The Storm That Nearly Lost the War

During the first week of November 1861 the worst storm in years struck the Atlantic Seaboard. Lacking modern meteorological equipment and techniques to predict its arrival, millions of people were caught unprepared. Floodwaters swamped Newark, Manhattan and Newport, R.I. Violent winds splintered fishing fleets off New England. On Nov. 3, 26 people on board the 990-ton square-rigger Maritana drowned when their ship capsized near Boston Harbor.

As bad as the damage was, though, most Northerners feared the worst news was still to come. Just days earlier, in an aggressive campaign to take control of the Atlantic, the largest Union naval fleet ever amassed had set sail from Fortress Monroe in Hampton Roads, Va., for the South Carolina coast. When the wind and rain finally stopped, nearly everyone asked the same thing: Had the fleet survived the storm?

Eager to establish a coastal depot for the Union blockade in the heart of enemy territory, President Lincoln, Secretary of State William Henry Seward and their top advisers had secretly authorized the Navy to capture the Confederate garrisons at Port Royal, S.C., located midway between the leading Southern ports of Charleston, S.C., and Savannah, Ga. Thus far, implementing the blockade and securing the Southern coastline had proven difficult: for much of the summer, the Navy had struggled to provide adequate coverage of the immense maritime border stretching from Virginia to Texas. Rebel ships were getting through, and whispers of open Southern harbors made the Union look outmatched — all the more so given its poor performance in the ground war. Still reeling from the loss at Bull Run, administration officials were anxious to complete the blockade and finally strangle the southern war effort. Establishing a beachhead along the Southern coast could make all the difference.

The blockade had also become a litmus test for what Capt. Samuel F. Du Pont, a 46-year Navy veteran, called “the international question.” The blockade had legal standing only if it worked, and its vulnerabilities raised the question whether the Old World would finally intervene, recognize Confederate independence and rescue its lost commerce. “[T]here are much greater interests involved in leaving a port uncovered than the getting in and out of vessels,” Du Pont noted in late September 1861. When paired with the North’s high tariffs, people everywhere wondered how long Europe would stand by counting its losses. Much depended on what England’s diplomat in Washington, Richard Bickerton Pemell Lyons, made of the situation: “If Lord Lyons finds out what has happened,” Du Pont said, alluding to the overburdened blockade, “Mr. Seward will have a hard road to hoe.”

The Union decision to go on the offensive, however, was as bold as it was haphazard. Du Pont had been tapped to lead the fleet weeks earlier, but Port Royal became the intended target only days before the fleet was scheduled to sail. During a late-night meeting at Seward’s home in Washington, General George B. McClellan, then-commander of the Army of the Potomac (he would be promoted to general-in-chief within weeks), agreed to divert 9,000 troops from the nation’s capital and an additional 5,000 from New York.

Du Pont’s combined force of over 70 vessels (frigates, tugs and colliers — all for transport or combat) met the army in Hampton Roads. The Union had the advantage so long as the fleet’s destination stayed secret and it sailed within the month. Du Pont knew the perils in waiting: “October,” he cautioned McClellan, “was the golden month for operations on our seacoast.” After that, he said, the sea turned violent.

The mystery and anticipation surrounding “The Great Naval Expedition” stood in stark contrast to other more troubling news that October. Two rebel diplomats recently assigned to Europe, James Mason and John Slidell, had escaped the blockade near Charleston, and because of faulty intelligence the Navy spent the rest of the month looking for the wrong ship. Then, a sitting senator was killed in the Union loss at the Battle of Balls Bluff. Suddenly, the fleet carried more importance than ever. “Those vessels,” wrote the Hartford Daily Courant, “are laden with the prayers and aspirations of the American people. … [M]uch of our future hangs upon the fulfillment of the design of this expedition.” Du Pont was confident: “If we can take, we hold.” But he needed to get there first. A few hundred miles to the south, a massive storm was forming into a hurricane and spinning straight toward him.

On Oct. 29 the expedition sailed under blue skies; by Nov. 1, the barometer had plummeted and the winds roared. The storm would rage for two straight days. Off the coast near Georgetown, S.C., the fleet broke formation and dispersed far in all directions, each vessel doing whatever it needed to stay afloat. The smaller transports pitched everything overboard, from cargo to cannon. The living quarters below deck were “hot and close,” Du Pont said, intensifying the danger as even the biggest ships began to “twist, roll and writhe.” The heavy seas flung trunks and “huge iron safes” from side to side. Cabins flooded, rudders snapped and mattresses were stuffed into shattered portholes. At one point during the harrowing but deadly rescue of the transport ship Governor, sailors above deck could hear “the bubbling cry of drowning men.”

Even the oldest of salts confronted the very real possibility that they might not make it. “A gloom rested on everybody,” wrote the New York Times reporter aboard the steamship Atlantic. Later he admitted, “We fancied how we should feel sailing back … having accomplished nothing; we recollected the fate of the Spanish Armada; we thought how the Southerners would pronounce the storm an interference of Providence, and the London Times would proclaim that even the elements were in favor of recognizing Southern independence.” Even more upsetting, he wrote, “We thought of the gloom that would be cast over the entire North.”

With no news arriving, Northern civilians tried to stay optimistic. From Connecticut to Chicago, newspapers had at first “reason to believe that the fleet escaped the worst of the storm.” But before long, it seemed as if their worst fears had come true. Not so in the Confederacy, where reports of the supposedly secret fleet had reached a few days before it set sail. “The blast of the storm has sounded in our ears like sweetest music,” gloated the Richmond Enquirer on Nov. 4. “[W]hether by the winds of Heaven, or by the blessing of Heaven on Southern valor, we trust soon to be able to announce that the fleet which sailed from Hampton Roads … shall never more return, unless, indeed, under another flag.”

As everyone awaited word from the Atlantic, the expedition limped into Port Royal Sound — worse for the wear, but in fighting shape. The storm had caused few casualties, and Du Pont was relieved when most of his fleet checked in. Unable to coordinate a ground assault because of the hurricane’s damage, however, he directed the campaign from sea. The battle for Port Royal began on Nov. 7; it ended in a decisive Union victory after five hours of sustained bombardment.

The victory electrified the North and helped stabilize the blockade, but the Union quickly lost what little leverage it had won in its dealings with Britain. The day after Du Pont took Port Royal, the Navy captured Mason and Slidell on board a private English mail ship off the coast of Cuba — sparking a second international crisis in the process.

Today’s meteorologists suspect that the hurricane in November 1861 hit with Category 1 force. Had it been stronger, the battle for Port Royal — and the war — may have ended differently. As it was, the Union leveled a strategic blow: “You can form no idea of the terror we have spread in the whole Southern country,” Du Pont boasted to a friend two days after the battle. The Union’s seafaring force had accomplished what its army had been unable to do. “The navy,” wrote The New York Times, “has once again proven its inestimable importance in this war.”

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Sources: Baltimore Sun, Nov. 6, 1861; Chicago Tribune, Nov. 4 and 7, 1861; Hartford Daily Courant, Oct. 15, 28 and 31 and Nov. 4, 1861; New York Times, Oct. 28 and Nov. 3, 4, 7, 9, 14, 22 and 24, 1861; John D. Hayes, ed., “Samuel Francis Du Pont: A Selection From His Civil War Letters,” Volume 1; Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series 1, Volume 12; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Atlantic Oceanographic Meteorological Laboratory, Hurricane Research Division; Michael D. Coker, “The Battle of Port Royal”; James B. Elsner and A. Birol Kara, “Hurricanes of the North Atlantic: Climate and Society”; Amanda Foreman, “A World On Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War”; Howard Jones, “Blue and Gray Diplomacy: A History of Union and Confederate Foreign Relations”; David M. Ludlum, “Early American Hurricanes: 1492–1870”; James M. McPherson, “Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era”; Craig L. Symonds, “Lincoln and His Admirals: Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. Navy and the Civil War.”

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Albin J. Kowalewski is a public historian in Washington.