[674] largest coasting steamers, were purchased and fitted with batteries, shell-rooms, and magazines, both for this expedition and to supply the general wants of the service in establishing and maintaining the most extended and effective 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 the Alabama, Augusta, and Stars and Stripes. But, alas! it is like altering a vest into a shirt to convert a trading steamer into a man-of-war. Except that there is a vessel and a steam-engine, all else 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 yesterday. She was built in fifty-eight days, and thoroughly built too. Her keel was growing in Sussex county, Delaware, seventy days ago.On the 19th of October, 1861, eighty days after the date of the order to General Sherman above quoted, Flag-Officer Du Pont (as officers in command of squadrons were then styled) left New York on board of the steam-frigate Wabash, followed by numerous men-of-war, among which were four small vessels, the Unadilla, Ottawa, Pembina, and Seneca, built in great haste and called “ninety-day gun-boats,” as the contract had required their completion within that time. Other vessels purchased and improvised for war purposes proceeded when ready to Hampton Roads, where the large troop transports had already congregated, as well as war vessels, regular, irregular, and defective. Among them were ferry-boats and the old steamer Governor, never in her best days adapted to a sea voyage, on board of which were six hundred marines, sent as a force to operate speedily and without embarrassment in conjunction with naval vessels. Twenty-five chartered schooners, laden with coal, were also on hand, and, after being partially lightened by filling the bunkers of the squadron, were sent to sea under convoy of the sailing sloop Vandalia the day before the departure of the fleet. On the morning of the 29th of October, the vessels of war and the army transports of all classes steamed outside and formed in order of sailing, which was the double echelon. The reader may know that this is in the shape of an inverted V, the leading vessel being the point, and the other vessels stretching out in lines but heading in a common direction. Our process of formation was not complete when the gun-boat Unadilla became disabled, and the signal was made to take her in tow. Our rate of speed was quite slow, due to a head-wind, and to the varied character of the vessels composing the fleet, which was larger than was ever before commanded by an American officer. Cape Hatteras, little more than a hundred miles from Cape 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, which caused all of us to make for the south-east; and soon after, when south of the cape, we bore away. The wind had hauled more to the eastward before we reached Hatteras, and that, with a rough sea, had caused considerable indraught; and the drift from the action of the wind on the large hulls, added to our low speed, had set us considerably to leeward. Hatteras is known to navigators as being subject to great and sudden
