Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 2.djvu/27

 this to mean that there would be considerable delay yet, and my surmise proved correct. I learned by degrees that, from the chief commander down to the lieutenants, the officers of the fleet had not much faith in either the offensive capacity or the speed of the new forms of ironclads, which were to be the principal instruments of attack, and that they were to be given practical trials in both respects before being actually used in the proposed grand effort to subdue Charleston.

I readily perceived that the key to the confidence of the Admiral and his chief of staff was the strict observance of their injunction not to say anything regarding the condition and purposes of the fleet in my correspondence, except what they should authorize to be published. I advised the managing editor of my intention to submit to this restriction, and confined myself at first to gathering material for purely descriptive letters. The supply proved rather meagre. One letter exhausted all that could possibly be said about Hilton Head, the army headquarters, and the fleet. The only other available sources of useful matter were excursions on the ordinary steamboats that kept up communication between the headquarters and the different points of occupation on the Sea Islands, and some reconnoissances by armed boats in the direction of the mainland, and especially of the Savannah River, through the network of tide-water inlets connecting the islands with one another. The steamboats made regular runs, but the reconnoitring trips, of course, took place only at the will of those in command.

My first excursion was to the famous town of Beaufort on St. Helena, the principal one of the islands. Our boat was the small side-wheeler Planter, that had been run out of Charleston harbor with a load of heavy siege-guns and delivered to the blockading fleet by her colored pilot, Robert Small, who had been its captain since, and whom I found a good-looking, intelligent, and well-informed mulatto. Beaufort was not more than eighteen miles from