A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [379]
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Rose Greenhow had arrived at Halifax on September 6, 1864, and had been forced to wait for nearly three weeks while the Condor recoaled and took on supplies before she could begin the final part of her journey to Wilmington, North Carolina. Two more passengers were joining her: Lieutenant Wilson, whose parole she had obtained from Charles Francis Adams, and the Confederate commissioner James Holcombe, who had decided that he did not wish to participate in Thompson’s or Clay’s operations. The long delay until the Condor’s departure on September 24 was enough time for the U.S. consul in Halifax to learn the names of the passengers and the ship’s destination. As soon as the vessel steamed out of the harbor, he sent a telegram to Washington warning the Navy Department to ready the fleet at Wilmington. When the Condor reached Cape Fear in the small hours of October 1, every available blockader was waiting.
A storm was brewing as the vessel approached the Carolina coast. The roiling sea favored the Condor, and Captain Hewett was able to slip past the first line of blockaders. But as they approached New Inlet—the closer of the two entrances to Cape Fear River—Hewett saw that the sheer number of blockaders crowding around the entrance would make it impossible for him to escape detection. USS Niphon was the first to spot the Condor, and at 3:30 A.M. the chase began. The Niphon plowed through the waves, firing her guns in a steady roll. The Condor’s passengers cowered beneath the deck listening to the explosions above their heads. Suddenly, the ship lurched hard to starboard and crashed to a stop. The pilot had mistaken the wreck of the Night Hawk, which had been chased down the previous night, for a Federal ship and turned hard to avoid it, hitting a sandbank in the process.
The Condor was close enough to Fort Fisher for its guns to afford her some protection against the Niphon. Captain Hewett thought he might still be able to make the final dash in a few hours, once the tide had lifted his ship off the bar, but he could not guarantee that it would hold against the pounding of the waves, or that the rest of the fleet would not join the Niphon. Rose Greenhow and James Holcombe both became hysterical. She was carrying dispatches from Mason and Hotze for Richmond, as well as £2,000 in gold, the entire profit from her book, and was rapidly becoming panic-stricken at the thought of being a Federal prisoner again.17 Since the shore was only a few hundred yards away, she begged Captain Hewett to let down a rowboat. Holcombe added his pleas. At first Hewett refused, but when two sailors volunteered to row, he relented.
Rose, Holcombe, Wilson, and the Condor’s pilot clambered with great difficulty into the rolling boat with the oarsmen. Rose had left everything behind on the ship except a copy of her book, the dispatches, and the money, which was in a pouch secured by a heavy chain. As they neared the surf, a wave flipped the boat over, spilling the passengers into the water. The men were able to swim to the surface and cling to the side of the boat, but Rose never reappeared. An hour later, the tide brought the rowboat in, allowing the battered and exhausted survivors to hobble onto the beach. Captain Hewett and his crew were rescued at dawn, although the Condor was left stuck in the sand.
Rose’s body was found in the morning by Thomas Taylor, an English blockade runner who had gone down to the beach to supervise the salvage operation of his own vessel.33.2 He had her remains carried to Fort Fisher, where the commandant’s wife, Mrs. Lamb, prepared it for transportation to Delaware. The following day, October 2, Wilmington gave Rose a state funeral: church bells tolled as her flag-draped coffin led an immense cortege headed by representatives from the Confederate War Department, the army, and the navy. Mindful