Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 22.djvu/102

 90 Southern Historical Society Papers.

Maffit, and Brooke, were men of extraordinary professional qualities; but, except in its officers, the Confederate Government had nothing in the shape of a navy. It had not a single ship of war. It had no abundant fleet of merchant vessels in its ports from which to draw resources. It had no seamen, for its people were not given to sea- faring pursuits. Its only ship-yards were Norfolk and Pensacola. Norfolk, with its immense supplies of ordnance and equipments, was indeed invaluable; but, though the 300 new Dahlgren guns cap- tured in the yard were a permanent acquisition, the yard itself was lost when the war was one-fourth over.

" The South was without any large force of skilled mechanics ; and such as it had were early summoned to the army. There were only three rolling mills in the country, two of which were in Tennes- see; (and the third, at Atlanta, was unfitted for heavy work). There were hardly any machine shops that were prepared to supply the best kind of workmanship; and in the beginning, the only foundry capable of casting heavy guns, was the Tredegar Iron Works, at Richmond, which, under the direction of Commander Brooke, was employed to its fullest capacity.

"Worst of all, there were no raw materials, except the timber that was standing in the forests. The cost of iron was enormous, and, toward the end of the war, it was hardly to be had at any price. Under these circumstances, no general plan of naval policy, on a large scale, could be carried out; and the conflict on the Southern side became a species of partisan, desultory warfare."

SCARCITY OF SUPPLIES.

The iron required was in the bowels of the earth. Hemp must be sown, grown, reaped, and there were no rope walks. You had never produced a sufficiency of iron in times of peace, and now, with the advent of war to increase its uses, the price rose from $25 to $1,300 per ton.

No powder was stored in any of the Southern States, except in small quantities. That captured at Norfolk, and in some arsenals, amounted, it is said, to sixty thousand pounds.

The stock of percussion caps was less than 500,000, and not a machine for making them could be found in the South.

Colonel Gorgas says: "We began in April, 1861, without an arsenal, laboratory or powder mill of any capacity, and with no foundry or rolling mill, except at Richmond. During the harass- ments of war, holding our own in the field defiantly and successfully,