mobile Advertiser, April 3.)
Saturday night, having obtained a berth for a trip to the Warrington Navy Yard, at a little after eight o’clock we cast loose from the Hitchcock’s press wharf on board the steamer Kate Dale, Capt. J. M. Brainard, bound for that place, with a load as per manifest of 10,000 solid and hollow shot, 40,000 cartridges, some 140 boxes of grape, and quantities of bacon, pork, flour, and other rations for the troops of the Confederacy. The boat also carried over Company A. of the Louisiana Zouaves, Capt. A. Coppens, who, as we left, were saluted with hearty cheers by the Mississippians quarter at the press, which were acknowledged by a roll of the drum; the Zouaves not being much given to cheering, but being in fact the most quiet corps we have encountered in these war times. The bay was calm, but not knowing what kind of weather there might be outside, Captain Brainard expressed a doubt whether he should proceed directly on the trip, the Kate Dale’s cargo being of a kind which would strain the boat severely in a heavy sea, not to mention the danger of its rolling overboard, and making a considerable smash of things on board while being got rid of.
At twelve o’clock we found ourselves close under Fort Morgan, the relief of the fort showing itself sharp and clear in the moonlight, with no sign of life about it but the figure of a sentinel walking his watch on the ramparts. There was scarcely a perceptible swell on the bar, which we crossed at once, and on rising in the morning Barrancas light was flashing right ahead of us, and off to seaward lay the frigate Sabine and sloop St. Louis, and two vessels under canvas, a British and an American bark bound for Pensacola. As the light strengthened the smoke of two steamers could be discerned still further at sea, which were recognized to be the boats of the New Orleans and Havana line, this being the point where they meet on their trips going and coming. Soon we had passed Fort McRea and the low battery on its right, and heading toward Fort Barrancas, and running close to Fort Pickens, came in sight of the steamer Wyandot lying inside, and of the rising sun at about the same moment. We were hardly made fast at the Navy Yard when the two steamers and the British bark passed us and proceeded up the bay.
After a capital breakfast on board, having found a companion in the person of G. C. G., we started on a ramble about the Navy Yard, where the general appearance of things differed but little from what we had noticed on a former visit some ten months ago, the first thing that stuck the eye being the absence of the United States marine uniform from the officers and sentinels on duty. The steamer Fulton, lying on the stocks where she had been placed after being wrecked a year ago last fall, has been stripped of her planking to the bends, and the timbers of her upper works have been set up and partially planked; most of the guns have been removed, and two have been planted in a battery behind a rampart of sand just outside the main wharf; but the pyramids of balls, the quantity of which we amused ourselves with calculating, and found to amount to about sixty thousand, do not seem to have been meddled with. There are now more than one thousand tons of these missiles here, besides what there may be at the different forts and batteries.
Among the passengers on board the Kate Dale was Captain Posey, of the Red Eagles, who brought over a number of recruits for his company, and from whom he had received an invitation to dine at his quarters near the redoubt in rear of for Barrancas. So, after leaving the Navy Yard, we emerged there-from by the Warrington gate in search of the road to the Eagle’s Nest.
Just outside the gate are the marine barracks, a very neat and conveniently arranged group of buildings, consisting of a Corps de Garde in the centre, with a house for officers’ quarters, &c., on each side, and the quarters for the men in the rear. The whole is surrounded by a wall, and encloses a sufficiently spacious parade ground for a battalion of men. The barracks were occupied in part by a company whose name we omitted to learn, and the rest has now been assigned as quarters for the Zouaves.
Warrington is a town composed of houses some neat and others shabby, built by permission of the government on government land. Its scenery is more peculiar than romantic, the principal street being macadamised with tan bark, and running along the backbone of a drift of that white sand which Pensacola bay produces in such unrivalled purity. Other drifts intervene between the street and the beach, as well as a few houses with their rear gables directed towards Fort Pickens, but most of the houses are facing the water, and the whole current of travel follows a plank walk in front of these, and hardly keeps its surface–which is as clean and polished as the kitchen floor of an old fashioned New England farm house–clear from the encroachments of the sand. We don’t know how housewives like Warrington, but it is a place where they have no excuse for slovenliness of house or dress, or for dirty faced children. A company of soldiers is quartered in the western part of Warrington and has in charge a two gun battery near the water’s edge, with a bomb proof magazine attached, the whole being constructed with sandbags on a foundation of pork barrels, that being the style of military architecture most affected by the Todtlebens of the confederacy, and they have ample supplies of both kinds of material at Warrington. In the neighborhood of this battery a clear and copious stream runs into the sea, giving token that so important a military element as fresh water is not deficient in this our Southern Crimea.
Crossing this stream we soon come to the Marine Hospital, now the headquarters of Gen Bragg, and some distance beyond it are the general barracks, a large three story building, only a portion of the plan of which is completed, but even now having room for five or six hundred men. Here are quartered about half of Col. Clayton’s regiment, his own quarters being in a comfortable frame building, more to the front and east. In the rear of these is the parade ground, with room for the maneuvers of a full regiment, and with convenient houses around for the quarters of officers, the whole encompassed with groves of live oak and other growth. From the barracks a railroad track furnishes means of conveyance for stores to and from the redoubt, about a thousand yards in the rear of Fort Barrancas, which itself is some distance further up the coast, and the lighthouse still further, and one or two sandbag batteries have been constructed on the bluff above the beach in the intervening space, but these we think have not yet received their armament.
The redoubt, at which we next arrived, is barely visible in certain directions from the sea, its purpose being to serve as a depot of provisions and ammunition for the other works. It is not intended as a work of offence, and is commanded by the guns of Fort Barrancas. For its own defence it is abundantly provided with loopholes for musketry, and is designed to mount some eighteen guns of moderate calibre. In the rear the Red Eagles have knocked up some comfortable shanties, which they call the Eagles’ Nest, and as we leaned that Captain Posey was with his company, who had not yet returned from inspection, we availed ourselves of the proffered services of the sergeant of the guard to examine the works.
The redoubt, which may some other day prove the Malakoff of this system of works, and so it has been christened by some of its visiters, though unfinished, has received more attention in its construction than any other portion of them on this side of the bay at least. It consists of two long and two short faces, the gorge being closed by a curtain which is flanked by shoulders, each intended for one casemate and one barbette gun. Four barbette guns are intended to be mounted in each of the lateral angles of the work, but the foundations even of the platforms of these have not been laid, and the whole terreplein is at present a loose sand heap, or rather sand pit encumbered with rubbish. The work is surrounded with a deep ditch and a counterscarp, pierced with loopholes, and provided with six or eight casemates for cannon to command the ditch. The covered way is crossed by traverses to enable the garrison to resist the attack of a storming party, who, after gaining the covered way, would be next exposed to the fire from the ramparts. The defenders driven from there, would be able to resort to the galleries beneath, in each vault on which are two loopholes (132 in all) and an air hole above for purposes of ventilation. In the rear, on either side, is a staircase leading down to a place of total darkness, and at the foot an unwary step might plunge you into a well, the water of which boils up from unfailing springs, and runs off by circuitous drains into the ditch, and is thence conducted away from the work. Feeling your way around these pitfalls, and meeting in your in your progress the iron doors of a magazine or two (and there are others in the galleries before visited) you see at last a glimmer of light, and following its direction, find yourselves in the gallery of the counterscarp, which surrounds the entire front of the place. Beneath this are vaults for stores and ammunition, which we did not visit. This would be the final stand of the garrison if driven from the body of the place, and when further resistance proved unavailing they would not be compelled to surrender or be smothered like rats in their holes, but leaving slow matches to the trains communicating with their magazines could retreat through subterranean passages to For Barrancus.
A portion of what we have described was the result of a subsequent visit under the guidance of the captain; for before this first inspection was complete, the Red Eagles had returned from their inspection, and joining Captain Posey and the officers of the Zouaves, we proceeded to his quarters. The Red Eagles furnished us with an agreeable surprise, for we confess we have never entertained a high opinion of the soldiers which the population of cities furnishes to the recruiting service. Indeed, Captain Posey found at first that he had some very indifferent material, but it does not take long for soldiers to become dissatisfied with the service when they find that both their commander and their comrades are ashamed of them; and so when the opportunity was offered of transferring themselves from the service of the State to that of the confederacy, these mauvais sujets declined the offer and were comfortably got rid of. Their places have since been partly filled by better men, and the captain is now justly proud of his company. As usual in American companies, there are men of every occupation among them; and one of them is a baker, who is stationed at the Navy Yard, where his military duties have been commuted for that of supplying the command with bread. Another of the specials is Jeremy Campbell, who has put in order an old neglected garden in the rear of the redoubt, and is glorying in the visions of the salads, cabbages, peas and potatoes with which his horticultural skill will supply the post. We cannot do justice to the captain cook, not having learned his name, but an excellent dinner of his providing received full justice at the hands of some seven or eight guests, including the Zouave officers, and the feast was concluded with the usual accompaniments of anecdote and song, ending with the Marseillaise, and that was performed with a rattling accompaniment by the pet of the Red Eagles, a long enfant de la patrie, with seven rattles and a button, from which to his fangs he measures about five feet and a half. The seven rattles are understood to be emblematic of the Confederate States, but there is some dispute whether the button stands for Arkansas or Virginia.
After dinner the whole party took For Barrancas on their return. This is garrisoned by the Enfala Rifles, whose tents are pitched in the ditch. In its general outline it does not differ greatly from the redoubt, though on a larger scale, having no flanking fire except from the epaulements of the counterscarp in the rear, the faces fronting to the water being open and pierced for musketry, while the guns, twenty five or thirty in all, are mounted on the ramparts. The entrance is through the glacis, and over a drawbridge in the rear. In front is a communication under ground with the old Spanish fort which performs the part of an outwork in front. This is merely a semicircular battery of ten or twelve guns. –or more fully, Fort San Carlos de Barrancas–occupies the most commanding position of all the works and is directly in the line of approach of vessels entering the bay, but its defensive capabilities are not great.
As we walked the parade ground the Alabama regiment, consisting of ten strong companies was out for evening parade. After seeing them dismissed we returned to Warrington, and there, in the company of the Zouaves, forgot the time until after the gates were closed. This, however, gave us no concern, as our friends had the countersign, but when at length one of them accompanied us to the gate to pass us in, it appeared he had only a countersign being one of three, and nevertheless the Zouaves were to relieve guard in the Navy Yard in the course of the night. It was plain that, in the language of Tennyson, one had blundered, but it was hardly the Zouaves, for there were parol and countersign under the sign manual of the General’s aid-de-camp. After trotting back and forward for about half an hour, the sergeant of the guard let us in, and we were soon in the arms of Morpheus and the Kate Dale.
How we visited the lighthouse battery next morning, how it is manned by the Clayton Guard, how it is built of oat sacks filled with sand, how the oats are growing out all over it, how it is mounted with four eight inch Columbiads, how they would knock the splinters out of Fort Pickens, how we hadn’t time to visit Fort McRae, how we left at ten o’clock, how we saw that the Brooklyn had joined the squadron during the night, how we took the small channel, how we rounded Mobile Point at six o, and got to the city at nine–the printers say it, it would be preposterous for us to attempt telling.
The Warrington correspondent of the Pensacola Observer says the Alabama regiment has been transferred to the Confederate States by General Clemens; Colonel Clayton has been reelected Colonel; Williams, Lieutenant Colonel; Steadman, Major. A man was shot at the redoubt on the night of the 27th, in attempting to pass the sentry without the countersign. He died soon afterwards. No blame is attached to the sentry, who only discharged his duty. The deceased was a member of the ‘Red Eagles,’ Captain B. I. Posey. The steamer Kate Dale arrived at Warrington on the 28th from Mobile, with large quantities of provisions, five hundred stands of arms and two hundred thousand ball cartridges from Mt. Vernon Arsenal.
The Jacksonville (Ala.) Republican says: –Captain Draper’s company of over sixty stalworth men, who left this county last Saturday, were nearly one half married men–not more than ten or a dozen have any interest in negro property and the three Lieutenants and Orderly Sergeant are all grandfathers. Each one of them can take off a grey squirrel head every pop, in the tops of our forest trees with a rifle.
The Montgomery Advertiser, of the 31st ult. says: –We understand that five hundred troops for Florida will arrive at Columbus, Georgia, about the 7th. The quota from Georgia, consisting of about 1,000 will rendezvous at Macon, and as soon as tents and equipments can be furnished them, will march direct to Pensacola. Two regiments from Mississippi, in all about 1,700 men, are now on their way to that point. They go by the way of Mobile, and thence across the country from Blakely. The Louisiana regiment, consisting of over 1,000 men, are now prepared to move, and will leave in a short time.