vy-Yard, in the eastern branch of the Potomac, on duty connected
with the patrol of the river; the Virginia bank of which was occupied
by the Confederates, who were then erecting batteries to dispute the
passage of vessels. After one excursion down-stream in this
employment, the ship was detached to the combined expedition against
Port Royal, South Carolina, the naval part of which was under the
command of "Flag-Officer" Dupont. The point of assembly was Hampton
Roads, whither we shortly proceeded, after filling with stores and
receiving a new captain, Percival Drayton, a man greatly esteemed in
the service of the day, and a South-Carolinian. Coincidently with us,
but independently as to association, the steam-sloop _Seminole_,
slightly larger, also started. We outstripped her; and as we passed a
position where the Confederates were believed to be fortifying, our
captain threw in a half-dozen shells. No reply was made, and we went
on. Within a half-hour we heard firing behind us, apparently
two-sided. The ship was turned round and headed up-river. In a few
minutes we met the _Seminole_, her men still at the guns, a few ropes
dangling loose, showing that she had, as they say, not been exchanging
salutes. We had stirred up the hornets, and she had got the benefit;
quite uselessly, her captain evidently felt, by his glum face and
short answers to our solicitous hail. He was naturally put out, for no
good could have come, beyond showing the position of the enemy's guns;
while an awkward hit might have sent her back to the yard and lost her
her share in the coming fray, one of the earliest in the war, and at
that instant the only thing in sight on the naval horizon. As no harm
resulted, the incident would not be worth mentioning except for a
second occasion, which I will mention later, in which we gave the
_Seminole's_ captain cause for grim dissatisfaction.

The gathering of the clans, the ships of war and the transports laden
with troops, in the lower Chesapeake had of course a strange element
of excitement; for war, even in its incipiency, was new to almost all
present, and the enthusiasm aroused by a great cause and approaching
conflict was not balanced by that solemnizing outlook which experience
gives. We lived in an atmosphere of blended exaltation and curiosity,
of present novelty and glowing expectation. But business soon came
upon us, in its ordinary lines; for we were not two days clear of the
Capes, in early Nove