The New Bern Raid

John Wood’s swashbucklers set out to seize a Union fleet.

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BY PHILLIP RUTHERFORD

As the new year of 1864 arrived, General Robert E. Lee’s attention focused on New Bern, North Carolina. Stationed there on the Neuse River was a fleet of imposing Federal warships and Yankee ironclads under construction in the sounds. They were inviting targets, Lee thought. On January 2, he wrote a recommendation to President Jefferson Davis.

A bold party could descend the Neuse at night, capture the gunboats, and drive the enemy by their aid from the works on that side of the river, while a force should attack them in front.

If anyone other than Lee had suggested such a scheme, Davis probably would have rejected it outright. But Lee saw the ironclads and gunboats as the nucleus of a fleet that would sweep the Carolina waters clean of the enemy. Davis agreed and immediately issued orders: attack New Bern.

A successful capture of the river town would solve a number of problems for the Confederacy. It was a military operations center, a major supply depot, and a rallying point for the strong unionist sentiment still alive in the state. Even if it could be held just long enough to loot the supplies stored there, the raid would be worthwhile. To head the land attack, both Lee and Davis decided on Major General George Pickett. And from the beginning, Davis had no doubt who he would select to head the naval part of the operation; his choice was a grandson of Zachary Taylor, son of Union General Robert Wood, and Davis’ own chief military aide and nephew . . . John Taylor Wood.

Already something of a hero, Wood distinguished himself in a type of naval warfare that had almost gone out of style. He was adept at surprising and capturing enemy warships using only darkness, stealth, small arms, and a few daredevils like himself. Employing his “navy on wheels,” (small boats transported to their destination by wagon) he had already “cut out” and captured seven enemy vessels, including two well-armed gunboats, the Satellite and the Reliance.

Knowing that the success of the operation depended on surprise, Wood immediately began to organize his part of the assignment, telegraphing naval commanders in Richmond, Wilmington, and Charleston. He ordered them to select crews of vigorous, hardy seamen for a secret mission. They were to be equipped only with cutlasses, rifles, revolvers, ammunition, three days’ cooked rations, and the clothes they wore; they were to travel fast and light.

Lieutenant Benjamin Loyall, commandant of midshipmen on the Confederate Naval Academy schoolship Patrick Henry, led the Richmond contingent, consisting of ten cutters and approximately 115 men and officers. On January 28, they left the James River and rowed to Petersburg, where they lashed the boats upright on railway gondolas and road in them like passenger cars on the overland trip.

When the Richmond group reached Goldsboro, North Carolina, Lieutenant George Gift, delayed with supply problems, had not yet arrived with his men and boats from Charleston and Wilmington. (The main problem was inter-service rivalry; he accused, “The army people monopolize everything, yield nothing.”) Evidently by prearrangement Loyall knew to push on to the embarkation point at Kinston. Arriving there at 2:00 a.m. on the 31st, his men quickly unloaded the boats and slid them down the bank into the Neuse. Wood had already engaged a pilot who knew the route and its dangers well. For secrecy’s sake, he sent them all twenty miles downstream to the first rendezvous, a small island, while he nervously awaited Gift.

As he paced the bank, Wood undoubtedly considered the problems of the total operation. New Bern might not be another Gibraltar, but it would be difficult to take. Located at the confluence of the Trent and Neuse Rivers, it had been in Federal hands for nearly two years, and the hands had not been idle. The Yankees constructed a line of earth-works, anchored by Fort Stevenson on the northeast, to protect the only land approach to the town; in front of these fortifications they cut all the trees for two miles, furnishing their artillery a clear field of fire. Fort Anderson, built just across the Neuse, covered the plain before the works with an effective crossfire. And most disturbing, the Federals at Moorhead City could instantly supply reinforcements by rail if they were ever needed. Pickett had a most difficult job ahead of him.

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