On 20 November 1861, an unusual flotilla got under way from New Bedford, Massachusetts. Flags flew along the shore, crowds cheered in wild encouragement, and windows rattled along the waterfront as gun batteries fired a salute to the departing vessels. Despite their naval mission, these were not warships.
Most were whalers whose days had been numbered by the increasing use of kerosene, replacing the whale oil that had long been lighting American lamps. Some looked like warships because of the broad white stripe running fore and aft, with black-painted squares known as “Fiji ports” that had once deceived marauding islanders in the South Pacific into thinking that cannon must be lurking in the darkness. But these ships carried large loads of stones instead of weapons, and their “main battery” was a “pipe and valve” rig—a five-inch hole in the hull with a wooden knock-out plug designed for easy scuttling.
Dubbed the “Stone Fleet,” the ships had been purchased by the Union Navy Department to carry out a strategic plan fathered by Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus Fox. In these early days of the Civil War, the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron had been trying to stop the flow of contraband cargoes (especially arms and ammunition) that was pouring into the South from Europe, primarily Great Britain. Attempts at blockading by conventional means had been largely ineffective, and Fox had decided on “corking the bottle” by sinking a large number of ships in the channels of the largest Confederate ports.
Fox tasked Flag Officer Samuel DuPont with the unusual mission, and he in turn put his chief of staff, Captain Charles H. Davis, in immediate command of “corking” the port at Charleston. DuPont could not have made a better choice than Davis. Before the war, he had served on a commission that recommended improvements to this important South Carolina port. He was also an acknowledged expert on tides and currents, having studied and written about their effects in the vicinity of large river outlets.
Other, less-informed officers would likely have scuttled the ships in a continuous line across the channel, but Davis’ knowledge of hydrodynamics told him that such a line would soon be penetrated by natural flows, creating passable channels. Instead, he directed that the vessels be positioned “like men on a checkerboard before the game has started.” This pattern would form the desired barrier and would also cause the fast-moving river current to create a swirling mass of whirlpools, eddies, and countercurrents, further complicating the navigational problem for would-be blockade runners.
On 19 December, the stone-laden fleet entered the Charleston channel and the 16 ships began pulling their plugs. As the vessels went down and settled on the irregular bottom, crews in whaleboats moved among the resulting forest of masts and spars, salvaging any reusable equipment while the guns of Fort Sumter boomed ineffectually—it was unclear whether the cannon were firing in protest of the intrusion or in celebration of the first anniversary of the state’s secession from the Union.
Herman Melville described the final moments of the sacrificial ships in a poem titled “An Old Sailor’s Lament”: “They sunk so slow, they died so hard, But gurgling dropped at last. . . .” Die they did, and when the last “gurgling” had subsided, the channel to Charleston was indeed sealed and remained that way long enough to choke off much of the contraband that had previously flowed into the port. When those natural forces that Davis had predicted later opened another channel, this one served Union Navy ships instead of blockade runners.
Derived largely from a December 1968 Proceedings article: “The Great Stone Fleet: Calculated Catastrophe” by Commander Arthur Gordon, U.S. Naval Reserve (Retired).