Historic Confederate ship had close ties to Carteret County, N.C.

One of the great Civil War stories that occurred in Carteret County, N.C., involves the blockade running ship known as the Nashville. The yarn deals with how the vessel got in, and then out, of Beaufort Harbor…just in the nick of time. 

The tale is a key element in a presentation titled “War Between the States in Carteret County,” which was delivered recently at the History Museum of Carteret County in Morehead City.

 

Lecturer Paul Branch, who is a park ranger and historian-in-residence at Fort Macon State Park, sad the intrigue of the Nashville curiously “circles back to” Josiah S. Pender, the Beaufort capitalist who instigated the “invasion” of Fort Macon in 1861. 

Pender had formed the local militia known as the Beaufort Harbor Guards who seized the fort for the Confederacy on April 14, 1861, just two days after South Carolina rebels attacked Fort Sumter at Charleston, S.C.

 

Josiah Pender

North Carolina Gov. John Ellis immediately sent “trained officers and soldiers” to occupy Fort Macon. This provided an opportunity for Pender to exit military service in December 1861 and convert his Beaufort steamship business into a small fleet of Confederate blockade runners. 

He moved his operations to Hamilton, Bermuda, and chiefly smuggled goods into the port at Wilmington, N.C., in support the South’s war effort. 

With Pender now established in Bermuda…Branch redirected the focus of his talk to the Nashville vessel itself.

 

Ranger Paul Branch

The ship was merely a mailboat in 1861, running regularly between New York City and Charleston, carrying postal letters and packages as well as a few “fashionable passengers.” 

Approaching Charleston on April 11, 1861, the crew noticed a large squadron off the Charleston bar. As the Nashville neared the channel, a ship approached and fired a shot, which skipped in front of the Nashville. 

“This cannon shot was the first naval fire of the Civil War,” commented Civil War historian John Quarstein of The Mariners’ Museum and Park in Newport News, Va. “Quickly raising the U.S. flag, the Nashville steamed into the harbor unmolested by the Union fleet.”

John Quarstein

 

The Confederates attacked Fort Sumter the very next day, April 12, and the Union troops inside surrendered April 13. The Nashville was claimed by the new Confederate navy, becoming its first combat ship. 

Built in 1853, the Nashville was a 215-foot, one-sided paddlewheel steamer powered by two boilers, complemented with two bark-rigged masts. 

Her new Confederate skipper would be Lt. Robert Baker Pegram of Dinwiddie County, Va.

 Lt. Pegram

He had a distinguished naval career, having served under Cmdr. David Glasgow Farragut during the Mexican-American War and having participated in Cmdr. Matthew Calbraith Perry’s Japan Expedition. 

Lt. Pegram armed the Nashville with two British-built bronze 6-pound cannons and strengthened the steamer’s engines. The vessel’s first assignment was to transport Confederate envoys to Europe. 

They were former U.S. Senators James Murray Mason of Virginia and John Slidell of Louisiana. Their mission was to enlist support and aid from England and France in this “War of Northern Aggression.”

 

James Mason

John Slidell

Secretary of the Confederate Navy Stephen Russell Mallory was eager to gain recognition of the Confederate States of America as a separate government by the great European powers; England and France were officially “neutral” at this point.

 

Stephen Mallory

Mallory said: “The strictest regard for the rights of neutrals cannot be too sedulously observed; nor should an opportunity be lost of cultivating friendly relations with their naval and merchant services, and of placing the true character of the contest in which we are engaged in its proper light….”

 

The Nashville would first have to “escape” from Charleston Harbor.

 

 

Confederate warship makes waves in Southampton, England

 Lt. Pegram insisted that the Nashville would not move, however, until conditions were ideal to make a midnight run to sneak past five Union warships that guarded access to the harbor. 

Mason and Slidell became impatient; they caught a ride on a smaller steamer that left the harbor through a side channel. In Cuba, they would board a British mail ship. (They were captured by Union sailors and became entangled in the infamous “Trent Affair.”) 

The Nashville departed Charleston on Oct. 26, 1861. The moon enabled Lt. Pegram “to clearly perceive the enemy’s vessels, while the Nashville, lying in the shadow thrown by the land, was completely hidden from hostile observation.” 

“The ship carried important dispatches to Confederate operatives along with hopes of Mallory to show the flag and advance the cause,” wrote Dwight Hughes for the Emerging Civil War website.

Dwight Hughes

 

The Nashville encountered the clipper Harvey Birch on Nov. 19 off the west coast of Ireland. The U.S. merchant ship was sailing from Le Havre (France) to New York City. Lt. Pegram raised the Confederate flag and demanded the Harvey Birch surrender. 

Once all officers, sailors and passengers were transferred to the Nashville, Lt. Pegram’s crew “removed everything of value” and then burned the clipper.

 

The Nashville reached Southampton, England, on Nov. 21, and Lt. Pegram released the 41 people who had been taken off Harvey Birch. 

Lt. Pegram noted that the Nashville “enjoyed the distinction of being the first war vessel to fly the flag of the Confederate States of America in the waters of England.” 

Back home in Dixie, the Nashville was praised for scoring the Confederate navy’s “first offshore victory,” taking out the Harvey Birch, Quarstein said. 

While the Nashville was in drydock at Southampton for repairs, Quarstein said the plot thickened with the arrival in January 1862 of the Tuscarora, a mighty Union gunboat. 

Capt. Tunis Augustus Macdonough Craven had orders “to capture or sink the Nashville.” He said his intention “was to await the egress of Nashville, then destroy the raider.”

Capt. Craven

 

“Craven kept such a close watch on the Nashville that Pegram filed a complaint with the Admiralty, as he believed it was a violation of the British Act of Neutrality: one belligerent vessel could not blockade another vessel within a British port,” Quarstein said. 

“To avoid any conflict, both ships were ordered to leave British waters within a specific time. Pegram, who knew that Tuscarora could easily outgun his ship, requested that the British implement the 24-hour rule,” Quarstein said. 

In effect, the Nashville was awarded a one-day head start, leaving Southampton on Feb. 3, 1862. 

“To prevent any breach of faith, the English frigate HMS Shannon, with steam up and guns shotted, lay alongside of the federal vessel,” Quarstein said. 

Next: Lt. Pegram meets Josiah Pender in Bermuda.