Silent Running
Englishman Thomas Taylor’s adventures on the blockade runner Banshee offer a glimpse into the life of a Civil War thrill-seeker By Kevin Maurer
I
t was a moonless night. Dark, but clear. Thomas Taylor searched the inky blackness from the deck of his blockade runner for any sign of a Union vessel. It was 1863 and the blockade runner Banshee skirted the North Carolina coast as it approached the mouth of the Cape Fear River. The ship, with two steam-driven paddles, was part of a loose collection of blockade runners keeping the Confederacy alive. Almost 200 blockade runners made it to Confederate ports in 1863. The next year, 244 made it to port, according to R. Thomas Campbell in Last of the Gray Phantoms: The Confederate Blockade Runners. Taylor was an Englishman employed by Liverpool merchants to act as the supercargo or the owner’s representative on the Banshee. Taylor captured his adventures in an 1896 book. His book, Running the Blockade, offers a glimpse of Civil War-era Wilmington and the importance of Fort Fisher as the protector of the Confederacy’s blockade-running fleet. Taylor admits early in the book he and other blockade runners were thrill-seekers and adventurers paid handsomely to defy the blockade, not true believers in the Confederate cause. “Nothing I have ever experienced can compare with it,” Taylor said. “Hunting, pig-sticking, steeple-chasing, big-game shooting, polo — I have done a little of each — all have their thrilling moments, but none can approach running a blockade.” The English-owned Banshee — the first steel-hulled ship to cross the Atlantic — was built specifically for blockade running. An 1863 New York Times story described the Banshee as a rakish-looking craft, with two pipes: “She sits low in the water, and neither her masts nor any other part of her rises high enough above the water
THE ART & SOUL OF WILMINGTON
to be seen at a distance, and everything about her seems neat and symmetrical. Like all the other vessels which come from England, she was black on her arrival, but was quickly painted lead color.” As the Banshee approached the mouth of the Cape Fear, Taylor was joined on the bridge by Jonathan W. Steele, a daring sea captain who believed himself immune from arrest if caught because he was a British citizen, and the ship’s pilot, Tom Burroughs, a Wilmington man who had a sixth sense for spotting blockaders. Vessels were frequently lost because the pilot lost his nerve or didn’t know his precise location. According to Taylor, Burroughs was a legend. “He knew his port like his own face, and the most trying situations or heaviest firing could never put him off or disturb his serene self-possession,” Taylor wrote about him. “For all his duties he had an instinct that approached genius. On the blackest night he could always make out a blockader several minutes before anyone else.” The rest of the crew was crouched next to the ship’s bulwarks scanning the black for signs of Union blockade ships. The hatchways were covered by tarpaulins. No one even lit a cigar. Crew members spoke in whispers. Any sound or light could betray their location. Running the Union blockage off the coast of North Carolina was delicate work. If the ship was discovered, the Union Navy would imprison the crew and seize the ship and its cargo. Each stroke of the engine and beat of the paddle against the Atlantic Ocean waters put the Banshee crew on edge. “Better get a cast of the lead, Captain,” Burroughs said to Steele. The captain grabbed the tube leading to the engine and ordered the engines stopped. Everyone his their breath hoping the engines wouldn’t blow off steam after being stopped abruptly. JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2019 •
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