Robert Blake, Black Medal of Honor Recipient-- Part 2: A Surprise on the Stono

Robert Blake was born into slavery  in Virginia.  He somehow ended up South Carolina.  In June 1862, his owner's plantation was burned during  a Union expedition  up the Santee River.  About 400 slaves from his plantation were taken aboard a Union ship as contraband.  They were sent to North Island in Winyah Bay, S.C..

While on North Island Blake answered the call for twenty single men to serve on the USS Vermont, an old U.S. ship of the line serving as a receiving ship at Port Royal, South Carolina.

By December 1863, he had been transferred to the USS Marblehead and was serving as a steward to Lt.Cmdr.  Richard Worsam Meade.  Early in the morning of December 25, while the Marblehead was cruising in the Stono River, the ship came under fire of a Confederate howitzer at Legareville on Johns Island.

Meade jumped from his bed and ran onto the quarterdeck to give the order to return fire, Blake followed him, handed him his uniform, and urged him to change out of his night clothes.

--Old B-Runner

"A Pretty Severe Initiation to Salt Water": A Voyage to Port Royal-- Part 1

From the Feb. 6th Rochester (NY) Democrat Chronicle "A Rochester sailor's near-fatal ordeal" by Bob Marcotte.

"We left Boston on the 24th of February (1862).  That night I shall never forget, " wrote Edward Fenn in a letter home.

That night, he and his crew nearly drowned when his ship, the old Ship-of-the-Line USS Vermont encountered a sever gale on its way to Port Royal, South Carolina where it was to serve as a receiving and store ship  The Vermont was battered for two days and left drifting helplessly.

Fenn was a surgeon's assistant on the ship.


THE US NAVY AT START OF THE WAR

The US Navy was clearly not up to the task of enforcing a blockade of 3,549 miles of Confederate shoreline, including some 189 harbors and inlets.  However, by the end of the war, the Navy had grown to a force of 641 ships.  And, as Confederate port and positions continued to fall, the blockade gained in intensity.

In the Army, regiments were recruited from the same area.  Thus, the 13th, 108th and 140th New York  Infantry regiments consisted primarily of men from Monroe County.

The Navy, however, assigned recruits at random to ships, usually at receiving ships where new enlistees entered service.

More to Come.  --Old B-Runner