Post by politicidal on Apr 1, 2018 2:31:58 GMT
It was not a sexual thing. It was all for a secret mission to hijack a Union passenger vessel. Yes, I'm serious.
TEXT:
Governor Letcher presented Zarvona with an advance of one thousand dollars to be used in procuring arms in Baltimore and possibly for encouraging a few young adventurers to join in a bold strike at the foes of the Confederacy. At the same time, he promised Zarvona the rank of colonel (Alexander and George, the rank of captain) if the plan succeeded, and told Zarvona to use the title in recruitment.
Zarvona, accompanied by Alexander, set out for Baltimore, traveling the usual route: by furtively crossing the Potomac, traversing the peninsula to the Patuxent, and (as an apparent farm worker) boarding Mary Washington for passage up the Bay. In Baltimore, the two let it be known in certain covert circles that they were seeking men for a bold but rewarding enterprise for the Southern cause.
One of the men, George W. Watts, late lieutenant, CSA, recruited by Zarvona, recounted his enlistment:
We were all strong Southern sympathizers, and one day the information was quietly circulated among those true to the cause that a Colonel Thomas, who had served in foreign wars, was planning a desperate expedition. I nosed around and got wind of what was up, Well, Sir, at first I was mighty disappointed with the Colonel. He looked like one of them slick floorwalkers in a department store. I think the other men felt the same way that I did, but pretty soon we found we were all fooled. Believe me, Sir, that man had the quickest brain I ever ran across, and his eyes were just as quick. Eyes? Why, when that man looked at you [they looked right through you]. It didn't take us long to learn who was boss around there. So we got all our plans ready ("Last Survivor of a Gallant Band," Evening Sun, August 27, 1910).
On the evening of June 28, 1861, the men engaged by Zarvona boarded St. Nicholas in Baltimore. They arrived at the wharf one by one or in pairs at intervals, passing themselves of as harvest hands in search of employment in the fields of southern Maryland. They paid their fares and were duly searched for contraband, as required by military authorities, who found nothing.
Among a total of nearly sixty passengers coming aboard St. Nicholas just before departure was a very stylishly dressed young lady, speaking only broken English with a marked French accent. Her brother (a fierce-looking bearded man) accompanied her, so she said, and helped translate her wishes. Her name was Madame LaForte, she said, and she had a number of large trunks to take with her, in order to establish her millinery business in Washington. Entranced by her smile, the purser assigned her to a commodious stateroom off the main deck and had deckhands haul her trunks to her cabin.
When the steamer departed, the lady emerged from her stateroom and flirted shamelessly with the most attractive males among the passengers and ship's officers. Captain Jacob Kirwan, who prided himself on his knowledge of French, tried out his vocabulary on the lady, who proved herself a native of France with a voluble stream of coquettish language that quite overwhelmed him. Fluent French gushed from her lips. She radiated charm. A veil covered her eyes and cheeks but not her reddened lips. She tossed her fan about and cocked her head at an angle toward any gentleman who occupied her attention at the moment. With her bearded brother at her arm, she meandered from saloon to dance hall, flirting as she went with the ship's officers. Captain Kirwan was disturbed. "I didn't like the appearance of that French woman at all," he said later. "She sat next to me at table and so close that our legs touched. I thought she looked mighty queer" (Day). She swished about the deck, waving a large fan like a Spanish dancer. "That young woman behaved so scandalously that all the other women on the boat were in a terrible state over it," said George Watts. One crew member, utterly mesmerized by the lady, leaned over to kiss her and straightened up abruptly with the mark if a hand slap on his cheek.
For some reason, which the crew did not understand, most of the passengers elected to wander about the decks on into the night as the steamer plowed her way south toward the Potomac. About midnight, the steamer rounded Point Lookout and sidled alongside the dock just inside the spit of land at the point. Coming aboard were several men including an elderly gentleman, all seeking passage to Washington.
George Watts, a member of the recruits boarding in Baltimore, was upset:
Among [the passengers] I counted my 15 comrades. We all kept separated, however, and didn't let anyone know we knew each other. But what worried me a lot was I couldn't find the colonel or anyone that looked like him. I could see the failure of the whole expedition, and also I could see myself behind bars at Fort McHenry, and the picture didn't look a bit good for me. I was on deck a-wondering where it was all going to end and whether I'd be hung as a Rebel spy when someone touched me on the arm. I whirled around like somebody had stuck a knife in me and saw Alexander [the bearded brother]. He grinned at the way he had scared me and said, "You're wanted in the second cabin." I hurried below decks [to the second cabin] and nearly had a fit when I found all our boys gathered around that frisky French lady. She looked at me when I came in, and, Lord, I knew those eyes in a minute! It was the Colonel. Then he shed his bonnet, wig, and dress and stepped forth clad in a brilliant new Zouave uniform. In a jiffy the "French" lady's three big trunks were dragged out and opened. One was filled with cutlasses, another with Colt revolvers, and the third with carbines. Each man buckled on a sword and pistol and grabbed a gun, and then the Colonel told us what to do ("Last Survivor . . . ").
The colonel and two men proceeded to the captain's cabin and confronted Kirwan, who, when apprised of the force seizing his ship, readily surrendered. George Watts, former sailor in the U.S. Navy, and John Frazier, a Baltimore pilot who had been briefed on Zarvona's plans, entered the pilothouse and placed a pistol at the head of the black quartermaster at the wheel. He gave in meekly enough, and Frazier, with Watts as quartermaster, wheeled the steamer about and pointed her bow for the mouth of the Coan River on the Virginia side of the Potomac. Elsewhere on St. Nicholas, the crew and passengers were informed of the capture of the vessel by Confederate men and assured of kind treatment when the steamer reached its immediate destination in the Coan River.
When Colonel Zarvona appeared on deck in full Zouave uniform and gave the signal for the capture of the vessel, the elderly gentleman who had boarded at Point Lookout shed his white wig and cane and emerged as Commander George N. Hollins, CSN. He had been ordered to board St. Nicholas with a few additional recruits to help insure the success of Zarvona's mission.
In the early morning hours of June 29, 1861, St. Nicholas docked on the Coan River and took aboard some thirty well-armed soldiers led by Captain Lewis. The large unit of the Tennessee regiment supposedly dispatched by General Holmes under orders of the secretary of war had been delayed, administratively or logistically. Not too far away was the small encampment of Zouaves still under training by Zarvona. From the decks of St. Nicholas trooped the passengers and crew taken captive the preceding night.
The passengers were permitted to leave with all their possessions. Many started off to seek conveyance by carriage or cart and boat to their homes. Several had missed their breakfast aboard the steamer and found it in a neighboring farmhouse. Upon asking how they should pay, they received a particularly hospitable reply, "Gentlemen, recollect that you are in Virginia!"
With a force of well-armed men aboard the captured prize, Zarvona prepared to undertake the next and more critical phase of his adventure. The climactic news came with frustrating suddenness. U.S.S. Pawnee had eluded his grasp and had left her station on the Potomac to proceed to Washington. Her skipper, Lieutenant Ward, had been killed by a rebel sharpshooter the day before in an artillery exchange with Confederate batteries off Point Mathias, and the vessel had returned to the Washington Navy Yard for the funeral.
How Zarvona learned of these tidings is not clear. Some reports indicated that Commander (later Commodore) Hollins had gathered the information before boarding St. Nicholas at Point Lookout. One account stated that Hollins learned of the event from newspapers at Coan. Still other accounts place St. Nicholas steaming fruitlessly up the Potomac in search of Pawnee before the news reached Zarvona on board from intelligence operations on shore. However the critical information reached Zarvona, he reacted, first with an explosion of frustration, and second with a resolve to make the most of the capture of St. Nicholas before the federal authorities learned of her seizure.
St. Nicholas, now manned entirely by men loyal to the Confederacy and commanded by Zarvona and Hollins, headed for the Chesapeake Bay, bent on a raid to compensate for the lost opportunity.
www.thelatinlibrary.com/chron/civilwarnotes/zarvona.html
TEXT:
Governor Letcher presented Zarvona with an advance of one thousand dollars to be used in procuring arms in Baltimore and possibly for encouraging a few young adventurers to join in a bold strike at the foes of the Confederacy. At the same time, he promised Zarvona the rank of colonel (Alexander and George, the rank of captain) if the plan succeeded, and told Zarvona to use the title in recruitment.
Zarvona, accompanied by Alexander, set out for Baltimore, traveling the usual route: by furtively crossing the Potomac, traversing the peninsula to the Patuxent, and (as an apparent farm worker) boarding Mary Washington for passage up the Bay. In Baltimore, the two let it be known in certain covert circles that they were seeking men for a bold but rewarding enterprise for the Southern cause.
One of the men, George W. Watts, late lieutenant, CSA, recruited by Zarvona, recounted his enlistment:
We were all strong Southern sympathizers, and one day the information was quietly circulated among those true to the cause that a Colonel Thomas, who had served in foreign wars, was planning a desperate expedition. I nosed around and got wind of what was up, Well, Sir, at first I was mighty disappointed with the Colonel. He looked like one of them slick floorwalkers in a department store. I think the other men felt the same way that I did, but pretty soon we found we were all fooled. Believe me, Sir, that man had the quickest brain I ever ran across, and his eyes were just as quick. Eyes? Why, when that man looked at you [they looked right through you]. It didn't take us long to learn who was boss around there. So we got all our plans ready ("Last Survivor of a Gallant Band," Evening Sun, August 27, 1910).
On the evening of June 28, 1861, the men engaged by Zarvona boarded St. Nicholas in Baltimore. They arrived at the wharf one by one or in pairs at intervals, passing themselves of as harvest hands in search of employment in the fields of southern Maryland. They paid their fares and were duly searched for contraband, as required by military authorities, who found nothing.
Among a total of nearly sixty passengers coming aboard St. Nicholas just before departure was a very stylishly dressed young lady, speaking only broken English with a marked French accent. Her brother (a fierce-looking bearded man) accompanied her, so she said, and helped translate her wishes. Her name was Madame LaForte, she said, and she had a number of large trunks to take with her, in order to establish her millinery business in Washington. Entranced by her smile, the purser assigned her to a commodious stateroom off the main deck and had deckhands haul her trunks to her cabin.
When the steamer departed, the lady emerged from her stateroom and flirted shamelessly with the most attractive males among the passengers and ship's officers. Captain Jacob Kirwan, who prided himself on his knowledge of French, tried out his vocabulary on the lady, who proved herself a native of France with a voluble stream of coquettish language that quite overwhelmed him. Fluent French gushed from her lips. She radiated charm. A veil covered her eyes and cheeks but not her reddened lips. She tossed her fan about and cocked her head at an angle toward any gentleman who occupied her attention at the moment. With her bearded brother at her arm, she meandered from saloon to dance hall, flirting as she went with the ship's officers. Captain Kirwan was disturbed. "I didn't like the appearance of that French woman at all," he said later. "She sat next to me at table and so close that our legs touched. I thought she looked mighty queer" (Day). She swished about the deck, waving a large fan like a Spanish dancer. "That young woman behaved so scandalously that all the other women on the boat were in a terrible state over it," said George Watts. One crew member, utterly mesmerized by the lady, leaned over to kiss her and straightened up abruptly with the mark if a hand slap on his cheek.
For some reason, which the crew did not understand, most of the passengers elected to wander about the decks on into the night as the steamer plowed her way south toward the Potomac. About midnight, the steamer rounded Point Lookout and sidled alongside the dock just inside the spit of land at the point. Coming aboard were several men including an elderly gentleman, all seeking passage to Washington.
George Watts, a member of the recruits boarding in Baltimore, was upset:
Among [the passengers] I counted my 15 comrades. We all kept separated, however, and didn't let anyone know we knew each other. But what worried me a lot was I couldn't find the colonel or anyone that looked like him. I could see the failure of the whole expedition, and also I could see myself behind bars at Fort McHenry, and the picture didn't look a bit good for me. I was on deck a-wondering where it was all going to end and whether I'd be hung as a Rebel spy when someone touched me on the arm. I whirled around like somebody had stuck a knife in me and saw Alexander [the bearded brother]. He grinned at the way he had scared me and said, "You're wanted in the second cabin." I hurried below decks [to the second cabin] and nearly had a fit when I found all our boys gathered around that frisky French lady. She looked at me when I came in, and, Lord, I knew those eyes in a minute! It was the Colonel. Then he shed his bonnet, wig, and dress and stepped forth clad in a brilliant new Zouave uniform. In a jiffy the "French" lady's three big trunks were dragged out and opened. One was filled with cutlasses, another with Colt revolvers, and the third with carbines. Each man buckled on a sword and pistol and grabbed a gun, and then the Colonel told us what to do ("Last Survivor . . . ").
The colonel and two men proceeded to the captain's cabin and confronted Kirwan, who, when apprised of the force seizing his ship, readily surrendered. George Watts, former sailor in the U.S. Navy, and John Frazier, a Baltimore pilot who had been briefed on Zarvona's plans, entered the pilothouse and placed a pistol at the head of the black quartermaster at the wheel. He gave in meekly enough, and Frazier, with Watts as quartermaster, wheeled the steamer about and pointed her bow for the mouth of the Coan River on the Virginia side of the Potomac. Elsewhere on St. Nicholas, the crew and passengers were informed of the capture of the vessel by Confederate men and assured of kind treatment when the steamer reached its immediate destination in the Coan River.
When Colonel Zarvona appeared on deck in full Zouave uniform and gave the signal for the capture of the vessel, the elderly gentleman who had boarded at Point Lookout shed his white wig and cane and emerged as Commander George N. Hollins, CSN. He had been ordered to board St. Nicholas with a few additional recruits to help insure the success of Zarvona's mission.
In the early morning hours of June 29, 1861, St. Nicholas docked on the Coan River and took aboard some thirty well-armed soldiers led by Captain Lewis. The large unit of the Tennessee regiment supposedly dispatched by General Holmes under orders of the secretary of war had been delayed, administratively or logistically. Not too far away was the small encampment of Zouaves still under training by Zarvona. From the decks of St. Nicholas trooped the passengers and crew taken captive the preceding night.
The passengers were permitted to leave with all their possessions. Many started off to seek conveyance by carriage or cart and boat to their homes. Several had missed their breakfast aboard the steamer and found it in a neighboring farmhouse. Upon asking how they should pay, they received a particularly hospitable reply, "Gentlemen, recollect that you are in Virginia!"
With a force of well-armed men aboard the captured prize, Zarvona prepared to undertake the next and more critical phase of his adventure. The climactic news came with frustrating suddenness. U.S.S. Pawnee had eluded his grasp and had left her station on the Potomac to proceed to Washington. Her skipper, Lieutenant Ward, had been killed by a rebel sharpshooter the day before in an artillery exchange with Confederate batteries off Point Mathias, and the vessel had returned to the Washington Navy Yard for the funeral.
How Zarvona learned of these tidings is not clear. Some reports indicated that Commander (later Commodore) Hollins had gathered the information before boarding St. Nicholas at Point Lookout. One account stated that Hollins learned of the event from newspapers at Coan. Still other accounts place St. Nicholas steaming fruitlessly up the Potomac in search of Pawnee before the news reached Zarvona on board from intelligence operations on shore. However the critical information reached Zarvona, he reacted, first with an explosion of frustration, and second with a resolve to make the most of the capture of St. Nicholas before the federal authorities learned of her seizure.
St. Nicholas, now manned entirely by men loyal to the Confederacy and commanded by Zarvona and Hollins, headed for the Chesapeake Bay, bent on a raid to compensate for the lost opportunity.
www.thelatinlibrary.com/chron/civilwarnotes/zarvona.html