Posted on 06/06/2002 10:14:52 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
Editor's note: The following is the first of two parts that were presented in a lecture May 25 at Mt. Dora by Lindsey before the 100th annual conference of the Florida Historical Society, of which he is a board member. The conference theme was "Small Towns of Florida."
Though Charlotte Harbor was visited by Spanish explorers in the 16th century -- and fished commercially by Spanish-Indians thereafter -- the first settlement there of Americans was born of the War Between the States.
The earliest settlement by Americans in Florida was in the state's north and central areas. The shores of Charlotte Harbor were low and unsuited for cultivation. The vast prairie north of the swampy shore was noted on early maps as "wet and dry."
Florida was not a locale for epoch military battles in the war. However, it was a major supplier of beef and salt for the Confederate armies of the Tennessee and Northern Virginia, and cotton for British textile mills.
The effort by the Union government to cut off this Confederate supply center was a strategic element of the conflict.
Brothers Joel and Jessee Knight and their brother-in-law Jacob Summerlin, anticipating war, moved their herds of cattle from central Florida to the Ninety Mile Prairie divided by the Myakka and Peace rivers.
The war started April 12, 1861, when the Charleston, S.C., battery fired on Fort Sumter. A week later, President Abraham Lincoln -- in office barely a month -- proclaimed a blockade of all Southern ports. However, it would take several months to assemble a fleet to enforce the edict.
Florida's many inlets and outer islands were ideal for runs through the blockade by shallow-draft ships. It is estimated that at the height of the war, Florida was shipping 2,000 head of cattle weekly to the Confederacy. Steers that sold for $10 before the war were fetching three times that in gold, or six times that in Confederate script.
Burnt Store
Shortly before the outbreak of war, Summerlin, Frances C.M. Boggess of Fort Ogden and ship captain James McKay of Tampa had developed a lucrative cattle trade with Havana and the U.S. Naval base at Key West. McKay had a side-wheel steamer, the Salvor, built for the purpose.
Their loading dock in 1860 was at Burnt Store -- formerly an Indian trading post destroyed during the Seminole War -- on the east coast of Charlotte Harbor opposite Boca Grande Pass.
The location was convenient to the Gulf of Mexico and a straight run to Havana or Key West. However, it was easily spied through the pass by Union gun ships.
When war broke out, McKay attempted to remain neutral in an attempt to keep both the Union and Confederacy as customers.
Canter Brown Jr., in his history "Florida's Peace River Frontier," recounts that Capt. McKay was detained at Key West after a delivery in June 1861. This was two months after the war had started and four months before the Union blockade of Florida was in place.
McKay's steamer was an attractive prize, but he also was a conduit for badly needed beef. The commander at Key West arbitrarily leased the Salvor. He gave McKay and his crew of slaves a small fishing smack with which to return to Tampa. Upon reaching home, McKay was arrested as a traitor for supplying beef to the new enemy.
The Tampa prosecutor demanded hanging. Fort Brooke's commander, Gen. Joseph M. Taylor, intervened and allowed McKay to post a $10,000 bond -- equivalent to about $300,000 in today's currency.
Capt. McKay returned to Key West and regained the Salvor. He promptly ran a cargo of cattle to Cuba. He started home with "21,000 stands of arms, 10 boxes of revolvers, ammunition and six rifled cannons."
McKay was intercepted by Union gunboats off the Tortugas and relieved of his ship and cargo. His slave crewmen were officially "freed" and released.
Capt. McKay and his son, Donald, were held in military custody for five months, first in Key West and then at Washington, D.C. They were released after taking oaths of allegiance to the United States and pardoned by President Lincoln.
Another steamer
Upon regaining his freedom, McKay built a new side-wheeler that he named Scottish Chief. By this time, Summerlin had obtained a lucrative contract to furnish beef to the Confederate Army of the Tennessee supplied from Mobile, Ala.
Summerlin solicited cattle from the Knights, Boggess and other ranchers of Southwest Florida. They built a new cattle dock near Hickory Bluff on the north shore of Charlotte Harbor, out of sight of Union ships patrolling Boca Grande Pass.
Blockade battles began on the west coast of Florida on Oct. 11, 1861. The first capture by Union forces occurred off Charlotte Harbor 11 days later when the USS Union seized the Confederate schooner CSS Aristides.
Blockading ships on station off Boca Grande Pass were the Gem of the Sea, a privately owned, three-mast bark converted to a gunboat; and the Rosalie, a two-mast cutter, formerly a captured blockade-buster on the East Coast.
Most blockading ships were equipped with one or two cannons. Gem of the Sea was fitted for four smooth-bore 12-pounders. The Rosalie had a 12-pounder and a howitzer.
Blockade-runners were unarmed and therefore treated as non-combatants if caught. The customary penalty was loss of ship and cargo. Occasionally there was a brief imprisonment until the captured crew signed oaths not to participate thereafter in hostilities.
These declarations usually were ignored. Typically, three runs through a blockade would pay off. Two successful sorties would pay for the construction of a ship, and the third would net a handsome profit.
Capt. McKay made six successful runs through the Charlotte Harbor blockade from the summer of 1862 to Oct. 17, 1863. According to family memory, McKay recovered his construction costs by his first run. The next five runs were all profit.
Upon his return trips, McKay brought back frontier necessities ordered from cattle profit by Joel Knight's brother Henry, a mercantilist at Tampa.
Henry and Joel Knight's son, Tom, built a small frame store at the foot of the cattle dock. Joel and Tom built houses there to guard their merchandise. Other families came for mutual protection.
A raiding party from USS Adela in 1863 discovered and burned the Scottish Chief taking on cotton up the Hillsborough River at Tampa.
By this time, the naval blockade of South Florida had grown tight enough to discourage ambitious attempts to thwart it. McKay was appointed Confederate commissary officer of South Florida. Thereafter, he arranged small, overland drives of cattle to the railroad at Baldwin.
Other blockade-busters
Though Capt. McKay initially operated on a large scale, other smaller but equally daring blockade-runners also gathered cargo at the Charlotte Harbor dock.
An unusual engagement took place July 8 as the cutters Rosalie and Restless pursued the schooner Ann and an unnamed sloop through the harbor and up the Peace River. The union vessels frequently ran aground before cornering their prey up Horse Creek. The cargoes of cotton were confiscated and the abandoned ships burned.
A "daredevil blockade runner who feared neither God nor man" was Capt. Robert Johnson. According to a memoir in the Fort Myers Weekly Press of 1909, he usually operated out of Cedar Key with a schooner named Director.
Johnson struck a deal in November 1862 with several cotton growers anxious to have their crops run through the blockade to Havana.
While a wagon train of mules and oxen hauled the cotton overland to the Charlotte Harbor dock, he crept along the coast to secluded anchorage at Estero Bay.
For two weeks, "lighters and craft of every kind" hauled 175 bales of cotton from Hickory Bluff to Punta Rassa through the inland waterway, out of sight from the Gem of the Sea and the Union stronghold at Fort Myers.
After delivering the cotton to Havana, Capt. Johnson raced back to Charlotte Harbor with a cargo of medicines, hospital stores, surgical instruments, coffee, tea, liquors and household goods.
Johnson concentrated on medical supplies because a smallpox epidemic was raging in Southwest Florida at that time. The medicines were "dispatched by runners into the interior, passing through the counties of Manatee and Hillsborough."
Capt. Johnson kept part of the household goods to set up a store near Fort Ogden. He married a local girl and ran the blockade several times from the Hickory Bluff dock to Nassau. In September 1863, a raiding party from several Union ships made their way to his home while he was absent. The naval crewmen burned his dwelling, warehouse and four small boats.
A few weeks later, the "Director" was captured while trying to run the Union blockade off Punta Rassa with a cargo of salt and whiskey. Johnson -- described as a "notorious villain" -- was arrested, shipped north and imprisoned. He was never heard from again.
There oughta be a movie...
At least it was a fair fight ;o)
Tonight on at RadioFR! June 6, 2002
9:00 p.m. - 11:00 p.m. EDT / 6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. PST...
YO!
ANNA AND MERCURIA
DO THE "REYNOLDS (W)RAP"
(Well, you knew it had to happen sometime...!)
WITH SPECIAL GUEST
DAVID PALMQUIST
"THE KING OF CONSPIRACY"
On the return trip, they would land at New Smyrna again and haul goods over land from the coast to Lake Monroe near Sanford FL (where SR-46 is today) about 40 miles. Steamers would transport goods northbound up the St. John's as far as possible.
We're on the river alot (we live a stone's throw away) and there are some facinating stories.
Great Article! A salute to those daring, courageous men.
Very nice photo of the blockade runner; and a very nice write-up on Great Grandfather James.
Donald Neal McKay, Inman, SC.
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