[
20]
Chapter 4: the balls Bluff disaster.
On October 21, 1861,
Col. Hinks was informed at 1 P. M., by
Capt. Edmund Rice, of Company F, commanding the companies on the river, that his detachment was ordered to cross to the
Virginia side as soon as certain other regiments had preceeded him.
Col. Hinks and
Lieut. Col. Devereux immediately repaired to the point of crossing, some four miles from camp.
The weather was superb and the spirits of the men were high, as they scented a movement on the part of the army.
The six companies at the river were collected and they joined the regiment.
No one had eaten and all were hungry.
By the time these companies joined,
Col. Hinks found himself the
senior officer at the
Ferry, and assumed direction of the transportation across the river.
He had a portion of the First California, a battalion of the Forty-Second New York (
Tammany) and four pieces of artillery to throw across, before his own regiment could move.
Meanwhile, the camp of the Nineteenth Massachusetts had been left in charge of
Second Lieut. Wm. H. LeCain, and his only command was the few sick and convalescents who had been left behind.
As the band had not been taken with the regiment, its musicians were ordered to do guard duty.
This was rather a serious incident in the life of the musicians, for, in all the little command left for guard duty, there was but one gun and that an old one.
The rest were ‘armed’ with sticks and staves.
The transportation from the shore to
Harrison's Island was very poor and insufficient and the work of crossing slow, arduous and tedious.
There were only three miserable hulks, dignified by the name of scows.
The two previously raised by the men of the Nineteenth were capable of carrying 30 men each,—the third of capacity sufficient to carry 60 men, or one
