American Adventures: A Second Trip 'Abroad at home'Street, Julian
General
American Adventures: A Second Trip 'Abroad at home'
Street, Julian
Southern States -- Description and travel; Southern States -- Social life and customs
spoken of as having had the appearance of a huge iron coffin, as well as
the attributes of one, for she proved a death-trap for successive crews
on three trial trips. As there were no electric motors or gasoline
engines in those days, she was run by hand, eight men crowded together
turning a crank-shaft which operated her propeller. After repeated
sinkings, she was raised, manned by new men, and sent forth again.
Finally, in Charleston harbor she succeeded in destroying the United
States man-o'-war _Housatonic_, but at the same time went down, herself,
drowning or suffocating all on board. A memorial drinking fountain on
the Battery, at the foot of Meeting Street, commemorates "the men of the
Confederate Army and Navy, first in marine warfare to employ torpedo
boats--1863-1865." On this memorial are given the names of sixteen men
who perished in torpedo attacks on the blockading fleet, among them
Horace L. Hunley, set down as inventor of the submarine boat. The names
of fourteen others who were lost are unknown.
* * * * *
Lord William Campbell, younger son of the Duke of Argyll, was British
governor at Charleston when the Revolution broke out. He had married a
Miss Izard, of Charleston, who brought him a dowry of fifty thousand
pounds, a large sum in those times. Their home was in a famous old house
which stands on Meeting Street, and it was from the back yard of this
house that Lord William fled in a rowboat to a British man-o'-war, when
it became evident that Charleston was no longer hospitable to
representatives of the Crown. Later his wife followed him to Great
Britain, where they remained.
The Pringle House, as it is now called, formerly the Brewton house,
perhaps the most superb old residence in the city, was the headquarters
of General Sir Henry Clinton, after he had captured Charleston, and was
the residence of Lord Rawdon, the unpleasant British commander who
succeeded Clinton. Cornwallis lived outside the town at Drayton Hall,
which still stands, on the Ashley River. After his capture Cornwallis
was exchanged for Henry Laurens, a distinguished Charlestonian, who,
though he wept over the Declaration of Independence, was before long
president of the Continental Congress, and later went to France, where
he was associated with Benjamin Franklin, John Jay and John Adams in
negotiating the treaty of peace and independence for America.
Mrs. Ravenel says in her book that Sherman destroyed all but one of the
superb old houses on the Ashley River, and when we consider that
Sherman's troops invested Charleston just before the end of the War, and
reflect upon the general's notorious "carelessness with fire," we have
cause for national rejoicing that Charleston, with its unmatched
buildings and their splendid contents, was not laid in ashes, as were
Atlanta and Columbia. Had Sherman burned Charleston it would be hard for
even a Yankee to forgive him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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