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12 Bringing the Fingal home november–December 1861 Makin wanted to run for Port royal. Bulloch and anderson decided not; it would be savannah as planned. Bulloch wanted to get the Fingal inside the blockaders and hug the shore as closely as he dared. Major anderson understood the strategy: “My naval education had taught me that of all things most dreaded by the commanders of men of war that of being in shoal water near a coast was the greatest bug bear, and that none of them were likely to venture inside of twenty fathoms.”1 fully loaded, the Fingal drew between fifteen and sixteen feet—two and a half fathoms plus. Bulloch would make landfall off Wassaw sound and wait off the entrance until daylight. if Pilot Makin recovered his confidence they’d enter Wassaw and ascend Wilmington river. if Makin was unwilling to risk Wassaw, they’d run for Tybee roads, right into the teeth of the blockade. anderson, Bulloch, and John low all took sightings every half hour and compared their findings. adjusting for the Gulf stream’s northward push and the ebb tide’s eastward tug, they kept the ship dead on course. about 1:00 A.m. the Fingal got alongshore soundings. Bulloch was looking for one of Tattnall’s vessels to escort them in. he knew from Mallory’s dispatches that an invasion was in the making, but he had no way of knowing of the battle at Port royal, or that he was running toward Du Pont’s great armada. although the moon set early, the night was bright and visibility good. off to the west a dark line on the water could be seen. Makin said it was mist hanging over the marshes, and it would soon roll out to them. sure enough, in half an hour, “we felt a cool damp air on our faces, then a few big drops of moisture, and we ran straight into as nice a fog as any reasonable blockade-runner could have Bringing the Fingal home / 89 wanted.” all lights had been covered—ports holes, engine room hatches, binnacle. “not a word was spoken, and there was not a sound but the throb of the engines and the slight ‘shir-r-r’ made by the friction of the ship through the water.” When the leadsman found six fathoms Bulloch had captain anderson order the engines to slow. at three and a quarter fathoms he turned the ship’s head east into the light swell and stopped the engines. now the waiting began. all ears strained to catch the chuff and hiss of a roving blockader’s steam engine. and eyes strained to penetrate the fog. Throughout the night and into the early morning they kept silence, and looked and listened. and in the intense stillness of that deepest dark just before dawn, with every nerve alert to catch the slightest sound, “there burst upon our ears a shrill prolonged quavering shriek,” said Bulloch. “it reverberated far and near, alow and aloft, and must have been carried far out to sea and been heard by the blockaders beyond us.” it was, Bulloch thought, “unearthly.” in a moment the sound was repeated, but we were prepared, and it was this time accompanied by a flapping and rustling noise from a “hencoop” in the gangway. “it is the cock that came aboard at Bermuda,” said some one. . . . [George] freemantle thrust his arm into the coop, drew out an unhappy fowl, and wrung off its head with a vicious swing. But it was the wrong one, and chanticleer crowed again defiantly. “Try again,” came up in an audible whisper from under the bridge; but freemantle’s second effort was more disastrous than the first. he not only failed to seize the obnoxious screamer, but he set the whole hennery in commotion, and the “Mujan” cock, from a safe corner, crowed and croaked, and fairly chuckled over the fuss of feathers , the cackling, and the distracting strife he had aroused. feeling for spurs, freemantle finally came up with the cock, fetched him a full arm swing and let him fall, running and flopping headless, on the deck. said Bulloch : “We were once again favoured with a profound stillness.”2 and once again, they settled down to wait. as the eastern sky began to lighten, “there came over the water from the land side an old familiar odor,” said Major anderson. “it was the smell of the salt marsh . . . and then...

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