This article is borrowed from the website of W.T. Block,
Jr.
Please
take a look at it
I borrowed this page to make
linking to boat and captain listings possible and because
in the past I have merely linked to pages like these only
to find they later disappear from the web, thus loosing that
information to all of us.
Requiem for a Confederate
Gunboat Reprinted from Beaumont ENTERPRISE,
By
W. T. Block
It is true that the Confederate States steam
gunboat “Josiah
H. Bell” did not participate in any significant battle
action, other than the offshore battle at Sabine Pass; and
it gained no special recognition for battle action in “War
of The Rebellion” either. It fired no shells in Hampton
Roads, VA., or in Mobile Bay, and it sank no Union commerce
on the high seas as did the “gray ghost,” the CSS
“Alabama.” However it was well-known all over Southeast
Texas, first for hauling cotton in Trinity River; helping
build the Texas and New Orleans Railroad from Houston to Orange;
and for its defense of Sabine Pass during the Civil War.
According to Texas steamboat inspection records,
the Josiah Bell was built at Howard Shipyard in Jeffersonville,
IN., in 1853, and it was a side-wheel steamer of 412 tons
burden. The vessel was 171 feet long, 30 feet wide, with a
6.7 foot depth of hold. The steamer was outfitted with a 450
hp. upright marine steam engine, powered by three boilers.
The Bell was built of white oak timbers, with a V-bottom,
deep-sea hull, and its bow was especially reinforced, perhaps
outfitted with an iron prow piece. The Bell had an 1,800 cotton
bale capacity, the second largest in Texas.1
Surely the Bell had had at least two names.
One report noted that the Bell had been in the Missouri River
trade, but if that were so, it could only have been a single,
round-trip voyage from St. Louis to St. Joseph, MO. Although
launched in 1853, by Jan. 1854 the Bell was already in the
Trinity River cotton trade and perhaps the Brazos as well.
The steamer belonged to Robert Mills, the “Duke of Brazoria,”
TX (later of Galveston), who arrived in Texas in 1830. The
huge R. and D. G. Mills firm rivaled McKinney, Williams and
Co. of Galveston in size, owning 200,000 acres of Texas land,
of which 3,300 were cultivated in cotton and sugar cane. By
1860 the Mills firm was worth $5 million, and in 1865 it emancipated
800 slaves. The steamboat was named for Robert Mills’
friend, Josiah Hughes Bell, who founded the towns of East
Columbia and West Columbia, TX in 1824.2
The Josiah H. Bell was one of 9 steamboats,
which were occupied in the Trinity River cotton trade in Jan.
1854.3 Typical of its voyages of 1858, the Bell arrived at
Galveston 3 times from the Trinity, carrying 836 bales on
one voyage.4 The Bell was still hauling cotton on the Trinity
in 1859, but sometime before the end of that year, it was
sold to the Texas and New Orleans Railroad to haul rail supplies
and rolling stock. Before 1859 the steamer was commanded by
Captain
Tom Peacock, and Capt. McCormick was
its pilot.5
The best description of the Josiah Bell came
from W. A. Bowen, who was a longtime Trinity River sailor,
as follows:6
“...An old-time Trinity riverboat was being
fitted out at the close of the war as the most formidable
gunboat on the Texas Coast. This was the Josiah Henry Bell.
She ran the Trinity River trade from about 1854 to 1860, and
having a deep-sea hull, she paid little attention to snags
and willows, but rushed right on, breaking through them like
weeds, and shoving snags and sawyers out of the way...”
“...It was the Bell which first made the
new channel going out of the Trinity into Galveston Bay at
Anahuac. The river had begun to spread over the flats, sluggishly
pushing its way across the shallows, and had deposited a bank
of soft mud. The J. H. Bell, after sounding, took a run and
would plow as far as her momentum would take her, and then
back up and try again, Thus she finally went through...”
“...It was also the Bell that first started
what is known as the ‘cut-off’ some distance above
Liberty. She came up there during a very heavy high water.
The pilot, the late Capt. McCormick, who also piloted the
gunboat Bayou City at the Battle of Galveston, saw the water
running across from a narrow place, and he suggested the idea
of running the Bell over it. The captain agreed, and it was
done, thus saving 10 or 15 miles. Her keel rubbed the earth,
and plowed a great ditch, and when the river went down, the
plowing had grown to a considerable channel. The channel was
dug out on a low water and on the next rise, the river went
through. The Bell began clearing away small rafts, and thus
worked her way higher and higher up river, and the boats that
met obstructions would wait until the Bell came along, at
which time she would ‘snatch snags’ out of the way
and thus let the log rafts float down. The other boats would
pay for this. The Bell was being fitted out for sea as a blockade
runner at Orange when Lee surrendered and our people sunk
her there...”
Also in 1893, Capt. Joe Boddeker of Galveston
rated the Josiah Bell as capable of carrying an 1,800 bale
load of cotton.7 By Jan., 1860, two of the biggest steamboats
in Texas, the Bell and Florilda,
were sailing on Sabine Lake, the property of Texas and New
Orleans Railroad, for that company was laying rails across
Orange and Jefferson counties; and the steamers carried rails,
crossties, and rolling stock from Sabine Pass to Beaumont.
Earlier the Bell had carried rails and crossties from Galveston
to Liberty. In Jan., 1861, a ship arrived at Sabine Pass,
carrying 2 locomotives and several box cars for the railroad.8
Between Feb. 1-8, 1861, three schooners arrived, all loaded
with railroad iron.9 Early in March the schooner Whirlwind
arrived there, loaded with 2 passenger cars and 10 box cars,
all for the Texas and New Orleans Railroad.10
Following the Union Navy’s capture of Sabine
Lake on Sept. 24, 1862, the Josiah Bell was trapped in Sabine
River, prior to the Confederates’ recapture of Sabine
Pass following the burning of the gunboat Dan on Jan. 8, 1863.
During that period the Bell is believed to have cut across
the river’s long sand bar at Conway’s Bayou, 4 miles
south of Orange, creating what was known as the ‘Conway’s
Bayou cut-off.’ On Jan. 1, 1863, General John Magruder’s
Confederates recaptured Galveston Island and bay, and the
general was equally determined to lift the blockade at Sabine
Pass by arming the steamers Josiah Bell and Uncle Ben with
artillery. To accomplish that end, he sent a 64-pound rifled
cannon, Lt. R. W. Dowling’s Co. F of artillery, and a
very incompetent major to the Levingston Shipyard in Orange,
Texas, where the 2 old cotton boats, Bell and Uncle Ben, were
to be outfitted with artillery and with cotton bales as breastwork.
Capt. K. D. Keith described his arrival with artillery Co.
B on Jan. 10, 1863, as follows:11
“...We arrived in Orange, very cold, sleet
and rainy; we found 2 old steam boats had been armed. The
Josiah Bell had one 64-pound rifled cannon... I immediately
proceeded to board the Bell, that being the headquarters of
Major O. M. Watkins... Imagine my astonishment when I discovered
that our commander was very drunk...”
The crew aboard the Josiah Bell at that time
included Capt.
Charles Fowler (who was also commander, Texas Marine Department,
in Sabine Lake); Green Hall, first mate; Theodore Wings, second
mate; D. E. Conner, chief engineer; Israel Clark, second engineer;
James McKee, 3rd engineer; Capt.
Peter Stockholm, pilot; G. McLean, pilot; Zach Sable,
pilot; and Joseph McClelland, carpenter.12
Capt. Fowler and Capt. Stockholm had grown up
together in Brooklyn, NY. Stockholm had been apprenticed as
a shipbuilder, and Fowler as a seaman. Stockholm often told
of the conversation that went on between him and Fowler while
the offshore battle at Sabine Pass was transpiring on Jan.
21, 1863.13
At midnight of Jan. 21, 1863, the gunboats Josiah
Bell and Uncle
Ben steamed out of the Sabine Pass, while the blockade
sail ships Morning Light and Velocity were at anchor. The
blockaders quickly hoisted sails, but there was only a slight
breeze available. After a 30-mile chase at sea, Lt Dowling
opened fire at the Morning Light at 2 ½ miles with
his 64-pound cannon. Four shells from the Josiah Bell exploded
on the Morning Light, killing one 32-pound gun crew, before
the blockade ship surrendered. The gunboats towed the defeated
ships back to Sabine Pass. Capt. Keith assured the drunken
major that he could kedge the Morning Light over the bar into
Sabine Pass, but the latter refused. As a result, the Morning
Light had to be burned, with loss of eight 32-pound guns,
200 tons of munitions and food, and 200 tons of pig iron ballast.14
After the battle the Rebel gunboats were no
longer up to any mischief, while floating serenely at anchor
in Sabine’s Texas Channel. But they did flaunt their
presence in the safety of the Pass, though, the prow of each
cottonclad frowning its figurative belligerence and defiance.
Commander Abner Read of the new blockade ship Cayuga was using
the abandoned light house as a spy lookout point, and the
gunboats enkindled in him a burning passion for revenge. Upon
seeing light flashing from the light house tower, a Confederate
detachment of sixty men hid out under the light keeper’s
cottage, and the resulting skirmish at Sabine lighthouse resulted
in 5 Union Bluejackets, including Commander D. A. McDermut,
killed, and 6 more wounded.15
Before the Battle of Sabine Pass on Sept. 8,
1863, the Josiah Bell
loaded two companies of Confederate troops at Beaumont, sailed
for Sabine Pass, but did not arrive in time to participate
in the battle.16
The only casualties that occurred on the Josiah
Bell were the result of accidents. In April, 1863, a gun explosion
on the Bell killed two sailors.17 In Oct. 1863 a boiler explosion
on the Josiah Bell killed four more.18 In Jan. 1864, a seaman
reported that all had been very quiet for a long time on the
Josiah Bell, and the crew hoped that some battle action would
develop.19
When Mrs. Delia Parsons of Sabine Pass, a sister-in-law
of Capt. Keith, discovered that the gunboat Bell had no Confederate
battle flag, she and some other ladies spent 2 days, sewing
a Rebel flag for the gunboat.
Following a year of battle inactivity at Sabine
Pass, Gen. Magruder decided that the Josiah
Bell would be of more value to the Confederate States
as a blockade runner than as a gunboat. Hence all cotton bales
and armor were removed, and the steamer was sent back to Levingston
Shipyard in Orange for conversion to a blockade runner. Hence
the Bell was still on the shipways there when Confederate
authorities learned that Gen. R. E. Lee had surrendered the
Army of Northern Virginia on April 12, 1865.
Ship carpenters at Levingston decided in May,
1865 that the old gunboat was too proud a craft to be surrendered
to the Northern victors. They removed the old gunboat’s
450 hp. steam engine, steam drum, 3 boilers, all piping and
shafting, before they sank the wooden hull in Sabine River,
4 miles south of Orange.
When H. J. Lutcher and G. Bedell Moore of Williamsport,
PA., built their sawmill at Orange in 1877, they found the
Bell’s old engine and boilers still in storage at the
shipyard. They bought the steam engine to energize their first
sawmill, later called the “Lower Mill.” When the
Lower Mill was subsequently enlarged to cut 200,000 feet daily,
the steam engine was moved to the powerhouse of the planning
mill. A history of the Lutcher and Moore Lumber Company explained
that the Bell’s engine remained in continuous use for
fifty years without suffering a single failure or mishap --
“...so much as the shearing of a single pin...”20
The final disposition of the Josiah Bell’s
old engine is uncertain. When in 1930, the Great Depression
plummeted lumber demand to zero everywhere, Lutcher and Moore
ceased operations entirely at both mills and sold all machinery
as scrap iron. That was the age during the 1930s when Japanese
scrap iron ships were leaving the ports of Beaumont and Orange
weekly - so the old engine might have been melted and recast
into artillery shells to be shot back at all Americans during
World War Two.
Divers believe they have found the wreckage
of the old Josiah Bell. It is sunk in 15 feet of water, near
the “Conway’s Bayou Cut-off,” in what is now
an unused channel of Sabine River.
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