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As I reached the top of the turret I saw a boat made fast on
the weather quarter filled with men. Three others were standing
on deck trying to get on board. One man was floating leeward,
shouting in vain for help; another, who hurriedly passed me
and jumped down from the turret, was swept off by a breaking
wave and never rose. I was excited, feeling that it was the
only chance to be saved. I made a loose line fast to one of
the stanchions, and let myself down from the turret, the ladder
having been washed away. The moment I struck the deck the sea
broke over it and swept me as I had seen it sweep my shipmates.
I grasped one of the smoke-stack braces and, hand-over-hand,
ascended to keep my head above water. It required all my strength
to keep the sea from tearing me away. As it swept from the vessel
I found myself dangling in the air nearly at the top of the
smoke-stack. I let myself fall, and succeeded in reaching a
life-line that encircled the deck by means of short stanchions,
and to which the boat was attached. The sea again broke over
us, lifting me feet upward as I still clung to the life-line.
I thought I had nearly measured the depth of the ocean, when
I felt the turn, and as my head rose above the water I was somewhat
dazed from being so nearly drowned, and spouted up, it seemed,
more than a gallon of water that had found its way into my lungs.
I was then about twenty feet from the other men, whom I found
to be the captain and one seaman, the other had been washed
overboard and was now struggling in the water. The men in the
boat were pushing back on their oars to keep the boat from being
washed on to the Monitor's deck, so that the boat had
to be hauled in by the painter about ten or twelve feet. The
first lieutenant, S. D. Greene, and other officers in the boat,
were shouting, "Is the captain on board?" and, with severe struggles
to have our voices heard above the roar of the wind and sea,
we were shouting "No," and trying to haul in the boat, which
we at last succeeded in doing. The captain, ever caring for
his men, requested us to get in, but we both, in the same voice,
told him to get in first. The moment he was over the bows of
the boat Lieutenant Greene cried, "Cut the painter! Cut the
painter!" I thought, "Now or lost," and in less time than I
can explain it, exerting my strength beyond imagination, I hauled
in the boat, sprang, caught on the gunwale, was pulled into
the boat with a boar-hook in the hands of one of the men, and
took my seat with one of the oarsmen. The other man, named Thomas
Joice, managed to get into the boat in some way, I cannot tell
how, and he was the last man saved from that ill-fated ship.
As we were cut loose I saw several men standing on top of the
turret, apparently afraid to venture down upon deck, and it
may have been that they were deterred by seeing others washed
overboard while I was getting into the boat.
After a fearful and dangerous passage over the frantic seas,
we reached the Rhode Island, which still had the tow-line
caught in her wheel and had drifted perhaps two miles to leeward.
We came alongside under the lee bows, where the first boat,
that had left the Monitor nearly an hour before, had
just discharged its men; but we found that getting on board
the Rhode Island was a harder task than getting from
the Monitor. We were carried by the sea from stem to
stern, for to have made fast would have been fatal; the boat
was bounding against the ship's sides; sometimes it was below
the wheel, and then, on the summit of a huge wave, far above
the decks; then the two boats would crash together; and once,
while Surgeon Weeks was holding on to the rail, he lost his
fingers by a collision which swamped the other boat. Lines were
thrown to us from the deck of the Rhode Island, which
were of no assistance, for not one of us could climb a small
rope; and besides, the men who threw them would immediately
let go their holds, in their excitement, to throw another -
which I found to be the case when I kept hauling in rope instead
of climbing.
It must be understood that two vessels lying side by side, when
there is any motion to the sea, move alternately; or in other
words, one is constantly passing the other up or down. At one
time, when our boat was near the bows of the steamer, we would
rise upon the sea until we could touch her rail; then in an
instant, by a very rapid descent, we could touch her keel. While
we were thus rising and falling upon the sea, I caught a rope,
and rising with the boat managed to reach within a foot or two
of the rail, when a man, if there had been one, could easily
have hauled me on board. But they had all followed after the
boat, which at that instant was washed astern and I hung dangling
in the air over the bow of the Rhode Island, with Ensign
Norman Atwater hanging to the cat-head, three or four feet from
me, like myself, with both hands clinching a rope and shouting
for some one to save him. Our hands grew painful and all the
time weaker, until I saw his strength give way. He slipped a
foot, caught again, and with his last prayer, "O God!" I saw
him fall and sink, to rise no more. The ship rolled, and rose
upon the sea, sometimes with her keel out of water, so that
I was hanging thirty feet above the sea, and with the fate in
view that had befallen our much-beloved companion, which no
one had witnessed but myself. I still clung to the rope with
aching hands, calling in vain for help. But I could not be heard,
for the wind shrieked far above my voice. My heart here, for
the only time in my life, gave up hope, and home and friends
were most tenderly thought of. While I was in this state, within
a few seconds of giving up, the sea rolled forward, bringing
with it the boat, and when I would have fallen into the sea,
it was there. I can only recollect hearing an old sailor say,
as I fell into the bottom of the boat, "Where in ---- did he
come from?"
When I became aware of what was going on, no one had succeeded
in getting out of the boat, which then lay just forward of the
wheel-house. Our captain ordered them to throw bowlines, which
was immediately done. The second one I caught, and, placing
myself within the loop, was hauled on board. I assisted in helping
the others out of the boat, when it again went back to the Monitor;
it did not reach it, however, and after drifting about on the
ocean several days it was picked up by a passing vessel and
carried to Philadelphia.
 |
Monitor's
red signal lantern.
From the Collections of The Mariners' Museum |
It was half-past twelve, the night of the thirty-first of December,
1862, when I stood on the forecastle of the Rhode Island,
watching the red and white lights that hung from the pennant-staff
above the turret, and which now and then were seen as we would
perhaps both rise on the sea together, until at last, just as
the moon had passed below the horizon, they were lost, and the
Monitor, whose history is familiar to us all, was seen
no more.
The Rhode Island cruised about the scene of the disaster
the remainder of the night and the next forenoon in hope of
finding the boat that had been lost; then she returned direct
to Fort Monroe, where we arrived the next day with our melancholy
news.
Francis
B. Butts
1The
method of communication from the Monitor was by writing
in chalk on a black-board which was held up to view; the Monitor
had no mast on which to hoist the regular naval code used by the
Rhode Island. As night approached the captain of the Monitor
wrote, while we could yet see, that if they were forced to abandon
their ship, they would burn a red light as a signal. About ten
oıclock the signal was given. When the steamer stopped to allow
the hawsers to be cast off the Monitor forged ahead under
the impetus of her headway, and came so close up under the steamerıs
stern, that there was great danger of her running into and cutting
the steamer down. When the engines of the Rhode Island
were started to go ahead to get out of the way it was discovered
that the hawser had got afoul of the paddle-wheel, and when they
were put in motion, instead of getting clear of her, the rope
wound up on the wheel and drew the vessels together. This was
an extremely dangerous position, for they were being pitched and
tossed about so much by the heavy seas, that if the iron-clad
had once struck the steamer they must both have gone down together.
However, a fireman went into the wheel at the risk of his life,
and with an axe cut the hawser away so that the steamer was enabled
to get away at a safe distance. From a letter to the Editor
from H.R. SMITH, then of the Rhode Island.
2After
making two trips there were still four officers and twelve men
on the Monitor, and the gallant boatıs crew, although
well-nigh exhausted by their labors, started for the third time
on its perilous trip, but it never reached them, for while all
on board the steamer were anxiously watching the light in the
turret and vainly peering into the darkness for a glimpse of
the rescuing boat, the light suddenly disappeared and forever,
for after watching for a long time to try and find it again
they were forced to the conclusion that the Monitor had
gone to the bottom with all that remained on board. The position
of the Rhode Island at this time was about eight or ten
miles off the coast directly east of Cape Hatteras. ---H.R.S.
page
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Go to Main Category:
The Monitor from the James River to Cape Hatteras:
May-December, 1862
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