Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 29.djvu/223

 < 'raise of the (\ X. Manner Naskrilh. 207

The enemy must have lost some 300. I could not, without great

disparagement of their courage, place their loss at a lower figure.



D. H. HILL, Colonel First Regiment North Carolina Volunteers.

[From the Richmond, Va., Dispatch, March 18, 1901.]

CRUISE OF THE C. S. STEAMER NASHVILLE.

By Lieutenant W. C. Whittle, C. S. N.

In 1 86 1 the Nashville, then used as a freight and passenger steamer, was seized in the port of Charleston, S. C., by the Con- federate authorities, and soon fitted out for the purpose of taking- Messrs. Mason and Slidell to Europe. She was a side-wheel, brig- rigged steamer, of about twelve or fourteen hundred tons, and was therefore deemed by them too large a vessel to run the blockade. That purpose was accordingly abandoned. Captain R. B. Pegram, then in* command of the Nashville, fitted her with two small guns and made her ready for sea, with a full crew of officers and men. The following is a list of her officers: Captain, R. B. Pegram; First Lieutenant, Charles M. Fauntleroy; Second Lieutenant, John W. Bennett; Third Lieutenant, William C. Whittle; Master, John H. Ingram; Surgeon, John L. Ancrum; Paymaster, Richard Taylor; Chief Engineer, James Hood; Assistant Murray and two others, and the following midshipmen: W. R. Dalton, William H. Sinclair, Clarence Cary, J. W. Pegram, W. P. Hamilton, - Thomas, and McClintock.

On the night of October 21, 1861, she ran out of Charleston and touched at Bermuda. After stopping there a few days for coal, she headed across the Atlantic, and on November igth captured in the entrance of the British channel the ship Harvey Birch, an American merchantman in command of Captain Nelson. She was boarded by an officer and boat's crew, who carried away all that was valuable, and burned the ship. On the 2ist, she arrived at Southampton, England.