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The captain of the Nashville turned out to be a former naval colleague of Anderson’s named Robert Pegram. That night, as they swapped news and experiences, Pegram warned Anderson and Bulloch to banish any thoughts of an easy entry into Savannah: if his encounter with the Connecticut was anything to go by, they would be chased all the way from the Outer Banks.

Five days later, on November 7, the Fingal set sail for the South during a tropical storm. After five nights of hurricane-force wind, the weather calmed, and the Confederates were glad to realize they were only 140 miles from Savannah. “The night closed in upon us bright and clear, with the moon shining sweetly down upon us,” wrote Anderson. “Everyone was on the alert.” The moment of reckoning had come. It was not long before they caught sight of a Federal ship bobbing on the water. “The silence of the dead was preserved on board our vessel,” Anderson continued. “In my anxiety as I stood beside the helmsman, I could hear the throbbing of my heart.” As dawn approached, the heavy night dew condensed into a thick, wet fog. Suddenly, one of the caged cockerels began its morning crow. A dozen hands reached frantically into the coop. The creature was strangled and thrown overboard. A second cockerel awoke, and then a third, forcing the crew to pitch the whole cage into the sea. It was too late for secrecy now. The Fingal raced toward the harbor, somehow managing to elude the steam frigate that guarded the entrance. At last, wrote Anderson on November 12, “everything had come about just as I had dreamed of.”45 Thousands lined the quayside to cheer the Fingal’s entry into Savannah.46

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Anderson and Bulloch’s arrival in Richmond, however, was overshadowed by the Federal capture of Port Royal in South Carolina on November 7. The South had lost the only good harbor between Charleston and Savannah, while the North gained a second base on the Confederate coast that could provide fuel and supplies to the blockading fleets. The battle had brought together the largest U.S. battle fleet ever assembled up to that time. Seventy-seven vessels carrying 12,000 troops had set sail on November 1 from the recently captured Cape Hatteras. Ebenezer Wells and the reinstated 79th were among the three regiments on board USS Vanderbilt.

The expedition began smoothly enough, but by nightfall the wind had picked up and the flotilla began to lose its cohesion. The next day a fierce gale assaulted the Union convoy. A supply ship went down with all hands; another jettisoned its guns in a frantic attempt to stay afloat. On the Vanderbilt, the terrified soldiers and animals howled in unison. As the storm continued to rage, the horses were driven into such a frenzy that a dozen were able to struggle free and went careering about the ship. Unable to capture or subdue them, Wells was forced to kill the animals by slitting their throats. Their blood spilled out across the deck and down through every crack and crevice, traumatizing the already shattered soldiers. When the battered fleet reassembled outside the sandbank off Port Royal on November 7, the 79th Highlanders were too sick and exhausted by their journey, recorded Wells, to care whether they were in the South or in Hell.

The uplifting sight of artillery shells smashing through the Confederate defenses at Port Royal brought the soldiers back to life. “We took them on completely by surprise,” recorded Wells. In less than a day, the two forts guarding the entrance to the port were bombarded into submission. The Federals followed up their victory by sweeping inland and seizing the town of Beaufort. “The soldiers and inhabitants all left in a hurry so much so that when we landed some of us had the satisfaction of sitting down to unfinished breakfasts and finishing them,” Wells wrote. Afterward he and his friends made a thorough inspection of the empty plantations, riding around in the owners’ carriages and generally helping themselves to anything of interest.47

Southerners,