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| Lieutenant John Grimball (1840-1922) in Confederate Naval Uniform. Photo taken in Paris, France in 1864 by French photographer Georges Penabert. Photograph courtesy U.S. Library of Congress. |
Confederate naval veteran and South Carolina's own Lieutenant John Grimball, CSN, holds two unique distinctions in Southern history as both one of the longest serving Confederate servicemen of the War Between the States (1861-1865) and serving under the only sovereign Confederate national flag to circumnavigate the Earth, as well as the last official Confederate flag to formally surrender seven months after the war ended.
He would be present for the very first shots of the war, and also be there to surrender the last official Confederate military holdout.
John Grimball was born in Charleston, South Carolina on Saturday, April 18, 1840, the fifth of nine children to wealthy planters John Berkley Grimball (1800-1892) and Margret Ann "Meta" Morris Grimball (1810-1881).
His father, John Berkeley Grimball (1800-1892), a graduate from Princeton University, grew rice at his plantation home, Pinebury, located in Colleton County, South Carolina south of Charleston. In 1830, the elder Grimball married Margaret "Meta" Morris, whose family owned the nearby Grove Plantation. The plantation was originally built by George Washington Morris (1799–1834), a grandson of Lewis Morris (1726–1798), signer of the Declaration of Independence. John inherited the Grove from his wife’s family in 1858, and they owned several African-American slaves. John Berkeley Grimball became a South Carolina State Senator and would later cast his vote in favor of secession from the United States in December 1860.
Young John Grimball (Jack to his family and Johnnie to his close friends) left home in 1854, at the age of 14, to join the Navy. He earned an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, graduating 14th out of 15 in his class in 1858 becoming an Ensign in the U.S. Navy. One of his classmates and fellow graduates was future Spanish-American War (1898) hero Admiral George Dewey (1837-1917).
Now 18 year old John Grimball only U.S. Navy service was aboard the frigate USS Macedonian for two years and saw peacetime service in the Mediterranean Sea and the Caribbean; notably when the American ship and her crew assisted in the refloating of the British ship HMS Curacoa on Thursday, October 28, 1858 when the later ran aground on the Pelican Reef, off Smyrna, Ottoman Empire (modern-day Turkey) a few days before.
However, any dreams that the young man might have had of earning military glory in the U.S. Navy blue would soon come to an end with the secession of South Carolina two years later.
On Christmas Eve, Monday, December 24th, 1860, just four days after South Carolina seceded from the Union, Lieutenant Jack Grimball resigned his commission and offered his services to South Carolina Governor Francis W. Pickens (1805-1869). For this act he was publicly praised in an article by the Charleston Courier on Saturday, December 29, 1860, stating: "Nothing less can be expected of true sons of the South."
Four of John's five brothers also joined the newly sovereign State of South Carolina and Confederate service in infantry and artillery units. The fifth brother was too young to have served.
Two brothers, Private Berkley Grimball (1833-1899) and Private Arthur Grimball (1842-1894) both served in the SC Light Artillery, Parker's Company, also known as the Marion Artillery.
The third brother, Doctor Lewis Morris Grimball (1835-1901) served initially in Company I, 2nd South Carolina Infantry Regiment, and then in Company B, 11th South Carolina Infantry (St. Paul's Rifles) before being assigned as a surgeon to various units for the remainder of the war.
The last brother, Lieutenant William Heyward Grimball (1837-1864) served in Company E, 1st Regiment South Carolina Artillery in Charleston. He would be the only brother to die in the war on Wednesday, July 27, 1864 of typhoid fever contracted at James Island, South Carolina.
Grimball’s first assignment as an officer in the military of the State of South Carolina was in the garrison of Fort Moultrie. The coastal fort had been occupied by Federal forces until a few days prior on Wednesday, December 26, 1860 when the garrison commander, U.S. Major Robert Anderson, moved his men to nearby Fort Sumter in the center of Charleston Harbor, which offered better opportunities for defense.
Meanwhile, the outgoing U.S. President James Buchanan dispatched the unarmed merchant steamer ship Star of the West out of New York Harbor, with a cargo of supplies and military reinforcements for Major Anderson and his men.
Despite the fact the Star of the West was a civilian ship, when news of the mission spread to South Carolina, it was interpreted as an act of aggression by what was now seen as a foreign power.
When the ship arrived at Charleston Harbor on Wednesday, January 9, 1861, John Grimball and the rest of the defenders of Charleston were ready to greet them.
The ship was fired upon by Grimball and the defenders of Fort Moultrie and by cadets from the Citadel Military Academy manning a battery on nearby Morris Island. Seventeen shots were fired at the steamer, which was hit twice in the hull causing only minor damage. These shots are considered by many historians as the actual the first shots of the war. Although Star of the West itself suffered no major damage, her captain considered it too dangerous to continue and turned about to leave, abandoning the mission and returning to New York Harbor.
Two months later, after six more Southern States withdrew from the Federal Union, the Confederate States of America was officially formed on Monday, March 4, 1861 in Montgomery, Alabama. John Grimball officially joined the navy of the new American nation shortly afterward, receiving a commission as a Master (or sailing master-warrant officer) by Confederate Secretary of the Navy, Stephen R. Mallory.
Still serving at Fort Moultrie, John Grimball was present for, and participated in, the bombardment of Fort Sumter on Friday, April 12, 1861 -- the official start of the war. The fort surrendered to the new Confederate States authorities two days later.
Master John Grimball's first naval service with the new Confederate States Navy was aboard the gunboat CSS Lady Davis -- named in honor of Confederate First Lady Varina Davis. At that time, the little gunboat served as flagship of Commodore Josiah Tattnall III's Savannah Defense Squadron, consisting of CSS Savannah, CSS Sampson, and CSS Resolute.
In spring of 1862, Grimball was promoted to Second Lieutenant and ordered to Memphis, Tennessee to serve aboard the casemate ironclad, CSS Arkansas, under the command of CSN Lieutenant Issac Brown. It would be serving aboard the Arkansas commanding the ship's bow gun that Lieutenant Grimball would receive his first serious taste of naval combat when the ship would make her famous run down the Yazoo and Mississippi Rivers.
At the mouth of the Yazoo River on Tuesday, July 15, 1862, the CSS Arkansas engaged in battle with the three Union ships sent to intercept the ironclad: the timberclad gunboat USS Tyler, the ram ship USS Queen of the West, and the ironclad USS Carondelet -- the later causing the heaviest damage to the Arkansas in the engagement. The battle between the ironclads caused heavy damage to the Carondelet and inflicted 35 casualties. About 25 of the Arkansas crew had been killed or wounded during the battle.
The Arkansas would continue on her way downriver towards the city of Vicksburg, Mississippi, where it would fight its way through USN Commodore David G. Farragut's Union fleet on the Mississippi River, damaging 16 of the Union ships. The Confederate ship had fired 97 shots during the day's fighting, of which only 24 of which had missed the Union ships. The Arkansas received an enthusiastic welcome by the citizens of Vicksburg.
These actions would result in Farragut withdrawing his fleet downriver and giving the Confederacy a temporary reprieve on the Mississippi River. Out of the Arkansas crew of 160 men, 30 became casualties during these engagements -- 12 killed and 18 wounded, including several men from Grimball's gun crew.
The ironclad CSS Arkansas would soon meet her end when she ran into serious engine problems and was ultimately scuttled by her crew on the morning of Wednesday, August 6, 1862 near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She was the shortest serving Confederate Naval ironclad of the war -- about 21 days -- but one of the toughest.
Lieutenant Grimball was then transferred to the ironclad CSS Baltic in Mobile, Alabama, where he would serve from late August of 1862 till May of 1863 helping to lay torpedoes (Naval mines) in the Mobile Bay.
On Monday, May 18, 1863, John Grimball left Wilmington, North Carolina aboard the paddle-steamer CSS Robert E. Lee, a fast blockade runner that was bound to Bermuda, and then on to Liverpool, England, U.K. His assignment there was to assist Confederate agents in purchasing and building of blockade runners and commerce raiders for the fledgling C.S. Navy.
Despite Great Britain officially being neutral in the American conflict, Liverpool was the unofficial home port of the Confederate overseas fleet. Confederate Naval Commander and foreign agent James D. Bulloch (1823-1901) was based in the city. The city provided ships, crews, munitions, medical supplies, and provisions of war.
Lieutenant Grimball's new duties would also have him travel across the English Channel to France (also officially neutral, and more strictly so than Britain) to help find crews and supplies for the Confederate fleet. He was in the French port city of Cherbourg on Saturday, June 11, 1864, when the commerce raider CSS Alabama arrived for a much-needed refit and resupply.
The Alabama, under the command of CSN Captain Raphael Seemes (1809-1877), had just completed her two-year voyage during which she'd captured or destroyed 65 Union merchant ships. Grimball and another officer volunteered to serve onboard Alabama if needed, but the French authorities prohibited them from joining the ship’s crew. Eight days later on Sunday, June 19, 1864, the CSS Alabama met and engaged in battle with the USS Kearsarge just off the Cherbourg harbor entrance and was sunk. Grimball witnessed the battle from shore.
It would be back in Liverpool that Lieutenant Grimball would soon find himself a more permanent home, as well as his greatest adventure of the war, as a top lieutenant aboard the famous Confederate warship CSS Shenandoah captained by CSN Commander James Iredell Waddell.
Originally built by the British in Glasgow, Scotland in 1863 as the troop transport ship Sea King, the vessel was secretly purchased by the Confederate States Navy along with a support vessel, the Laurel.
The Sea King left London on October 8, 1864, allegedly for an announced trading voyage to Bombay, India. The Laurel sailed from Liverpool the same day, carrying the Confederate officers and crew. The two ships rendezvoused at Funchal, Madeira, an island off the coast of Portugal a few days later. There, it was refitted as a battle cruiser with several naval guns, ammunition, and ship's stores.
The new Confederate cruiser was commissioned on Wednesday, October 19, 1864, with the symbolic lowering the British Union Jack and the raising the "Stainless Banner" and the former Sea King was renamed the CSS Shenandoah, a ship that would earn both world-wide acclaim and infamy depending on who you ask.
The destruction of the North's whaling industry was part of the Confederate naval strategy to damage the North's economy and commerce, hindering their war effort. It was also hoped that the actions of these commercial raiders would draw Union warships from the blockade of Southern ports to protect the whalers.
To those ends, Commander Bulloch issued the following orders to the CSS Shenandoah:
Sir: You are about to proceed upon a cruise in the far-distant Pacific, into the seas and among the islands frequented by the great American whaling fleet, a source of abundant wealth to our enemies and a nursery for their seamen. It is hoped that you may be able to greatly damage and disperse that fleet, even if you do not succeed in utterly destroying it.
Detailed Instructions from Commander Bulloch, C.S. Navy,
to Lieutenant J.I. Waddell, C.S. Navy, October 5, 1864.
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| The CSS Shenandoah undergoing repairs at dry dock in her extended stopover in Melbourne, Australia in early February, 1865. The 2nd Confederate National Naval Jack flies proudly above. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Naval History and Heritage archives. |
John Grimball was one of five lieutenants to serve among the Shenandoah’s crew, along with fellow South Carolinian, Dr. Charles Edward Lining (1834-1897) the ship's surgeon. Lieutenant Grimball served as second officer (third in command) and frequently led the boarding parties that captured the crews of the U.S. whaling ships encountered at sea. Once the crews were removed, most of the enemy vessels and their cargo were burned rather than sent into port as prizes.
Shenandoah was said to have destroyed 32 vessels, ransomed 6 others,
and taken 1,053 Yankee prisoners (who were paroled and sent via neutral ships to American ports). In all the value of the vessels and cargoes
destroyed by the raider, according to her officers' calculations, came
to $1.4 million.
Ironically, it would be on June 28, 1865 -- five days after the surrender of the last Confederate land forces by Brigadier General Stand Watie at Doakesville, Choctaw Nation, Oklahoma -- that the CSS Shenandoah would have the most lucrative day of her career, Shenandoah encountered and decimated nine New England whaling ships working together in the Bering Strait in an 11-hour span.
It was here that the CSS Shenandoah fired the last actual shots of the American Civil War, across the bow of the New England whaler Nile and forcing her surrender almost three months after General Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House, Virginia on Sunday, April 9, 1865. Lieutenant Grimball himself is reported to have fired this last shot.
Two months later, on Wednesday, August 2, 1865, while traveling south towards the US west coast to wreak havoc on more shipping, the crew of the Shenandoah confirmed the news of the end of the war from a British vessel. The crew then removed and stored away their guns, which would never be fired again -- and sailed east around Cape Horn into the South Atlantic and returning to Liverpool where she began her journey a year before to formally surrender to neutral Great Britain.
British citizens stood on the shores in awe to see the Shenandoah arriving on the morning of Monday, November 6, 1865; her Confederate National colors flying proudly from her mast -- the last one to do so as a representative of a sovereign Southern nation.
Captain Waddell maneuvered his ship near the British warship HMS Donegal, dropping anchor in the river. The CSS Shenandoah was then formally surrendered his command to Royal Navy Captain James Dorset Paynter of Donegal. The Confederate flag was lowered again for the very last time under the watch of both the British Navy personal and now former Confederate Navy crews.
Lieutenant Grimball, the young man who'd seen the first shots fired at the Star of the West and at Fort Sumter in 1861, now witnessed the surrender of the last official Confederate military holdout. His was the longest service of any Confederate military officer in the War.
During her incredible thirteen month voyage of 58,000 miles (or 93,342 kilometers) -- about 50,400 nautical miles -- the CSS Shenandoah became the only Confederate Navy warship to circumnavigate the Earth.
The Shenandoah crossed the
equator four times, covering points from
its departure at Liverpool, around South Africa's Cape of Good Hope, into the Antarctic waters of the Southern Ocean, across the Indian Ocean with an extended stopover in Australia, then from the South Pacific north into the Arctic Ocean above the Aleutian Islands into the Bering Strait, then back south around South America's Cape
Horn, then back into the Atlantic Ocean and returning to Liverpool to surrender.
Like her sister ship, the famed raider CSS Alabama, the CSS Shenandoah never made port in a Southern State during the course of the War Between The States. Her Stainless Banner Naval Jack is the only sovereign Confederate national banner to circle the globe during wartime -- a voyage that covered all five of the world's oceans and all of the traditional "seven seas" -- and the very last to be lowered in surrender.
The crew of the Shenandoah were held over briefly by British authorities before being released on parole. It was ruled that the crew of the Confederate sailors did not violate international law in carrying on their duty and were not guilty of piracy.
Grimball, and some of the other former Confederate officers, feared reprisals from the United States government for their raids after the formal end of the war. Grimball left Great Britain and stayed in Mexico where he and a few others worked for a time on a ranch.
A year later, after learning that the government would not charge him or any of his fellow officers with "piracy", John Grimball returned to South Carolina where he began a career in law, practicing in his native Charleston at first, then in New York City. He later returned to Charleston in the 1880s. In 1885, he would marry to Mary Georgianna Barnwell (1857-1920) and the couple would have two sons: Arthur (1886-1951) and William Heyward (1886-1964).
Lieutenant John Grimball died on Christmas Day, Monday December 25, 1922 at the age of 82; and is buried in historic Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston, South Carolina, USA.
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| The grave of Lt. John Grimball at Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston, SC. Photo courtesy of Find A Grave. |
John Grimball wouldn't be the last member of the Grimball family to serve the State of South Carolina and his country in time of war.
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| The Naval Ensign of the CSS Shenandoah behind a replica model of the vessel. The flag is currently on display at the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Virginia, USA. |
The special thanks to the following sources used for this article:
The Voyage of the CSS Shenandoah: A Memorable Cruise. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2014.
Waddell and James D Horan. C.S.S. Shenandoah: The Memoirs of Lieutenant Commanding James I. Waddell. Bluejacket Books. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1996.
The American Civil War Museum, Richmond, Virginia.
The U.S. Library of Congress.
The U.S. Naval History & Heritage Command archives.
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