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Pocket Diary Reveals the Monotony of Daily Life in the Army and the Navy
BY JOHN M. COSKI
What I don’t understand is this entry about going ‘into Pennsacola [sic].’ What’s a guy in the 1st Maine Cavalry doing in Pensacola?”
Senior Curator Robert Hancock and I were puzzling over the often faint and almost indecipherable penciled entries in a pocket diary that the Museum just received. The donor found the diary in a thrift store in Washington state and knew nothing about it beyond what is written on the first page: “Eben Andrews / 1st Maine Cavalry / Compeny [sic] C / Jan. 1st / 1864.”
We discovered the answer to the riddle about a Maine cavalryman in Florida as we perused entries leading up to the May 1864 Overland Campaign. “[P]leasant all day Rebel Capt. Captured in Warrenton,” Andrews recorded on Saturday, April 23, 1864. “Application came back for me to go in the Navy[.]” Closer examination revealed that a month earlier Andrews had “again sent my name for a transfer to the Navy.”
Transferring between services was not uncommon in the Civil War, but letters and diaries by men who did so are rare. George S. Burkhardt received the Museum’s 2008-2009 Founders Award, given for excellence in editing of primary source documents, for his Doing Double Duty in the Civil War: The Letters of Sailor and Soldier Edward W. Bacon. Could Eben Andrews’ diary be another valuable source offering insight into a little-studied aspect of the War?
Scan of Eben Andrews’ diary signature page
ACWM Collections
Yes and no. Anyone who has read Civil War pocket diaries is aware of their limitations in space and detail – as well as soldiers’ famously poor spelling and sparse punctuation (which this article will retain). The stereotypical pocket diary was primarily a weather report or running culinary commentary with occasional references to things that modern readers consider historically significant.
Furthermore, the donated diary covers only one of Andrews’ four years of wartime service. The son of a Bangor, Maine, clerk, Eben Andrews enlisted as a private in Company C, 1st Maine Cavalry on October 20, 1861, a month before his 21st birthday. The 1st Maine Cavalry served in the Eastern Theater and participated in campaigns from the 1862 Shenandoah Valley Campaign through the Petersburg Campaign. Andrews was detailed from the unit as an orderly with General Samuel Sprigg Carroll, and it’s not clear how much action Andrews saw during his army service. He was promoted to corporal in November 1863 (but reduced to the ranks on April 2, 1864 for unstated reasons) and reenlisted a month later.
The diary reveals little about his service in the 1st Maine Cavalry. Most of the pages for January through March are blank. Andrews began writing regular entries only as he made his way back from his home in Gardiner, Maine, after a 35-day furlough. (Although he did not mention it, census records suggest that Andrews may have gotten married during that furlough.) Traveling by way of Boston, New York, and Washington, Andrews spent March 12 sightseeing, visiting the U.S. Capitol building and “look[ing] around through Washington untill I was tired.” He found his unit near Warrenton, Virginia. “Boys all well,” he wrote.
Just before Andrews left on furlough in January, his unit went into winter camp. From the time of his return from furlough until his departure for the navy, Andrews settled into a routine that consisted of picket and guard duty, punctuated by occasional company drills, inspections, reviews, and alerts of enemy activity.
During those six weeks, Andrews recorded his daily routine dutifully in his pocket diary. He always included details about the weather. “Twenty men Left camp to go on Picket near Beal[e]ton Station arived at our destination at one oclock,” he wrote on March 20th. “The Weather clear and pleasant only a little windy.” Three days later it was a different story: “The weather clear this morning with a foot of snow on the ground we had a cold time last night.”
The regiment broke camp on April 21, and there were stirrings of enemy activity. Still, on April 26, Andrews noted “All quiet as usual” and that “The Boys having a good time playing ball[.]” Two days later he left the regiment for Washington, D.C.
“I was examined, and was accepted as ordernary Seaman to serve in the Nav[y] 2 Years 8 months,” Andrews recorded on May 3. As his former 1st Maine Cavalry comrades prepared to ride in Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan’s raid on Richmond, Ordinary Seaman Eben Andrews “[w]as drafted to go to sea onbord the Sloop of War Brooklyn” and met his ship at anchor in New York the next day.
Andrews’ ship was the first of five screw propeller-driven sloopsof-war that the U.S. Congress authorized in 1857. Measuring 233 feet long by 43 feet at beam, she drew 16’3” and carried a battery of 21 large smoothbore guns. She was launched in 1858 and commissioned in 1859. Her first commander was a Tennessee-born captain named David Glasgow Farragut.
By the time Andrews went aboard in May 1864, Brooklyn had been commissioned, decommissioned for repairs, and recommissioned several times during the war. She had seen hard action at the battle of New Orleans in April 1862, on the Mississippi River at Vicksburg, and in blockading duty off Galveston, Texas.
As an ordinary seaman, Andrews was part of the deck crew, and his job consisted primarily of cleaning, scraping, painting, and maintaining the ship’s deck. His perspective was limited, as were his diary entries. Anyone hoping for poetic descriptions of a beautiful sloop-rigged sailing steamship will have to look elsewhere.
Brooklyn left New York on May 10 and arrived at Key West, Florida, on May 22 to take on coal, before proceeding to Pensacola. She took up her station in the West Gulf Blockading Squadron (commanded by now Admiral David Glasgow Farragut) off the port of Mobile, Alabama, on June 3. Three days later Andrews reported that “one of the Blockaders brought in a prize from Sea a quite a large Rebel Steemer” (which turned out to be the blockade runner Donegal).
On July 1, Andrews “espied a Blockade Runner ashore near the Fort and six of our Gun Boats shelling her[.]” Federal vessels continued the shelling grounded blockade runner Ivanhoe from a distance for several days. Andrews apparently was unaware that on the night of July 5-6 a raiding party of men from Brooklyn and from the flagship Hartford dared the guns of Fort Morgan and burned Ivanhoe.
Entries from Andrews’ diary about his Navy transfer.
ACWM
Aside from the occasional sightings of blockade runners, Andrews settled into a new kind of routine centered around his deck maintenance duties, occasional drills at the guns, and “meetings” – shipboard worship services – on Sundays. “The Weather continues cool and cloudy, nothing going on but cleaning and scraping [throughout] the ship,” he wrote on June 14. On Sunday, June 26, the former soldier stood guard as he had done so often in the army but with a very different perspective: “had a look out at the fore top mast head from eight to ten in the morning[.]”
Even in the relative isolation of blockade duty, “Madame Rumor” was as busy in the navy as she was in the army. “We hear that Gen Grant has taken Richmond,” Andrews noted on June 18. More accurately, on July 15 he “heard that the Rebel Pir[a]te Alabama was sunk” – as indeed she had been in an engagement off Cherbourg, France, a month earlier.
Although Andrews reported no rumors about his own theater of war, he did record hints that Brooklyn soon would be doing something other than patrolling the waters off Mobile Bay. His entries for June 20 and 21 noted that he and his comrades “have commenced to prepare the Ship for action” that they were at “work putting up netting around the Bullworks to stop splinters in time of action[.]”
During the last week of July, Brooklyn sailed to the squadron base at Pensacola to take on coal, ammunition, and provisions. The preparations also included more explicitly warlike measures on July 25-26: “To work taking on provisions and shealding [shielding] the ships with an Anchor cable” and “To work the same as yesterday and also making Grap lines to [fish?] up Torpedoes to keep them clear from the ship[.]”
All those preparations seemed superfluous when Brooklyn returned to the squadron and then, as Andrews wrote on July 30, “Nothing doing all day.” Andrews made no entries at all on August 1 or 2, then jotted a retrospective entry for the first three days of August: “every thing goes on as usueual[.]” Finally, on August 4, Andrews noted that “We got the Decks and every thing ready for action[.]”
The “action” was, of course, one of the largest and most significant naval battles of the Civil War, the Battle of Mobile Bay. Ordinary Seaman Eben Andrews’ pocket diary entries provide a skeletal outline of the battle and its aftermath:
Andrews’ bare-bones diary entries for the battle of Mobile Bay.
ACWM
[Friday, August 5, 1864] Morning three oclock turned out all hands got under weigh and run the Gauntlet by Fort Morgan
[Saturday, August 6, 1864] Saturday took possession of Fort Powell and Burried the dead
[Sunday, August 7, 1864] had a meeting of thanks, and o[f?] Prayer and also the thankes [sic] of the Admiral and Capt of the Fleet was read
[Monday, August 8, 1864] Fort Gaines surrendered with eight Hundred prisoners
Andrews’ diary suggests only indirectly that Mobile Bay was an enormous and costly battle. Andrews’ own ship was in the middle of it all. Brooklyn was nearest in the line of battle behind the Federal monitor Tecumseh when the latter struck a Confederate mine, “turned turtle,” and sunk. Brooklyn’s commander, Capt. James Alden, hesitated, then stopped, and alerted Farragut of the minefield, prompting Farragut’s immortal retort: “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” as he took his flagship, Hartford, around Brooklyn’s port side.
Hartford and Brooklyn engaged both the guns of Fort Morgan and the Confederate ironclad ram, Tennessee. In that action, Brooklyn sustained 59 hits on her hull, rigging, and spars, and suffered 11 men killed and 43 wounded.
The battle gave the Federal navy effective control of Mobile Bay, but it did not destroy the Confederate fleet or compel the surrender of Fort Morgan, which guarded
the entrance to the bay. Over the next two weeks, Andrews tracked the measures taken to reduce Fort Morgan.
[Wednesday, August 10, 1864] Landed two thousand Troops in the rear of Fort Morgan
[Wednesday, August 17, 1864] Took two nine inch guns from our ship and landed them on shore in the rear of Fort Morgan
[Thursday, August 18, 1864] Some men were detailed to go on shore, and get the Guns in a position and work them in fireing on Morgan
[Friday, August 19, 1864] some fireing by the monators [sic] on Morgan…
[Sunday, August 21, 1864] …along towards night the[re] was some preparations made for engaging Morgan the next day
[Monday, August 22, 1864] Morning at four oclock we turned out and got under weigh and went with in range of the Fort and fired about one Hundred shots at the same time all the Fleet
[Tuesday, August 23, 1864] …the Guns and morters on shore were engaged kept up the fireeing twenty four Hours when the Fort surrendered with every thing
With Fort Morgan’s surrender, Andrews and his comrades went to work cleaning the ship and “clear[ing] away all the splinter netting[.]” Brooklyn was ordered to the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron to participate in the assault on Fort Fisher guarding Wilmington, North Carolina. Eben Andrews would not be on her. “I with two others were drafted to go on board the Barque Anderson,” he wrote on September 8. The next day he joined the U.S. bark, William G. Anderson (also on duty with the West Gulf Blockading Squadron), and Brooklyn went to sea. Andrews spent the remainder of the year on the Anderson, occasionally on the receiving ship Potomac at the Pensacola Navy Yard. On October 2, he was promoted from ordinary seaman to seaman. He went on the sick list in early October and remained ill for more than a month, making only occasional diary entries in November. He made his last entry on December 16: “Went a shore on liberty visated the Second Maine Cavalry,” which was stationed in coastal Alabama.
Aside from making a flag (an ensign) for the ship, Andrews’ duties became a deadening routine. Students of the Civil War are familiar with what historian Bell Irvin Wiley described as “the long periods between campaigns when dullness, homesickness, and despondency hung like dark clouds over encampments….” Eben Andrews himself had experienced the boredom of camp life before he transferred to the navy: “nothing new going on accept [sic] the duties of the camp” he wrote on April 16, 1864.
Andrews learned that there was an analogous boredom in navy shipboard life. His diary provides an almost comical array of entries that underscored the monotony of his routine:
“same as yesterday”
“same as useual”“nothing transpires worth noting”“nothing new occurred”“nothing new of any importence [sic]”
“nothing new every thing continues about the same”
“nothing doing all day”
“every thing remains the same as useual nothing new”
“the same as yesterday nothing new nothing happens”
“Every thing has been the same day after day”
“Every thing has passed along just the same day after day”
“Things continue to move along about the same”
“every thing quiet”
“Every thing quiet allong [sic] the coast”
Eben Andrews was discharged from the William G. Anderson on August 3, 1865, a year ahead of his enlistment’s expiration. After the war, he was a farmer in Stetson, Penobscot County, Maine. By 1900, he and his wife, Francena, lived with their daughter and son-in-law in Portland. He attended at least one reunion of the 1st Maine Cavalry. In 1903, he and five other “old war veterans” attracted the attention of a newspaper reporter when they presented “[a] striking and practical illustration of the example of Cincinnatus… sowing cabbage in South Portland….”
By 1907, the old soldier and sailor felt compelled to apply to the U.S. Government for an invalid pension. He died in June 1909 at the age of 68. Francena received a widow’s pension until her death in 1925.
John M. Coski is the ACWM Historian.
