Another Fort Fisher/Wilmington Connection in the Book: Rose O'Nel Greenhow

yesterday, I wrote about Union Ensign Robley Evans' turning down a request to amputate his legs which I took from the magazine/book "The Civil War on the Front Lines."

In the section titled "Women at War: Spies, Scouts, Soldiers, and heroic Homemakers" there was a paragraph on one Rose O'Neal Greenhow.

"Few women espionage agents could surpass the successes of Rose O'Neal Greenhow, a well-connected Washington, D.C., socialite.  Greenhow not only organized a spy network that significantly contributed to the Confederate victory at First Bull Run, but served five months in Washington's Old Capitol Prison for her role, along with her young daughter.

After Greenhow was released, she returned to the South nut drowned returning from a mission to Great Britain in 1864, when the blockade runner carrying her ran aground on The North Carolina coast.

The blockade runner was the Condor and it ran aground off Fort Fisher.  She is buried in Wilmington.

--Old B-Runner

Confederate Agents Crossing the Potomac: Check Their Butttons

JANUARY 9TH, 1865:  Secretary Welles notified Commander F.A. Parker, commanding the Potomac Flotilla, of intelligence that Confederate agents enroute Richmond were crossing the Potomac River by India rubber boats at night in the vicinity of Port Tobacco, Maryland.

"These messengers," the report warned, "wear metal buttons, upon the inside of which dispatches are most minutely photographed, not perceptible to the naked eye, but are easily read bu the aid of a powerful lens."

Also, this date: The USS Wyalusing captured the schooner Triumph at the mouth of the Perquimans River, N.C., with a cargo including a large quantity of salt.

JANUARY 10TH, 1865:  The USS Valley City seized the steamer Philadelphia in the Chowan River, N.C., with cargo including tobacco and cotton.

--Old B-Runner

USS Niphon Destroys Another Blockade-Runner Off Wilmington: Confederate Spy Rose O'Neal Greenhow Dies

OCTOBER 1st, 1864:  The USS Niphon, Acting Master Kemble, ran British blockade-runner Condor aground off New Inlet, North Carolina.  Niphon was prevented from destroying the steamer by intense fire from Fort Fisher.

Among the passengers on board was Mrs. Rose O'Neal Greenhow, one of the most famous Confederate spies of the war.  Mrs. Greenhow, fearful of being captured on the grounded steamer with her important dispatches, set out by boat for the shore, but the craft overturned in the heavy surf.

The crew managed to get ashore, but the woman, weighted down by $2,000 in British gold in a pouch around her neck, drowned.  She was buried at Wilmington.

A Very Famous Passenger.  --Old B-R'er

How a Spy Spurred the USS Monitor

From the January 4, 2013 Washington Post Opinion.

Mary Touvestre was a freed slave who worked as the housekeeper for a Confederate engineer turning the frigate USS Merrimack into the ironclad ram CSS Virginia.  She overheard her employer talking about it and realized the new ship's significance.

She proceeded to steal a set of the ship's plans and delivered them to the Department of the Navy in Washington, DC.  This prompted the North to begin work on their own ironclads, one of which was the USS Monitor.

Old B-R'er