Clean up and Follow-up

I was working on Letter #21 last week and during the course of the exercise, I found a section of the Google Blogger that I had been remiss in accessing.  I set up this blog to allow for interaction with you...the reader...and to get comments, suggestions and insights into the interests of my readers.  I was puzzled as to why I was getting no comments on the blog (internal to the commenting tool) and yet would get comments directly sent to jwdletters@gmail.com.  Well...mystery solved.   I finally located and reviewed the "Comments" in the Blogger tool and found about a dozen comments that you...the readers...have sent me.  Some as far back as a year.  Wow!  I am feeling kinda silly having asked for comments and then...when folks do send comments...I give the impression that I ignore them.  For that, I profusely apologize!  For those of you who sent the comments directly to the gmail account, I did respond to those...as well as those who commented on my Facebook link and the various groups I belong to in Linkedin.  I have since posted all of those dated comments in their respective postings, so you can see  your comments, if you go back to those dates.  So...I will start reviewing the Blogger comments and posting them on this website on a regular basis...and I am sorry for appearing to be so aloof.

Ok...enough about that.


In 2011, I traveled to the Outer Banks of North Carolina to spend a few days at the beach and to do a little research into Burnsides Expedition to North Carolina.  The 48th PVI played a prominent role in this campaign and I wanted to spend a few days absorbing the atmosphere and reflecting on the environment that was endured by my ancestor 149 years prior.  The trip was planned and I was very excited by adventure I was embarking upon.....then came hurricane Irene.  Delaying my trip by 2 days, I ventured south to the Outer Banks only to find that access to the location of the 48th PVI on Hatteras Island had been blocked by storm damage and a missing/washed out road.  While I was 'bummed' by missing this opportunity, I knew that I would return to the Outer Banks...a favorite vacation destination for our family.  So...this year I made another try...and was successful!

My plan was to visit two locations on Hatteras Island...the wreck of the SS Oriental....and the southern point of the island where markers are located commemorating the Burnsides Expedition.   I had been told that wreck of the SS Oriental in May of 1862 was one that was still visible today.  The wreck is located about 100 yards offshore in the surf about 10 miles south of the Oregon inlet across the street from the Pea Island nature center.  I have often heard from people about sites and locations and how "easy" they are to see/access and upon going there myself, find just the opposite.  In this case, the rumors are true.  I parked at the visitor center with my daughter, and we made the 150 yard trek across the road and up the sand dune towards the beach.  At the top of the dune, you get a very good view of the entire beach for miles and a great perch from which to view the ocean....and there...about 100 yards offshore....the wreck of the Oriental.  Well....the cast iron boiler at least.  What you see (below) is the remains of the boiler of the ship and it is just tall enough to breach the surface so you see it with each passing wave.  Very cool.  Especially when you think that it has been 150 years since the ship foundered and sank in a tropical storm leaving many of the passengers to either swim to shore, or the await rescue from the SS George Peabody.   As a reminder...my interest in the Oriental is because of the connection to the Peabody...the ship that transported Derr from Fort Monroe to Hatteras Island in 1861.  Documentation indicates that during the rescue operations, members of the 48th PVI provided support on the ship to the sinking ship.  Was Derr part of that?  I don't think we will ever know.
For more on this see my posting of...

 http://www.jwdletters.com/2011/09/bits-and-pieces-and-little-clean-up.html .

SS Oriental

Wreck of the SS Oriental

Boiler images taken from the shore of the SS Oriental......

  

SS George Peabody

The second location I decided to visit was the location at the drive end of the Hatteras Island near the "Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum" where markers are located in the museum parking lot commemorating the Burnsides Expedition.   The 48th PVI, being and integral part of this expedition, camped and fought here during the defense of the newly captured Forts Hatteras and Clark.  Later  the 48th PVI would transit further south on ships as part of the New Berne campaign near the Neuse River.  Derr's letters of 1861 and early 1862 indicate participation in these actions as well as his discomfort at living in the cold/wet (winter) and hot/sandy (summer) environment of the Outer Banks of  North Carolina.  As a side note...having visited these locations during the month of August in the dead of summer, I can not imagine the discomfort of these soldiers at living in the hot, humid, sandy and insect ridden environment as they did.  Unbelievable.

 Yeah...that's me taking the picture in the reflection....


Jim D.

Insights, Addendum and Thank you

Thanks to everybody who has commented and made recommendations to date, and thank you for the great responses that I got from the last letter.  It's really nice to hear the comments and reflections from friends and followers who remember stories of family traditions such as "snitzing parties".  I think it's important that we remember and repeat those stories so that those old American traditions are not lost in the flow of time.

The next letter will be published on Monday, November 28th.  I will warn you that this particular letter is rather short and not very exciting, only being a paragraph long.  However, if you are following the entire JWD story from the time he entered the Army until his death in 1876, you will see that this letter is the first indication of troubles that plagued him for the rest of his short life.  Essentially, this period in his life was the beginning of the decline in his health.  References to this part of JWD's service are seen in the pension applications affidavits that I have already posted and ones that I will post later in this blog.   Fortunately, or unfortunately...you can reference such seeminly innocuous letters and see the sad decline...and where it began.   I will never really know what ultimately killed JWD, but these letters provide some measure of the symptoms he suffered and possible linkages to common ailments of soldiers during this period in time.

Now, some filler and addendum to prior posts.....


Camp Hamilton (origination of the Letter #2) was organized on the site of what is now Phoebus, Virginia and provided an overflow camp to Fort Monroe.  Visitors to Phoebus, can see where the camp was located as well as the cemetery containing those soldiers who were the unfortunate victims of the typical camp diseases of the era.   The camp was located just prior to the bridge connecting Fort Monroe to the mainland.

Here is a link to the Civil War Today website's posting of information on Camp Hamilton:

http://civilwartoday.net/camphamilton.aspx

Camp Hamilton from a  Stereo Opticon image from the National Archives

Fort Monroe today

Fort Monroe plans from the Virginia Historical Society

Ok...the next image has nothing to do with the subject matter this week, but I needed to get it into the blog record for completeness.  My good friend and brother RDML Sinclair Harris helped me with some research on my favorite ship....the George Peabody.  As you remember from prior postings, I had a somewhat obsession with researching this particular ship that carried JWD to the Outer Banks of North Carolina during the conduct of the Burnside's Expedition.   After exhausting all of the avenues that I knew of in finding informational "tidbits" and images....I decided to go to an expert.  Who better than a friend who happens to be an Admiral in the United States Navy?    The results included information that I had previously posted, and the following image that I have not yet posted.  I find this picture of the George Peabody to be most special, as it is a hand drawn image that is housed in the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.  RDML Harris correctly pointed out to me that the George Peabody was not a United States Ship, but a private vessel...hence my change from USS.    Many thanks to RDML Harris....ok...Sinc to me....for a great addition to my blog.

George Peabody (Library of Congress)

Jim D.

Bits and Pieces and a Little Clean-up

Since this blog is meant to be dynamic and not static, I thought I'd spend a "blog week" doing a little bit of housekeeping in order to add to blogs that I had posted previously.  Probably a good thing to do, before I get to a point in a few years whereby my reflections on this website become inaccurate and embarrassing.

Two weeks ago, I had the grand intention of doing in-the-field research in preparation for future letter posts.  My family and I had a vacation planned for the Outer Banks in North Carolina....more specifically...the Corolla area on the barrier islands.  Living in the Washington DC area, my plan was to drive down I-95 south and cut over to I-295 on my way to I-64 in the Hampton, Virginia area.  The plan was to visit and absorb the history of the Cold Harbor battlefield...part of the Richmond National Battlefield Park - Cold Harbor visitor center (  http://www.nps.gov/rich/historyculture/cold-harbor.htm).  JWD fought at Cold Harbor in 1864 and I wanted have a sense for location and terrain.

After Cold Harbor, I was planning to continue down I-64 to Hampton and visit Fort Monroe                      ( http://www.civilwaralbum.com/misc/fortmonroe1.htm)...located just before the Hampton Roads Tunnel.  JWD was there in 1862 prior to the launching of the Burnsides Expedition to the Outer Banks area of North Carolina...this will be seen in the next letter I post on October 19th.

Next, I planned a trip down NC-12 on the Outer Banks with a first stop at the wreck of the USS Oriental in order to take photographs of the still visible wreck from shore.   In my blog dated August 25th, I gave a partial write-up of the connection between the "George Peabody Boat"  (aka USS George Peabody) and the USS Oriental....( http://www.jwdletters.com/2011_08_01_archive.html).  More on this below....

Lastly, I decided that another trip to the Hatteras point would complete the barrier island adventure.   There, I planned to visit the Graveyard of the Atlantic museum along with visiting the tribute to the 48th PVI located in the parking lot of the museum.  (http://www.graveyardoftheatlantic.com/)

Ok...so  that was the grand plan!  Unfortunately, a little thing called Hurricane Irene decided differently.
We ended up leaving a couple of days late due to the storm as well as the overall closure of the barrier islands to the general public...post storm.  When we finally got going on the Monday of that week, I found out that most of the I-295 and I-64 corridor was without power...hence...the Cold Harbor battlefield and Fort Monroe were closed.   This, however, was only the beginning.  The hurricane was so damaging to the thinly protected sandbar called the Outer Banks, that part of NC-12 south of the Oregon Inlet and north of Rodanthe was literally washed away.  The Oregon Inlet Bridge and the road south were closed.  Given that the USS Oriental wreck is located on Pea Island, just south of the bridge, and that Hatteras was even further south...strike four!   However, I must say that my little inconvenience is nothing, compared to the major disruption to the residents of Hatteras Island....

NC-12 at Mirlo Beach north of Rodanthe, NC (August 28, 2011) Photo from CNN.com

Some new info I found......

As I previously wrote, the USS George Peabody was the transport ship that carried the 48th PVI to battles on the North Carolina coast.  Additionally, it was also identified as the ship that provided search-and-rescue for the passengers and crew of the Oriental when it ran aground in May of 1862.  I was excited to hear that the same ship that transported my gg-grandfather, was also mentioned as the primary rescue craft for this doomed vessel.     During a trip to a bookstore in Corolla, NC, I picked up a book, "Shipwrecks of North Carolina" by Gary Gentile, and searched to see if there was any more information about the USS Oriental.....it so happens that Mr. Gentile writes...

"Members of the 48th Pennsylvania Volunteer Regiment stationed at Fort Hatteras, were involved in the rescue."

Hmm....could JWD have been involved?  That...I will probably never know....

USS Oriental

USS Oriental in distress, May 1864 - Harpers Weekly

USS Oriental from the beach on Pea Island

Photo from http://www.carolinaouterbanks.com/shipwrecks-2.htm

So...I guess the moral of this story is that you CAN make lemonade out of lemons...this little bit of information that I dug out of a bookstore on the Outer Banks, while bored and disappointed for not having been able to execute my research plan...ended up being the hit of the trip!


Jim D.