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largest coasting steamers, were purchased and fitted with batteries, shell-rooms, and magazines, both for this expedition and to supply the generalwants of the service in establishing and maintaining the most extended andeffective blockade ever known in history. Under date of August 22d, 1861,Captain Du Pont wrote from New York :
“We drove where several of the purchased vessels were being altered, and examined theAlabama, Augusta, and Stars and Stripes . But, alas ! it is like altering a vest into a shirt to con-vert a trading steamer into a man-of-war. Except that there is a vessel and a steam-engine, allelse is inadaptable; but there is no help for it—the exigency of the blockade demands it.”[August 23d.] “ The Tuscarora (new steam sloop-of-war) was launched at Philadelphia yester-day. She was built in fifty-eight days, and thoroughly built too. Her keel was growing inSussex county, Delaware , seventy days ago.”
On the 19th of October, 1861, eighty days after the date of the order toGeneral Sherman above quoted, Flag-Officer Du Pont (as officers in commandof squadrons were then styled) left New York on board of the steam-frigateWabash , followed by numerous men-of-war, among which were four smallvessels, the Unadilla, Ottawa, Pembina, and Seneca, built in great haste andcalled “ ninety-day gun-boats,” as the contract had required their completionwithin that time. Other vessels purchased and improvised for war purposesproceeded when ready to Hampton Roads, where the large troop transportshad already congregated, as well as war vessels, regular, irregular, and defective.Among them were ferry-boats and the old steamer Governor, never in her bestdays adapted to a sea voyage, on board of which were six hundred marines,sent as a force to operate speedily and without embarrassment in conjunctionwith naval vessels. Twenty-five chartered schooners, laden with coal, w 7 erealso on hand, and, after being partially lightened by filling the bunkers of thesquadron, were sent to sea under convoy of the sailing sloop Vandalia theday before the departure of the fleet.
On the morning of the 29th of October, the vessels of war and the armytransports of all classes steamed outside and formed in order of sailing,which was the double echelon. The reader may know that this is in theshape of an inverted V, the leading vessel being the point, and the othervessels stretching out in lines but heading in a common direction. Our proc-ess of formation was not complete when the gun-boat Unadilla became dis-abled, and the signal was made to take her in tow. Our rate of speed wasquite slow, due to a head-wind, and to the varied character of the vesselscomposing the fleet, which was larger than was ever before commanded byan American officer. Cape Hatteras, little more than a hundred miles fromCape Henry, was not reached until 1 o’clock on the morning of the 31st,•when two of the heavier transports struck slightly on the shoals, whichcaused all of us to make for the south-east; and soon after, when south ofthe cape, we bore away. The wind had hauled more to the eastward beforewe reached Hatteras, and that, with a rough sea, had caused considerableindraught; and the drift from the action of the wind on the large hulls, addedto our low speed, had set us considerably to leeward.
Hatteras is known to navigators as being subject to great and sudden