Snatching the St. Nicholas

During the uncertain early months of the Civil War, the USS Pawnee seemed the embodiment of United States naval might on the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay. No vessel in the nascent Confederate Navy could come close to matching the fearsome steamer. But that did not stop two enterprising Southern naval officers from hatching plans to capture her, and what ensued was one of the war’s most unusual operations.

By the summer of 1861, the Pawnee had already rendered valuable service to the Union. Within hours of Virginia’s secession on 17 April, the 233-foot steam sloop was dispatched from the Washington Navy Yard to secure, if possible, the Gosport Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia, and to establish a blockade at Hampton Roads. Commodore Hiram Paulding was on board with orders to “repel force by force” at the shipyard and, if necessary, to destroy the facility. By the time the Pawnee neared Portsmouth early in the evening on 20 April, the shipyard’s commander had begun scuttling the vessels in the yard. Left with little choice, Paulding ordered the facility’s destruction. Shore parties torched ships and buildings and blasted Gosport’s granite dry dock. For the Pawnee, that long night ended when she anchored across Hampton Roads off Fort Monroe with USS Cumberland and the few smaller ships that escaped the scuttling order.

News of the Pawnee’s presence at the mouth of the James River spread quickly to Richmond, about 90 miles away. By the early afternoon of 21 April, the capital was in the fullest grip of a panic. All attention was on the James, as the residents waited for the Pawnee, with her eight 9- inch guns and two 12-pounders, to hove into sight. By the time the sun set on “Pawnee Sunday,” however, most of the Richmonders’ revolutionary fury had cooled and crowds had drifted up the riverbanks’ hills.

Over the next two months, some Southerners began to see the Pawnee in a more intoxicating light, and two naval officers would conceive similar daring plans to seize her. The first was Lieutenant Hunter H. Lewis, a Naval Academy graduate. Before resigning from the U.S. Navy, he had defended the main entrance to the Washington Navy Yard during the fearful weeks leading to Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration. The second was Captain George N. Hollins, a U.S. Navy veteran of the War of 1812 who had finally resigned his commission in June.

Two other men—Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury and Richard Thomas—would play important roles as Lewis’ and Hollins’ plots developed and finally coalesced. Known as the “Pathfinder of the Seas,” Maury was a founder of the science of oceanography who had recently resigned as head of the U.S. Naval Observatory and was serving as a mem- her of Virginia’s de facto war cabinet. Thomas, on the other hand, was a young Marylander who had attended the U.S. Military Academy before soldiering with Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi.

Lewis’ story began on a June day at Aquia Creek, near its confluence with the Potomac, as he and the area’s Confederate commander, Brigadier General Theophilus H. Holmes, watched the Pawnee on her usual river patrol. Also chugging up the Potomac toward Washington was the side- wheel passenger steamer St. Nicholas on her weekly run between the capital and Baltimore. What caught Lewis’ attention was that the side-wheeler’s approach to the warship went unchallenged. Indeed, crewmen transferred provisions from the St. Nicholas to the Pawnee. Very curious indeed, Lewis thought, and over a few days, he began to limn a plan to board and seize the unarmed St. Nicholas and then to use the talents of any soldier with steamboat experience to capture the Pawnee.

The lieutenant told Holmes that he needed 300 men to pull off the operation (the Pawnee's compliment was between 151 and 181 men), but the general dismissed the notion as hare-brained. To drive home the point, Holmes told Lewis that the secretary of war himself would have to order him to loan the men.

Well, if Lewis had to go through the secretary, Leroy Pope Walker, for soldiers, he was determined to make the request in person. On his way to Richmond, he by chance met Maury, who had been visiting his family in Fredericksburg. The younger officer eagerly told the commander about his plan. Maury, who had been working feverishly to shore up Virginia’s coastal defenses with guns and mines, liked the idea but suggested that he go through Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory for initial cabinet approval.

Although they had each spent many years in Washington, Mallory, a former chairman of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee, was not one of Maury’s old friends. Indeed, in the mid-1850s they had engaged in a nasty argument about Maury’s forced retirement from active naval service. This day, however, Mallory bore no grudges and quickly penned a note to Secretary of War Walker informing him that Maury will be presenting a request for troops, adding that they were to be detailed to the Pawnee operation. Ill-suited for his job and overwhelmed by its responsibilities, Walker acquiesced. On June 27 he dispatched an order to Holmes: If he thought Lewis’ plan was feasible, he was to detail 500 troops to cooperate with the lieutenant, else he should send a detachment of troops to the mouth of the Coan River, across the Potomac from Point Lookout, Maryland, “to support him [Lewis] in the event he should find it necessary to run [the St. Nicholas] in at that point.

Holmes, choosing the latter, selected Colonel William Bate’s 2nd Tennessee Infantry Regiment to assist with the mission, but from the shore, not on the water. The next day he reported to Secretary Walker, “I sincerely hope your excellency will not consider me extra cautious in this matter, for when we consider that an indispensable requisite to success would be the absolute concealment of 300 to 400 men on a comparatively small steamer, and those men untrained volunteers, and that this is only one of several contingencies equally difficult to be reconciled, it seems to me that success would be miraculous.” Richmond, however, was requesting miracles that June—especially ones that could break the blockade of Virginia’s waters.

Hollins, who had served under Captain Stephen Decatur, was anything but overcautious. According to Hollins’ account, he had first suggested his plan to capture the Pawnee to a Confederate sympathizer in Maryland shortly after an 18 June 1861 trip from Baltimore to the Patuxent River on a steamer. He recalled, “I was told that the plan could not be carried out, as there were so many Union men about; that it must certainly be discovered before it could be executed.” But Hollins was not to be deterred, and he made his way to Richmond to report to Mallory. While in the capital, he met Maury and other former comrades from the U.S. Navy. He told each of them about his plan.

Maury later wrote that he had advised foregoing a direct appeal to Mallory, especially in light of the Holmes’ dismissal of Walker’s request, and instead approaching the Navy secretary with a plan to appeal to Virginia Governor John Letcher for arms and men. Hollins recalled that “Governor Letcher, without a moment’s hesitation, acceded to the proposal and gave me a draft for $1,000 to send North.” Also present in Letcher’s office when Hollins presented his plan was a slight man with a scarred cheek who was from a prominent Maryland family—Richard Thomas. He was colonel of an ad hoc military unit, the Maryland Zouaves, and using the alias Zarvona. Letcher told Hollins that Thomas would round up the men and purchase the guns that would make his plan a reality.

For weeks Thomas had also been pondering ways to seize a Union warship. The idea first came to him when he saw a steamer towing the Constitution, on their way from Annapolis to Newport. “It was a tantalizing sight for I am confident that a gunboat. . . could have taken both,” Thomas confided to a friend.

Soon thereafter, Hollins and Thomas met with Lieutenant Lewis in Fredericksburg. Lewis was no doubt astonished to hear about the pair’s rival plan, which was so similar to his own. In any case, the lieutenant boarded a steamer with Bate’s Tennesseans on 28 June. They were to head downriver, land at Monaskon, Virginia, march to the mouth of the Coan, and await the arrival of the captured St. Nicholas. The vessel was due in at 3 a.m. on the 29th.

Hollins and Thomas, meanwhile, proceeded with their plan and crossed the Potomac. While the Confederate captain and his two sons holed up at a friend’s house in Maryland, Thomas continued north to purchase weapons and enlist more conspirators. According to the plan, the young Marylander and his comrades would be passengers on the St. Nicholas' next Baltimore-Washington run. When the vessel pulled in at Point Lookout, Maryland, where the Potomac enters the Chesapeake, Hollins and his sons would also come aboard.

On 28 June, Thomas boarded the St. Nicholas in Baltimore—disguised as a French lady, with a veil discreetly covering his eyes and upper cheeks. “Madame La Force” was most anxious that her several large trunks be quickly sent to her stateroom on the 1,200-ton vessel. Once the trunks were safely stowed, Thomas played his role to the hilt. According to one of his men, George H. Alexander, he was speaking French fluently and “tossing a fan about and putting on all the airs of an animated French woman, much to the enjoyment of the Federal officer with whom he was conversing.”

Other conspirators came aboard as the steamer made her way down the Chesapeake Bay toward the Potomac. Numbering between 20 and 25, they mingled easily with other passengers, awaiting the signal to spring into action. When the St. Nicholas called at Point Lookout, a distinguished looking elderly gentleman and at least two younger men— Hollins and his sons—boarded. The captain later wrote, “1 told Col. T. [the disguised Thomas] to hold himself in readiness; as soon as we cleared the wharf, we would take the steamer.” Thomas quickly repaired to his stateroom, changed clothes, and opened the large trunks, which were filled with arms and ammunition.

What then unfolded was an inspired bloodless coup. Wielding a cutlass and a pistol, Thomas burst from his room outfitted in his elaborate Zouave uniform. His confederates then raced to the stateroom, where they too grabbed cutlasses and pistols. For his part, Hollins armed himself with a Sharps rifle and a pair of pistols and “ran up to the wheelhouse, put my hand on the captain’s shoulder and told him I had captured his boat.” The captain protested that he was no pilot. “I told him I knew he was a pilot and that if he did not pilot me over [to the Coan River landing] I would set fire to the St. Nicholas and land all my men in his boats, as I was determined she should not fall into the hands of the enemy.”

George Alexander later wrote that “We overpowered the passengers and crew, secured them below the hatches, and the boat was ours.” It was so quick that panic and resistance had no time to take hold. According to an account in a St. Mary’s, Maryland, newspaper, “The ladies were told by the commander [likely Hollins] that they were in the hands of Southern gentlemen, and would be treated as his own sisters.” One other reason for the passengers’ calmness was Hollins’ observation that “nearly all” had been on their way South. Indeed, a few of the women would entertain themselves by making Confederate flags out of captured U.S. flags.

When the St. Nicholas reached the Virginia shore, her new crew found that the Tennessee troops and several dozen Confederate sailors had not yet arrived. Hollins had little choice but to wait, during which time he came upon a discarded Baltimore newspaper on the steamer. The Confederate captain was stunned to read that the Union gunboats on the Potomac had left their stations for Washington so that their crews could attend the funeral of Captain James Harmon Ward, former commander of the Potomac Flotilla.

After an hour, Lewis, the Tennesseans, the sailors, and a handful of Virginians—including three Maury relatives—arrived. By then, Hollins had devised a new plan: He would sail the St. Nicholas into the Chesapeake Bay and up the winding Rappahannock River to Fredericksburg and safety. The captain figured that with a little luck, he could take a few more prizes before reaching the town

And so it was. After taking aboard about two dozen Navy officers and seamen and several infantry officers, the St. Nicholas set out. Hollins reported that between Smith’s Point, about ten miles downstream, and the Rappahannock, “I saw a fine brig; ran alongside of her.” She was the Monticello, loaded with coffee and dispatches and sailing from Rio de Janeiro to Baltimore. Seizing the vessel was swift work. Soon, her captive crew was aboard the St. Nicholas, but Hollins left “the captain and his wife on board, as I did not wish to terrify the lady or render her uncomfortable.” The Confederate captain put C.S. Navy Lieutenant Robert D. Minor in command of the brig with orders to sail for Fredericksburg.

Before daylight Hollins and his men had captured two additional prizes: the schooners Mar} Pierce, with 260 tons of ice bound for Washington from Boston, and Margaret, with 270 tons of coal bound for New York. A mate aboard the Margaret, E. Case, told the New York Times that he had been suspicious of the St. Nicholas’ behavior the night before when he saw her heading away from Washington. Tire newspaper quoted Case as saying: “Capt. Hollins hailed us, and asked what schooner it was. We told him the schooner Margaret. He then inquired what it was loaded with, and we told him. He then sung out we were a prize of the Southern Confederacy.”

To ensure that the St. Nicholas could generate enough steam to make the roughly 80-mile trip up the Rappahannock, Hollins tapped Margaret’s load of coal. “I filled up as 1 went along, as I began to feel a little fearful that some of the gunboats might be after me.” The unusual St. Nicholas adventure ended on 30 June, when the vessels reached Fredericksburg. Never to return to her placid days as a passenger steamer, the side-wheeler was converted into a gunboat and renamed the Rappahannock.

Although they had failed to capture the dreaded Pawnee, the operation’s chief players received praise and promotion from the Confederate authorities for bringing in four enemy vessels laden with much-needed supplies. The C.S. Navy gave Lieutenant Lewis command of the Rappahannock (Confederates evacuating Fredericksburg would destroy the vessel in April 1862). Hollins went on to command the James River fortifications and the naval station at New Orleans before spending the balance of the war serving on various naval boards and courts.

Thomas, using the name Richard Thomas Zarvona, was quickly commissioned a colonel in the Virginia Volunteers. Governor Letcher authorized $1,000 for him to recruit a regiment to be called the Potomac Zouaves. But the former Madame La Force was soon arrested in Maryland and charged with piracy. After boarding another Northern steamer in an attempt to repeat his St. Nicholas feat, he had been recognized. His captors found the diminutive Marylander hiding, squeezed into a stateroom bureau drawer. Imprisoned under harsh conditions, Thomas was finally exchanged in 1863 and immigrated, quite naturally, to France.

As for the Union ship whose presence on the Potomac had set in motion the St. Nicholas adventure, the Pawnee rendered valuable service throughout the war, spending a good part of the conflict on blockade duty along the South Atlantic coast. Her days as a fearsome warship ended in 1870 when she was converted into a storeship.