Dec. 19, 2010

So there they were, virtual prisoners aboard their ship while the British weighed their fate. Would they be set free or turned over to the Americans who wanted them tried as pirates?

The CSS Shenandoah, out of touch with the world and its news, had virtually destroyed New England’s whaling fleet months after the Civil War ended. In an extraordinary halfway-round-the-world flight to avoid capture, the rogue ship docked in Liverpool and surrendered to British authorities.

Among the officers and crew was the young, romantic, but also tormented, executive officer, William Conway Whittle Jr., son of a prominent Norfolk family.

Not only were his thoughts weighed down by cares of his family – whether they would be ill-treated or starved by the Yankee scoundrels – but with yearnings for a mystery woman.

Pattie. Dear Pattie. Darling Pattie. Whittle’s extraordinary journal, written while at sea for more than a year, is full of lamentations for a young woman about his age, 22, whom he had apparently met only once. And yet he was, at least temporarily, madly in love with her.

As the Shenandoah battled storms and dodged federal cruisers seeking to capture or destroy it, Whittle imagined not so much his death but life in exile without her.

“To know how I feel would give anyone the blues. How my position is altered. No country, no home, no profession, and alas: to think the fondest wish of my heart, i.e., to marry, must be abandoned. Oh! My darling Pattie, how can I give thee up?”

Whittle was a complex fellow. The son of a naval officer, he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy at 18, joined the Navy and, when Virginia seceded from the Union, resigned his commission and joined the southern cause. He proved to be a daring blockade runner and spy, helping spirit the Shenandoah out from under British noses and turn it into a lethal weapon against northern shipping.

But he was also young and heartsick.

Another journal from 1863, tucked into files at Norfolk Public Library’s history collection, mentions letters “from my dear little Pattie.” But he also dotes on a young and beautiful woman he met while stationed in Paris.

“If I do not fall in love with this sweet creature, I shall…” and here his tiny, scrunched handwriting is illegible, even with help of a magnifying glass.

Whatever happened to these young women remains a mystery. He never mentions them again in his later writings. What we do know is that the British let all crew members go free and that Whittle went into exile in Argentina for three years. Finally, when a general amnesty was declared, he returned to Norfolk.

And that in 1872 he married Elizabeth Calvert Page, daughter of Richard Lucien Page, a naval officer, and Sarah Alexina [cq] Taylor. They settled into what would be known as the Taylor-Whittle House, a Federal-Georgian architectural gem on West Freemason St. and raised four children.

The house is owned by the city and leased to the Junior League of Norfolk-Virginia Beach, with upstairs offices used by the Norfolk Historical Society.

Whittle spent 22 years as skipper of a steamboat that plied the Chesapeake between Norfolk and Baltimore. He was also a founder of the Bank of Virginia. He and Elizabeth lived comfortably in Norfolk until his death in 1920 at the age of 80.

The last residents of the house were two of Whittle’s granddaughters. Mary Beverley Dabney and Betty Page Dabney, both schoolteachers, lived there until 1972 when the house was donated to the Norfolk Historic Foundation and, ultimately, to the city.

Betty Dabney, a poet, might have been thinking about their grandfather when she wrote “Last Voyage”:

To that unvisited harbor I must bring
My vessel in at last.
From the thronged seaways and the smoky hum
Of traffic in the ports, surrendering
All but a shadowy cargo, I shall come
Where the waves arch their glassy backs, then past
The lines of breakers, home.
There the slow ripple that spreads on the cold strand
Shall beach me, light as a shell.
The brown grass on the hills, the birdless air,
The winter light that touches all that land,
I shall know well.
Accept the sand that drifts and sifts and covers,
Soft as a fleece and deep,
Let my last treasure slip from my strenghless fingers
And into a frosty silence
Sleep.

Sketch of The Taylor-Whittle House, circa 1790, on West Freemason Street in Norfolk. Courtesy of the Junior League of Norfolk-Virginia Beach.

Dec. 12, 2010

When they heard the news that the war had ended months before – while they were capturing and burning dozens of whaling ships – the 132 crew members of the CSS Shenandoah were devastated.

“The darkest day of my life,” Lt. William Conway Whittle Jr. lamented in his journal. “The past is gone for naught, the future as black as the darkest night. Oh! God protect and comfort us I pray.”

Whittle, the son of a prominent Norfolk sea captain, was executive officer on board the fast clipper during its frenzied destruction of northern merchant ships after departing London in October 1864.

They had sailed around Africa, heading east, all the way to the Bering Sea off Alaska. Now, the following August, learning that the war had ended in April, the men suddenly realized they were likely to be chased down as pirates and likely suffer the consequences: death by hanging.

They were off Northern California, some 18,000 miles from England. The only hope was to make it to a neutral port, either Melbourne, Australia, which was relatively close, or Cape Town, South Africa, somewhat farther but also under British rule.

Capt. James Waddell surprised and angered many of his fellow officers by seemingly steering toward Melbourne, then changing course and heading for Liverpool. The risks of being captured by a Union ship or wrecked in a storm or simply worn out after what would amount to more than a year at sea were enormous. There was almost a mutiny, but Waddell stuck to his guns.

Whittle, his second in command, privately considered Waddell a fool, but stood by his captain.

The three-masted Shenandoah was a race horse, capable of making 16 knots under sail. In its belly was a 250 hp steam engine and on deck a telescoping smoke stack. When in doldrums, the crew could fire up the boiler, raise the stack and soldier along at half the speed. It was this auxiliary power that would save them.

Having swung around Cape Horn and heading through shipping lanes off the shoulder of Africa, no enemy warships had been spotted. But one afternoon in late October their luck ran out. A menacing shape was spotted on the horizon.

A federal brig had altered course and, under full sail, was bearing down on them. Winds were light, so there was no way to outrun their foe, and if they raised the smoke stack or changed course, it would be a dead giveaway. Fortunately, it was late in the day and they sailed innocently along until darkness blanketed them, then fired the boilers and altered course, ducking east below the path of the enemy.

“If she be a Yankee, she will be somewhat astonished tomorrow to find no vessel in sight.” Whittle mused. “She will have a sweet time finding us….”

The Shenandoah sailed 58,000 miles over a period of 13 months and carried the Confederate flag completely around the world. But on the night of Nov. 5, 1865, the entrance to the River Mersey was confusing. They set off a flare, requesting a pilot.
Shortly after midnight, Whittle welcomed a pilot aboard, and the two had a brisk conversation.

“Good morning. What ship is this?”

“The late Confederate steamer Shenandoah.”

“The hell you say. Where have you fellows come from last?”

“From the Arctic Ocean.”

“And you haven’t stopped at any port since you left there?”

“No, nor been in sight of land, either. What news from the war in America?”

“Why, the war has been over so long people have got through talking about it. Jeff Davis is in Fortress Monroe, and the Yankees have a lot of cruisers looking for you.”

Whittle was still a long way from what would become known as the Taylor-Whittle House in Norfolk’s Freemason neighborhood. The residence, one of the best examples anywhere of Federal period architecture, will be open today for visitors – as will other historic houses in the city – from noon to 5 p.m.

Next week: Tense moments awaiting their fate; a mystery woman vanishes; exile and, finally, a homecoming.

Artist's depiction of the CSS Shenendoah in waters off Alaska. Courtesy of the U.S. Navy Historical Center.

Dec. 5, 2010

In October 1864 a tall, fit-looking young man appeared in the restaurant of a hotel
in central London with a newspaper under his arm. Taking a seat, he inserted the corner of a napkin in a button hole in his coat and began scanning the headlines.
A stranger, dressed in business garb, approached.

“Is this Mr. Brown?” the stranger asked.

“Yes,” replied the young man. “Is this Mr. Wright?”

In what might seem a clichéd scene from a modern spy novel, the two breakfasted together and then repaired to one of the hotel rooms where they mapped out an elaborate scheme to sneak a fast merchant ship from under the nose of the British authorities and turn it over to the Confederate States of America.

The 23-year-old man was not “Mr. Brown,” but Lieutenant William Conway Whittle Jr. of Norfolk, son of a prominent naval officer. Whittle had already gained a reputation as a daring blockade runner.

What was to become his home on West Freemason Street in Norfolk is one of the finest examples of Federal-style architecture in the nation. Now occupied by the Junior League of Norfolk-Virginia Beach and the Norfolk Historical Society, the Taylor-Whittle House will be the scene of an open house next Sunday, Dec. 12, from noon to 5.

Just before the Sea King, a 230-foot, three-masted clipper ship, was to set sail, ostensibly to deliver coal to Bombay, Whittle, acting like a drunken sailor, stumbled down to the pier and clambered aboard. Those watching the piers were none the wiser.

Then, in a series of audacious moves, the Sea King rendezvoused with another ship loaded with small arms, munitions, powder and stores in the Madeira Islands off Africa, and within days the men had transformed the black-hulled merchant vessel into armed, lightning-fast raider and rechristened it the CSS Shenandoah. Its orders were to strike a blow at the North’s industrial might by destroying its whaling fleet.

Under the command of North Carolinian James Waddell, with Whittle serving as executive officer, the Shenandoah sailed halfway around the world to the Gulf of Alaska, taking merchant ships almost at will, acquiring a multi-national crew. Then, with unflagging efficiency, the Shenandoah seized and sank dozens of whaling ships. By the time they were through, they had seized or sunk 40 ships and suffered not a single casualty – or barely even a scratch.

But what Waddell and Whittle did not know –and could not because of their isolation – was that the war had ended months before. Just as they began their prodigious shipwrecking campaign, Robert E. Lee was surrendering at Appomattox.

The Shenandoah had received conflicting reports of the war’s last days and chose to ignore them. Lee would never surrender, Whittle believed.

He was a bit of a zealot, spewing venom on “those miserable Yankees in his journal. “I regard them individually and collectively as a pack of scoundrels consummated in every variety to rascality.”

In the Pacific again and headed south, Captain Waddell even considered bombarding and subduing San Francisco, but decided he’d make sure there was still a cause to fight for.

“On Aug. 12 …we saw a vessel, a sailing bark, which we chased under steam and sail, and overhauled and boarded her at 4 p.m.,” Whittle recalled. When asked about the war, “the English captain said. ‘What war?’” It had ended in April.

The realization that they had spent all this time destroying vessels of a peaceful nation, and that they were probably then and there being hunted by that nation’s warships struck like a thunderclap.

“We were bereft of country, bereft of Government, bereft of ground for hope or aspiration, bereft of a cause for which to struggle and suffer,” he moaned.

The crew immediately began disarming the by-now notorious raider, loading the ship’s guns in the hold for ballast. But what would they do? Where would they go? To whom would they surrender? Would they be tried as criminals and, most likely, convicted and hung for piracy? Could they make it safely to a neutral country?

They were thousands of miles and months away from knowing.

Next Sunday: The end of one of the strangest voyages in naval history

William Conway Whittle Jr, lieutenant in the Confederate Navy, was an 1858 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy -- at the age of 18. Courtesy of the Junior League of Norfolk-Virginia Beach.