Combat· American Civil War
Wreck of the Governor
A disaster at sea redeemed by discipline.
As the great Port Royal expedition steamed south, the chartered side-wheeler Governor, carrying Major John Reynolds' Marine battalion of about three hundred men, was caught by a gale off the Carolina coast. Battered by heavy seas and in danger of foundering, the Governor began to break up, and Reynolds set his men to bailing and shoring the failing bulkheads as the ship wallowed helplessly through the night. When the frigate Sabine came alongside the sinking hulk the next afternoon, the lines repeatedly parted in the rising wind; Reynolds held his men steady and passed them across a few at a time, and the Governor stayed afloat just long enough to save nearly all of them. Thanks to that order, only seven Marines were lost out of three hundred, a remarkable outcome for so dangerous a wreck. The survivors went on to Port Royal.
Podcast episodes on American Civil War
Record no. 404