Blackwater Betrayal: The Ruthless Treatment of Milton and Pensacola by the Confederacy.

By Richard Kyle Smith

Blackwater Betrayal tells the story of the ruthless, ill-conceived scorched earth actions by the Confederacy of Mill Town, or Milton, on the Blackwater River in the Western Florida Panhandle and the rest of the Pensacola Bay area.

It tells the journey of John Geoghegan and how he became a successful blockade runner out of Pensacola. It is the story of Maria Moreno, the Spanish beauty whom John loves and almost loses.

It is the story of Johns friend Ben Jernigan, engaged to French-educated Amanda Rucker. Ben has no interest in war, so he hides in Yellow River swamp to avoid conscription but finds himself drawn out to help his friend Caleb, a slave who has killed in self-defense. He gets Amanda and her friends out of Milton and finally leaves the Southern ruins with John and his friends on his ship, the Carolina.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514417218

Richard Kyle Smith

Richard Kyle Smith is a retired Alabama CPA who was born and raised in Milton, Florida, and graduated from Samford University. After many years in public accounting, he served as finance director of the City of Hoover, Alabama (population 85,000), for sixteen years, where he received many awards for his financial reporting before retiring in 2001. Richard presently lives in Pelham Alabama.

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Copyright © 2015 by Richard Kyle Smith.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2015917139

ISBN:      Hardcover   978-1-5144-1723-2

                Softcover     978-1-5144-1722-5

                eBook           978-1-5144-1721-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 12/08/2015

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Author's Note

Introduction

Prologue

PART I

Chapter 1 John Geoghegan: Running the Union Blockade, 1861--1865

PART II

Chapter 2 John Geoghegan: Before the War Between the States

Chapter 3 Jose Garcia: River Gambia

Chapter 4 H. R. Parry: John's Departure

Chapter 5 Captain Eric Skultety: Malaga to Yarmouth

Chapter 6 The Hanshaw Brothers: Bear River, Nova Scotia

Chapter 7 Captain Burt McLocklin: Nova Scotia to Key West

Chapter 8 Maria Moreno: Pensacola

Chapter 9 The Mill Town: Milton, Florida

Chapter 10 Maria Sent to Spain

Chapter 11 John's Would-Be Captor, Oliver Watson

Chapter 12 Northern Hostility: John's Lack of Knowledge of Moreno's Plan

Chapter 13 Michael Smith

Chapter 14 Susanna

Chapter 15 Moreno Apologizes

Chapter 16 The First Blockade Run: The Union Boards the Carolina

Chapter 17 Halloween: Thirteenth Blockade Run

Chapter 18 Destroying Union Frigates

Chapter 19 John Finds Maria

PART III

Chapter 20 Ben Jernigan, Jacob Rucker, Amanda Rucker

Chapter 21 Ben Jernigan Waiting Out the War

Chapter 22 Caleb

Chapter 23 Clayton's Box: Trip to Milton

Chapter 24 Zeke: Caleb's Plan

Chapter 25 Ben's Trip for Guns and Ammunition

Chapter 26 Ben Saves Amanda

Chapter 27 Celeste, Escape from Milton

Chapter 28 Caleb Sails for Fort Pickens, Ben and Amanda Hide Out

Chapter 29 Amanda's Tragedy

Chapter 30 Ben's Viewpoint

Chapter 31 Yankee Racism

Chapter 32 Sister Alice

Chapter 33 Ben Finds John

Chapter 34 The Rest of John's Story

Chapter 35 Hernando Lopez, Jose Garcia

Chapter 36 Matt and Mark: Accumulating Trade Goods

Chapter 37 Charles W. Ware

Chapter 38 Going to Brazil: William Clayton's Suicide

Epilogue

This book is dedicated to the Confederate citizens,

most of whom owned no slaves,

who died when the Union invaded their homeland.

We are capable of many things in all directions of great virtues and great sins. And who, in his mind, has not probed the black water?

---John Steinbeck, East of Eden

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T here are many people I would like to thank for their work on this book: my sister-in-law Paula Smith and Elizabeth Hamilton for their excellent typing, editing, and suggestions; Brian Rucker for his book about Santa Rosa County, Florida, Blackwater and Yellow Pine ; Nathan Woolsey for his advice on historical matters; Carol Culton for her proofreading; as well as Mary Brewer, Caroline Thompson, and Judy Smith for their reading and suggestions. Thank you to Shad Helmstetter for his publishing advice and, finally, photographer Jerry Patterson for his work on the book photographs.

There are others who should be mentioned, but my old memory fails me. Thanks to them as well.

Richard Kyle Smith

June 24, 2015

AUTHOR'S NOTE

T he historical background of Blackwater Betrayal is essentially factual. The characters and their actions are fictional. Cedar Groove is fictional as is the Clayton family who lived there in the story.

I trust that my fictional account of the period depicted in the story fairly represents the hardships the Confederacy inflicted on its own people in the Pensacola Bay area during and after the War Between the States.

INTRODUCTION

T he Pensacola Bay area was booming in 1860, primarily because of the seemingly unlimited supply of virgin yellow pines that grew from the Gulf Coast to well up into Alabama. Milton, on the Blackwater River, was the most industrialized city in Florida before the war. Lumber for building, as well as all manner of wooden products, were manufactured and exported from Northwest Florida, known as the Florida Panhandle.

Because of the prosperity in Escambia, Santa Rosa, and Walton Counties, there was a significant Unionist sentiment, but a greater support for secession.

When the guns were fired at Fort Sumter, the Union army held Fort Pickens, located on the western tip of Santa Rosa Island, where it guarded access to Pensacola Bay. This allegedly eliminated Pensacola Bay as a place to run the Union blockade.

A north-south railroad had recently been built to Pensacola, going north to Montgomery, Alabama, and beyond. Union general Ulysses S. Grant was advancing his army into Western Tennessee and had to be stopped. Confederate general Braxton Bragg had about 5,000 Confederate soldiers in Pensacola. So it was decided by the Confederate secretary of war to not only leave the Pensacola Bay area defenseless by sending Bragg's army to Tennessee, but also to initiate a scorched earth policy for the entire bay area. This was to prevent anything useful from falling into the hands of the Union. General Bragg and his troops took the last train out of Pensacola (taking the rails up behind them to the Alabama line). After the Confederacy betrayed the Western Panhandle and destroyed their livelihood, most of the citizens went north to the relative safety of South Alabama. However, some petitioned the Union army for protection when Pensacola fell into Union hands. The Western Panhandle became a no-man's-land. A few stayed. This tale is about some of them.

PROLOGUE

B efore the War Between the States, affluent ladies and gentlemen of the city of Pensacola would sometimes be ferried from the mainland in the cool of the day to the sugar-fine white-sand beaches of Santa Rosa Island. The ladies would stand facing the surf in their long, full skirts and wide-brimmed hats in the late afternoon, silhouetted against the setting sun. Their children would play in the water or build sand castles. Salty breezes swept over them, carrying the aroma of the sea. Gulls cried as they hung motionless overhead. The waves pursued their ceaseless grasping for the shore. Later, the dog flies would blow in from the north and the pleasure of the moment would be gone.

PART I

CHAPTER 1

John Geoghegan: Running the Union Blockade, 1861--1865

J ohn had his own way of doing things. He and his crew slipped his ship, the Carolina , out of her hiding place up a deep bayou in the thick forest south of the burned-out towns of Milton and Bagdad, on a night when there would be no moon. John's ship was painted black with black sails. She moved into Blackwater River heading south. As the river widened to become the bay, friends with lanterns kept the Carolina in the channel. She quickly moved from Blackwater Bay into Pensacola Bay. John was then a bit more confident about the depth of the water.

He had to cross the bay at a speed that would move the ship within an area where he could see a signal from Fort Pickens---one lantern light to proceed, two if he should abort, or three if he should hold steady because a Union ship was too close to the mouth of the harbor.

If he got the proceed signal, he had to find the channel as only he knew how. John could see the lantern light. Only one---therefore, proceed! John was always at the wheel on these occasions. He finessed the ship around the western end of Santa Rosa Island where Fort Pickens was guarding the harbor.

He was close enough to the fort to see Union soldiers warming themselves by a fire on this cold January night. But the soldiers could not see the ship through the early-morning blackness.

The Carolina moved into the gulf. John was reading his compass by a candle well hidden on the deck near the wheel. He knew in what direction he needed to go to avoid running aground. John could see a blockader moving east away from them. No other ships were visible. Fortunately, there was a north wind behind them. John waited until the Carolina was several miles into the gulf before he started the steam engine that powered the screw propellers. To hear the steam engine and propellers was a comforting sound.

Now the crew replaced the black sails with white and ran up a Mexican flag. The crew started painting the top four feet of the outside of the ship white. It was amazing how fast the crew executed these tasks.

John had a highly motivated crew. John's crew was made up entirely of men of Spanish descent, left over from when the Florida Panhandle belonged to Spain. They all spoke both Spanish and English. The reason for this was in case they were ever approached or even boarded by the crew of a Union vessel, the crew of the Carolina would converse in Spanish while John hid below. In the unlikely event a Union sailor could speak Spanish, he certainly could not tell the difference between Mexican Spanish and West Florida Spanish. John was prepared.

He rehearsed this useful but seemingly unlikely scenario with his crew before every mission just to be prepared. First they would always speak rapidly in case the federal sailor's grasp of Spanish was not very good. They would laugh and look puzzled when the sailor tried to speak Spanish.

If the crew was confronted by someone proficient in Spanish, they had elaborate maps, plans, and documents to confirm the legitimacy of their journey---where they came from and other useful information to deceive the Northerners. If their location was inconsistent with their course, they had a story of privateers or Confederates pursuing them, causing the ship to be off course. Their last action, if all else failed, would be to kill the intruders and try to escape. This cost John plenty because the crew was well rewarded if the mission was a success, but so was John.

The War Between the States was not John's war. He didn't arrive in West Florida until a few years before the war began. He was a wanted man. The Royal Navy was offering a five-hundred-pound reward for information that would lead to his arrest. John knew he would probably be found guilty, though, in reality, the facts did not support a guilty verdict. So he was trying to avoid being