Beez Neez now Chy Whella - Battle of South Mills

Battle of South Mills

Beez Neez now Chy Whella

Big Bear and Pepe Millard

Wed 23 Nov 2011 22:47

The Civil War and The Great Dismal Swamp

The Dismal Swamp Canal, opened to waterway traffic in 1805, became a “prize of war” during the Civil War. In the early months of war, southerners used the canal to transport much-needed supplies. W.F. Lynch, Commander of the C.S.S. Sea Bird, a side-wheel steamer, received naval supplies via the canal when he was in charge of a tiny fleet defending Roanoke Island.

Sea Bird was built at Keyport, New Jersey in 1854, was purchased by North Carolina at Norfolk, Virginia in 1861 and fitted for service with the Confederate States Navy. Her displacement was 202 tons. Length: 133 feet. Beam: 21 feet. Depth of hold: 7 feet. One deck. One low pressure 30 x 84 inch vertical-beam engine built by Birbeck, Furnam & Co., NY. She carried 42 officers and men. She was armed with one 32-pounder smoothbore cannon, one 30-pounder rifled cannon. No mast and no figurehead. She was assigned to duty along the Virginia and North Carolina coasts with Lieutenant Patrick McCarrick, CSN at the wheel. Sea Bird served as the flagship of Confederate Flag Officer William F. Lynch’s "mosquito fleet" during the hard-fought battles in defense of Roanoke Island on the 7th and 8th of February 1862, and Elizabeth City, North Carolina, on the 10th of February when she was rammed and sunk by USS Commodore Perry one of Admiral Goldsborough’s fleet. Her casualties were two killed, four wounded and the rest captured. Two other ships fled northward up the Paquotank River to the Dismal Swamp Canal en route to Norfolk. While C.S.S. Beaufort made it safely through the Canal to Norfolk, C.S.S. Appomattox was two inches too wide to enter the locks. Rather than let his ship be captured by the enemy the captain set her on fire.

Union forces did not attempt to capture control of the Dismal Swamp Canal until two months later. According to the Editor Frank Moore of the Rebellion Record, it was known that - Rebel entrenchments and batteries to protect the canal had been installed at South Mills. Also, this was the time of the “ironclads”, with the battle between the Monitor and the Merrimack at Hampton Roads on the 9th of March 1862. Word reached General Burnside, who had established a position in New Bern, that Confederates were building ironclads in Norfolk and intended to bring them south through the Dismal Swamp at Currituck Canals. Therefore, General Burnside ordered General Reno to move troops to South Mills to blow up the locks there, then proceed to the Currituck Canal and destroy its banks.

General Louis Malesherbes Goldsborough and General Jesse Lee Reno

General Ambrose Everett Burnside – the man the world got “sideburns” from and Colonel Augustus Romaldus Wright.

General Reno moved his command of three thousand man from Roanoke Island on the 17th of April and transported them by water to Elizabeth City. From there, they marched north to South Mills, accompanied by three wagons loaded with explosives to be used on the locks. After marching all night, Reno’s men encountered the Third Georgia Regiment, commanded by Colonel Wright, just below the locks at the edge of the woods at the north end of Sawyer’s lane. On the 19th of April seven hundred and fifty defenders withstood Union assaults for five hours. Running low on ammunition, Wright withdrew his troops to a new position about a mile away. Unaccustomed to the oppressive heat, the Union forces did not pursue and, in fact, rapidly withdrew back to their boats, leaving their dead and wounded behind and the canal intact.

Despite claims to the contrary, The Battle of South Mills was a failure for Federal troops because their mission was not accomplished even though the smaller Confederate army retreated. Soon afterwards, however, Norfolk surrendered on the 10th of May 1862, and Union troops transported goods on the Canal. In a “Letter from the Secretary of the Treasury in reference to the interests of the Government in the Dismal Swamp Canal”, Leroy G Edwards, Collector of the Tolls for the Dismal Swamp Canal Company, testified: “In the latter part of the summer of 1862, the US forces took possession of the work. They gave us much trouble......Goods were carried through under military permits. I asked payment of tolls, which were refused”.

General Edward Augustus Wild and Governor Zebulon Baird Vance

During this time, a sizable number of Confederate sympathisers and deserted soldiers were hiding in the swamp, making periodic raids on Federal boats. Official Army records document on the 5th of December 1863, Brigadier Wild led forces from Norfolk to South Mills and Camden Court Hose to capture these rebel forces. However, the two small steamers carrying supplies for his forces were by “some unaccountable blunder.....sent astray through the wrong canal”, and did not catch up with general Wild until he arrived in Elizabeth City. Rebels eluded this expedition in the vastness of the swamp. All settlements discovered on this march were burned and confiscated, innocent men were hanged and women taken as hostages. North Carolina Governor Vance referred to General Wild’s actions as a “disgrace to the manhood of the age. Not being able to capture soldiers, they war upon defenseless women. Great God! What an outrage”. The Union forces returned to Norfolk on the 24th of December, leaving a trail of destruction behind them.

Following the surrender at Appomattox on the 9th of April 2865, the Canal was returned to its owners in a deplorable condition.