#2: The Union Blockade, or the Anaconda Plan, or “Scott’s Great Snake”
Herman Melville’s Poem
The Stone Fleet --- An Old Sailor's Lament
(December, 1861)
I have a feeling for those ships,
Each worn and ancient one,
With great bluff bows, and broad in the beam:
Ay, it was unkindly done.
But so they serve the Obsolete ----Even so, Stone Fleet!
You'll say I'm doting; do but think
I scudded round the Horn in one ----The Tenedos, a glorious
Good old craft as ever run ----Sunk (how all unmeet!)
With the Old Stone Fleet.
An India ship of fame was she,
Spices and shawls and fans she bore;
A whaler when her wrinkles came ----Turned off! Till, spent and poor,
Her bones were sold (escheat)!
Ah! Stone Fleet.
Four were erst patrician keels
(Names attest what families be),
The Kensington, and Richmond too,
Leonidas, and Lee:
But now they have their seat
With the Old Stone Fleet.
To scuttle them ----- a pirate deed ----Sack them, and dismast;
They sunk so slow, they died so hard,
But gurgling dropped at last.
Their ghosts in gales repeat
Woe's us, Stone Fleet!
And all for naught. The waters pass ----Currents will have their way;
Nature is nobody's ally; 'tis well;
The harbor is bettered ----- will stay.
A failure, and complete,
Was your Old Stone Fleet.
Notes on the Stone Fleet
In November 1861, the whaling ship Leonidas sailed from New
Bedford, Mass., for the last time. Whaling was one of America’s first
global industries, and oil carried home in ships like the Leonidas
lubricated machinery in booming factories and lit homes in the nation’s
growing cities. That November, though, the Leonidas departed New
Bedford with a hold (storage area) full of stone. One month later, the ship
lay in pieces on the sandy bottom of Charleston Harbor, one of some 30
merchant and whaling ships sunk there by the United States Navy
between December 1861 and January 1862.
Since the early days of the Civil War, the Navy had been
blockading the Southern coast in an attempt to stop the import of
Confederate military supplies and halt the export of Southern cotton.
Charleston was particularly difficult. Known to Northerners as a “rathole” because of the numerous navigable channels in and out of its
harbor, it had sent forth countless successful blockade runners in the
months after the Navy began tightening its noose. In desperation, the
Navy bought up old whaling and merchant ships that, once scuttled
(sunk), would create a barrier to the harbor; they called the ships the
“stone fleet.”
Starting around 3 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 19, a small crew of
sailors on each ship pulled the cork out of a carefully drilled hole in the
ship’s bottom. As the hull filled with water, sailors standing on the tilted
decks chopped down the masts with sharpened axes. After dismasting
each ship and removing its valuable sails and rigging, the sailors rowed
away from the gurgling wreck in small boats. The work continued
through the next day, when the last ship, the Robin Hood, was set on
fire. The ship smoldered as it leaned into the harbor before settling
beneath the waves. A month later, on Jan. 25 and 26, the Navy sank a
second stone squadron of 13 or 14 vessels, sealing off a different entrance
to Charleston harbor.
Although the stone fleet had sailed south under sealed orders,
the mission and destination of the doomed whalers had been an open
secret and the cause of a controversy. The stone fleet disrupted harbor
traffic temporarily, but Charleston Harbor soon reopened. The
shipwrecks on the bottom sank deep into the sand or broke up and
floated away. New channels formed around the remaining ships.
Question: What comparison can you make between the information on the Stone Fleet and Melville’s poem?
Names: __________________________________________________________________
You should write on this paper. Answer the questions on the sheet.
#1: Statistics, Places, Point of View
Civil War Casualties: The Bloodiest Battles
Battle Of Gettysburg (Pennsylvania): Over 50,000 casualties
Seven Days Battle (Virginia): Over 35,000 casualties
Battle Of Chickamauga (Georgia): Over 34,000 casualties
Battle Of Chancellorsville (Virginia): Over 29,000 casualties
Battle Of The Wilderness (Virginia): Over 24,000 casualties
Battle Of Antietam (Maryland): Over 22,000 casualties
Second Battle Of Bull Run (Virginia): Over 24,000 casualties
Battle Of Shiloh (Tennessee): Over 23,000 casualties
Battle Of Fredericksburg (Virginia): Over 18,000 casualties
Cold Harbor (Virginia): Over 18,000 casualties
Battles around Richmond
Question: What generalizations can you make about the
American Civil War from reading these statistics and maps?
How the South fell to the North