William B. Gould

William B. Gould, a twenty-six-year-old former slave from Wilmington, North Carolina, inserted this drawing in the diary that he kept while he served aboard the Union frigate Niagara during the last years of the Civil War. Gould had escaped from slavery in 1862 by rowing out to the Cambridge, a federal gunboat on patrol off the Carolina coast. Gould immediately joined the Union navy, sailing first onboard the Cambridge before transferring to the Niagara. His service brought him to the Boston naval base and hospital, and, after the Civil War, he settled in Dedham, Massachusetts, where he died in 1923, "a faithful soldier [i.e. sailor] and loyal citizen." His extraordinary diary is described in more detail in a previous object of the month.

Early in 1865, the Niagara joined the hunt for the newly-commissioned Confederate ram Stonewall. While the drawing of the Stonewall appears on the blank last page of an earlier volume of the Gould diary facing his entry for 5 September 1864, Gould described the search for and anticipated battle with the dreaded Confederate ironclad in his entries for February-March 1865.

The Odyssey of the Sphinx

The Stonewall was one of a pair of vessels built in France in 1863-1864 for the Confederacy. The ships, each 171 feet in length, were designed to carry powerful, rifled cannon in casements within armored hulls but they also mounted enormous iron beaks—fortified rams with which to pierce the sides of Union vessels. The Sphinx and Cheops, as the vessels were named (to conceal their true ownership and to maintain the pretext of French neutrality), were a combination of ultra-modern and ancient technology. They were sail-assisted rather than true steamships and their fortified prows were modern versions of those of the oared galleys that fought at Lepanto or even Salamis. Theoretically, the ships had the potential to break the Union blockade that was strangling the Confederacy, either by crossing the Atlantic and directly attacking Union ships off the Southern coast or by raiding Northern ports.

The Sphinx becomes the Staerkodder

During the American Civil War, a "secret service" war was fought between Union and Confederate agents in Europe. Through a combination of espionage and diplomacy, the North was able to stymie Confederate efforts to purchase or build modern warships first in England (the so-called "Laird rams") and then in France, where they uncovered the plan of the Bordeaux shipbuilding firm of Louis Arman to build the Sphinx and Cheops and forced Arman to break his contract with the Confederacy. Through a straw purchase by a Swedish commercial firm, the Sphinx was sold to the Danish government, which renamed it the Staerkodder ("Strong Otter"—sometimes in contemporary documents the Stoerkodder). Denmark then was fighting against Prussia in the Second Schleswig War. Prussia purchased the Cheops and renamed it the Prinz Adalbert, but neither the Danes nor the Prussians were able to put their ships into service, so the sister ships never fought against each other.

The Staerkodder becomes the Stonewall

Late in 1864, the Confederacy reclaimed the Staerkodder from Denmark and commissioned it as the Stonewall (named for Confederate hero General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson). A maritime race and chase then ensued from Copenhagen to Lisbon. Confederate captain Thomas Jefferson Page had to fit out and equip the Stonewall for an Atlantic crossing even while preparing to fight his way free of his Union pursuers. CSS Stonewall was designed for service in calm coastal waters and in the winter waters of the North Sea and Atlantic she proved to have all the sailing characteristics of an actual stone wall. Nevertheless, Commodore Thomas T. Craven, who led the pursuit in the Niagara, approached an engagement with the Stonewall with trepidation. In theory the Stonewall would have been a formidable opponent—in William B. Gould's words, an "ugley customer."

By 1865, Gould was a veteran of more than two years of naval duty and his diary reflects his impatience with the delaying tactics adopted by Commodore Craven. The Niagara was much larger than the Stonewall—in battle it would have towered over the ram—and armed with a powerful battery of rifled cannon, but it was a less-maneuverable, wooden-hulled ship, vulnerable to the Stonewall's terrible armored beak. Even with the aid of a smaller consort, the Sacramento, it was not clear that the Niagara could handle the Stonewall, except under favorable conditions, although Craven's opponent, Thomas Page, had strong reservations about the seaworthiness of his own vessel. In the end, to Seaman Gould's intense regret, Craven allowed the Stonewall to sail for America without a fight. After the war Craven was court-martialed and reprimanded for failing to have done his utmost to overtake and engage the enemy.

A Second Life for the Stonewall

Thomas Page sailed the Stonewall to Nassau in the Bahamas and then on to Cuba where he learned that the Civil War had ended. He turned his ship over to the Spanish government in return for funds to pay off his crew. The following year, the United States reimbursed the Spanish and took possession of the ship that they, in turn, sold to the Japanese government in 1867. Under its new name, Kotetsu ("Steel"), the Stonewall was destined to fight in a Civil War—the Boshin War—but for rather than against the central government of Japan. After fending off a surprise attack by sword-wielding Samurai, the Kotetsu led the Imperial fleet into action at Hakodate Bay in May 1869. Renamed Azuma ("East"), the former Stonewall served on until 1888, a last relic of the Confederate navy.