had no further encounters with Confederate ships, but their dominant presence was none the less important. They not only exercised the same sort of silent yet all-important safeguarding of communications which has in recent times been the chief work of the Allied navies; in addition, their guns time after time rendered the most signal assistance to the troops on shore.

As McClellan, early in May, moved up the narrow peninsula between the York and James, naval vessels kept progress with his march. On the York and its tributary, the Pamunkey, they cooperated with the troops in skirmish after skirmish, cleared the rivers to White House, McClellan's new base, and opened. and held his line of communications between that point and Fortress Monroe and Washington. On the James, they advanced to within seven miles of Richmond, where they were at length held by the strong batteries at Drewry's Bluff. They were in position to cooperate more actively with the army had McClellan's advance continued; as it was, a less glorious but no less important rôle was reserved for them-the salvation of McClellan's army after its unfortunate experiences in the Seven Days' fighting.

After a week of indecisive engagements across the head of the peninsula, McClellan, as always seeing his foe double their real strength, decided upon retreat-not upon his old base at White House on the Pamunkey, but upon the James. His first contact with that river was at Malvern Hill, where in the battle of July the naval vessels materially aided him by shelling the reserve positions of the Confederates. On the day of this engagement he wrote to Flag-Officer Goldsborough of the North Atlantic Squadron: "I would most earnestly request that every gunboat or other armed vessel suitable for action in the James River be sent at once to this vicinity." On the same date, Commander John Rodgers, in immediate command on the James, reported to Goldsborough: "The army is in a bad way; the gunboats may save them, but the points to be guarded are too many for the force at my disposal. . . . To save the army, as far as we can, demands immediately all our disposable force. . . Now, if ever, is a chance for the navy to render most signal service, but it must not delay."

The navy did not neglect its opportunity. No sooner had the army arrived at Harrison's Landing, its destination on the James, than Rodgers placed his gunboats and ironclads upon its

two flanks, where they gave the direct protection of their guns as well as the assurance that communications should be maintained. The importance of this work is evidenced by a department order of July 6 designating the James River Flotilla an independent division of the North Atlantic Squadron, a position which it held until the last of August, when the army had been withdrawn from the peninsula and the necessity of controlling the James had ended. Admiral D. D. Porter thus summarizes the navy's work in this campaign: "Without it, the Grand Army of the Potomac could not have been moved so successfully to the Peninsula ; and it is scarcely yet forgotten how, in the most trying times, when that army seemed to be in danger of annihilation, the navy was at hand to give shelter under its guns to our retiring and weary troops, and drive back the excited and victorious foe, who would have driven our soldiers into the river, or made them lay down their arms."

For almost two years after the above events the James River saw little of naval activity. While the North maintained a nominal control of the river, little use was made of it other than for an occasional expedition for the destruction of military stores or other contraband. In the meanwhile the Confederates at Richmond were busy mining the river with electric torpedoes and building a fleet of river vessels which it was hoped might meet successfully the next attempt to approach Richmond by water. The Merrimac, or Virginia as she had been rechristened, had proved of too deep draft to be taken up the river and had been destroyed at Norfolk, but her two wooden consorts, the Patrick Henry and Jamestown, had steamed to Richmond, there to form a nucleus for the new flotilla. Three new ironclads, of the same general character as the Merrimac but in every way lighter, were constructed, and to these-the Virginia II, Richmond, and Fredericksburg—were added the wooden gunboats Nansemond, Hampton, Beaufort, Raleigh, Drewry, and a vessel referred to as "Davidson's torpedo boat." The difficulties encountered by the Confederates in building men-of-war are indicated by the following bit of description of the Nansemond and Hampton: "These vessels," wrote a Confederate officer, "had saw-mill engines, and when they got under way there was such a wheezing and blowing that one would suppose all hands had been attacked with asthma or heaves."

But, primitive and inefficient as it was, this "fleet in being," as we shall see, caused great anxiety in the minds of the opposing naval and military commanders in the most important campaign of the war, and detained for service in the James several powerful ironclads which might have been used to advantage at Mobile Bay, Charleston, or Fort Fisher.

In March, 1864, Ulysses S. Grant, now with the rank of Lieutenant General, revived especially for him, was placed in supreme command of the armies of the United States. On the fourth of May he crossed the Rapidan and moved against Richmond. In several weeks of fighting in which he tried repeatedly to encircle Lee's right flank, he met with a series of bloody reverses, culminating June 3 at Cold Harbor. He was on McClellan's old battle ground, scarcely nearer Richmond than when he had begun. But Grant, the very antithesis of McClellan, never recognized defeat. Blocked by an impenetrable wall this side of Richmond, he turned his eye in another direction-Petersburg, south of the James on the southern approaches to the Confederate capital.

Already a minor campaign against Petersburg had been opened by the Army of the James under General Butler, supported by the Union fleet. As far back as April 8 Grant had telegraphed to General Halleck in Washington: "It is the intention to operate up the James river as far as City Point, and all the cooperation the navy can give us we want. Two of the ironclads are wanted as soon as they can be got. You will know how to communicate our wants to the Secretary of the Navy."

In pursuance of this request, Acting Rear Admiral S. P. Lee had on May 5 successfully convoyed Butler's transports from Hampton Roads and landed them without opposition at City Point on the upper James. Seven wooden vessels had been detailed to precede, dragging the river for torpedoes. Closely following came the main column-four monitors and the captured ironclad Atlanta, each towed by two gunboats or tugs. Advancing westward from City Point toward Petersburg, Butler occupied a line stretching from Trent's Reach on the James to the Appomattox River, while, at his request of May 13, Admiral Lee's squadron moved up through the curves and shallows of the upper James and took up its position on Trent's Reach, covering the right flank of the army. The movement was attended with

considerable danger. Already two vessels had been destroyed, one caught beneath an overwhelming fire from a masked battery on shore, the other blown up by one of the torpedoes with which the river was veritably studded. "Torpedoes, commanded by rebels on the left bank, which commands our decks," Lee wrote to Secretary Welles, "and shoal water, by chart, by several feet less than the monitors draw, make difficult the advance." Nevertheless, Lee was able to report on the seventeenth that the advance had been successfully accomplished and that the monitors in Trent's Reach protected Butler's flank.

When, therefore, General Grant determined to throw the Army of the Potomac across the James, the southern bank of that river at the proposed point of crossing was already in Union control and the navy was in position to guard the crossings at Willcox's Wharf and Fort Powhatan. Even before the battle of Cold Harbor it is evident from the correspondence of Generals Grant and Butler, Rear Admiral Lee, and the Secretary of the Navy, that the move across the James was contemplated and that the necessity of controlling the river was thereby rendered imperative. On June 1 Rear Admiral Lee had requested that the monitor Tecumseh, ordered to sea May 28, be left under his command, and that further reinforcements be sent, because of "the importance of this river to the armies of Generals Grant and Butler." Again on June 3 the same officer mentioned in his correspondence with General Butler the "necessity . . . . of holding this river beyond a peradventure for the great military purposes of General Grant and yourself." And Butler a few days later wrote to Lee: "The necessity of holding our positions here is an overwhelming' military one." The absolute necessity of holding the river safe against attack from above is further emphasized by the following passage from Grant's "Memoirs": "It was known," he writes, "that the enemy had some gunboats at Richmond. These might run down at night and inflict great damage upon us before they could be sunk or captured by our navy."

In order to secure control of the river "beyond a peradventure" the military authorities determined upon a course exceedingly distasteful to Rear Admiral Lee. In the last days of May General Butler had suggested that the channel at Trent's Reach be obstructed by the sinking of a half-dozen stone-laden

schooners in the river at that point-a suggestion to which Lee had given qualified assent. He did not, however, relish the idea of barricading his fleet against attack from a presumably inferior force, and on June 2 Butler, in a letter that contains some striking passages, undertook to assuage the admiral's delicacy. "I am aware," he wrote, "of the delicacy naval gentlemen feel in depending upon anything but their ships in a contest with the enemy, and if it was a contest with the enemy's ships alone, I certainly would not advise the obstructions, even at the great risk of losing the river; but in a contest against such unchristian modes of warfare as fire-rafts and torpedo-boats, I think all questions of delicacy should be waived by the paramount consideration of protection for the lives of the men and the safety of the very valuable vessels of the squadron." Lee was not altogether convinced by Butler's argument. He replied noncommittally, and on June 7 he asked instructions from Secretary Welles, transmitting his correspondence with Butler, pointing out that his ironclad force was stronger than Grant had asked for, and adding: “The navy is not accustomed to putting down obstructions before it, and the act might be construed as implying an admission of superiority of resources on the part of the enemy." But Secretary Welles declined to relieve the perplexed admiral of the responsibility of the decision, replying on June 11, "Action in this matter is left to the discretion of the admiral of the squadron, in whom the department has confidence." Between the indecision of Lee and that of Butler, the question dragged along without action, and it was not until the fifteenth, when half the Army of the Potomac had crossed the James, that a peremptory order from Grant led to the sinking of the schooners. In the meantime the safety of two Union armies depended entirely upon Admiral Lee's force of monitors and gunboats.

Why was the Confederate flotilla all this time inactive? Admiral Lee and his officers were in constant expectation of an attack. Confederate deserters again and again reported an attack as imminent. Not only was there hope of cutting Butler's communications and damaging his base, but from June 7 on, Grant's intention of crossing the James was an open secret in Richmond. Why, then, was no effort made to interfere with these vitally important operations? The answer-aside, of course, from the risk entailed by the inferior strength of the Confederate flotilla