Sea of Gray The Around-the-world Odyssey of the Confederate Raider Shenandoah

Chapter One Of Ice Floes and Arctic Fires It was just past 1:00 a.m., June 28, 1865, a few tilting spins of the earth beyond the year's longest day. And in the Bering Strait the hazy summer dawn breaking over the blue-white ice floes crowding its waters revealed a curious tableau: framed by the dark, distant, snow-crowned headlands to the east and west and, at a lower elevation, the two flat- and sheer-sided Diomede Islands tucked between those mainland heights, rose a forest of masts, sails, and rigging. Closer inspection revealed a listing three-masted whaleship. Moored to it by a web of radiating ropes bobbed five smaller vessels, the thirty-five-foot whaleboats that, on better days, the whaleship dispatched to harpoon the bowhead whales that brought white men to these remote climes. And, completing the scene, forming its outer perimeter, nine other whaling vessels swung at anchor in the eerily calm waters of this 37 F cloudless Arctic morning. A day earlier the winds that often slice through this storied icy gut dividing North America and Asia had roiled those waters; swells had blown the Brunswickthe now-listing ship from New Bedford, Massachusettsagainst one of the ice floes. During the summer these chunks of ice drift northward from the Pacific to the Arctic through this fifty-mile-wide passage between Siberia's eastern and Alaska's western shores. The collision stove a hole below the Brunswick's waterline, breaching the wooden planking and the copper-alloy sheathing of her hull. Afterward the ship's officers and crew had done their best to still the rush of seawater into the ship's holds. But the ship's master, Alden T. Potter, knew that, with more than a thousand miles of water between them and the nearest shipyard, he and his crew had little hope of repairing the vessel. In the meantime, all he could do was what American captains had always done in such situations: raise Old Glory upside down to signal their distress to any ships that might sail by. This being a busy passage in a busy whaling season, nine other vessels, all flying the U.S. flag, soon lay anchored alongside the crippled Brunswick. As the other whaling vessels answering the Brunswick's distress flag arrived, each vessel's masteras captains of commercial ships are usually calledcame aboard to survey the damage. And each, in turn, concurred that the listing ship was a lost cause. They also agreed with Captain Potter that his only recourse was to fall back on the general custom under the circumstances: condemn the ship and auction off her cargo, whaleboats, and whatever gear could be hauled off the vessel. At the least, the Brunswick's master could reduce some of the losses to his ship's owner and insurers. Decision made, they set to business and by the early morning of June 28 the auction had concluded. But as accounts were being squared and sailors from the nine other whaling vessels were busy removing barrels and crates from the crippled Brunswick, yet another ship hove into view, from the south. Observing the ship's three masts and the plume of smoke rising from her, the whaling masters immediately concluded that she was an auxiliary steamerso called because she was propelled by both wind and a steam-engine powered iron-screw propeller. Such vessels were rare, if not unknown, in these waters and, as the ship drew closer and they could see that she was flying a U.S. flag, speculation turned to her identity. Some thought the ship might belong to the Western Union Telegraph Expedition, yet another expression of America's ongoinChaffin, Tom is the author of 'Sea of Gray The Around-the-world Odyssey of the Confederate Raider Shenandoah', published 2007 under ISBN 9780809085040 and ISBN 0809085046.