USS Constellation on the Dismal Coast: Willie Leonard's Journal, 1859–1861

This seaman’s journal recounts a twenty-month voyage from Boston to the African coast to intercept slave-trading vessels as America approach the Civil War.

Today the twenty-gun sloop USS Constellation is a floating museum in Baltimore Harbor; in 1859 it was an emblem of the global power of the American sailing navy. William E. Leonard served aboard the Constellation during a crucial and eventful period, chronicling it all in this remarkable journal.

Sailing from Boston, the Constellation, flagship of the US African Squadron, was charged with the interception and capture of slave-trading vessels illegally en route from Africa to the Americas. During the Constellation’s deployment, the squadron captured a record number of these ships, liberating their human cargo and holding the captains and crews for criminal prosecution. At the same time, tensions at home and in the squadron increased as the American Civil War approached and erupted in April 1861.

Leonard recorded not only historic events but also fascinating details about his daily life as one of the nearly four-hundred-member crew. He saw himself as not just a diarist, but a reporter, making special efforts to seek out and record information about individual crewmen, shipboard practices, recreation and daily routine—from deck swabbing and standing watch to courts martial and dramatic performances by the Constellation Dramatic Society.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Dec 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781611172904

Book preview

Prologue

A three-masted wooden warship floats in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, embraced by modern office towers and market buildings. This veteran of distant seas and other centuries claims the center, while throngs of visitors eat ice cream cones and shop for jewelry or T-shirts in the shadow of its spars. For much of the twentieth century, this ship was believed to be the 1797 frigate Constellation. In fact, however, when the 1797 frigate was dismantled at the Gosport Navy Yard near Norfolk, Virginia, work was beginning on the 1854 sloop, likely reusing some timber from the old ship in building this very new one. The misidentification was maintained by deliberate deception, apparently to enhance the likelihood of the ship’s being preserved as a historic relic. Naval records and the evidence of the extant ship’s hull, though, make it clear that the vessel floating today dates from 1854. This second USS Constellation was the last all-sail ship constructed for the U.S. Navy, and as such it represents the ultimate in American design and craft of the Age of Fighting Sail. Also the only Civil War–era ship still afloat, Baltimore’s Constellation is a twenty-gun sloop, 199 feet long and displacing 1,400 tons.

The confused identity had the happy result of causing the people and city of Baltimore, where the first Constellation had been built in 1797, to claim this ship as their own. Thus it has been preserved. Baltimore’s claim is no less strong today, though the relationship has been revealed to be adoptive rather than one of birth.

Of the various assignments during a hundred-year career (1855–1955) with the U.S. Navy, the sloop Constellation’s most notable episode was the cruise from 1859 to 1861 as flagship of the African Squadron. The squadron’s specific mission was to interdict slave ships leaving the West African coast. During the Constellation’s time as flagship, the squadron experienced by far its greatest operational success, even as at home, under the stress of slavery, the national fabric frayed and split at the seams.

Importing slaves into the United States was effectively ended when it became illegal after 1808, and U.S. law also forbade American citizens from engaging in the shipment of slaves anywhere, not just into the States. The U.S. Navy had been an occasional presence on the West African coast since 1820, when the USS Cyane escorted the Elizabeth, carrying the first group of freed American slaves to settle in what would become Liberia. However not until 1843 was the U.S. African Squadron formally established. Its creation was the result of the 1842 Webster-Ashburton Treaty (Treaty of Washington) between the United States and Great Britain.

Britain had made slave trading illegal throughout its empire in 1807, followed by the abolition of slavery itself beginning in 1833. Leading a global effort against the slave trade, Britain had since 1807 maintained a naval squadron along the African coast and developed a series of treaties and understandings with other countries to aid in suppression of the trade. Those agreements permitted the Royal Navy’s African Squadron to stop and search ships flying the flags of various nations, with the most important exception being the United States. The British practice of stopping ships flying the U.S. flag had been a major issue in the War of 1812, something still very fresh in memory, and Americans were adamantly against signing away any bit of the sovereignty represented by the Stars and Stripes. Her Majesty’s captains repeatedly watched ships full of slaves sail away unmolested under the American flag, to deliver their unhappy cargoes to the sugar plantations of Brazil and Cuba. The British government, noting that such a vacuum of authority could not be permitted to continue, urged action on the part of the United States. Hence in 1842 when Lord Ashburton came to America to negotiate with Secretary of State Daniel Webster the boundary between Maine and Canada, the issue of the slave trade was included. The two countries agreed that each would maintain a naval squadron mounting no less than eighty guns patrolling the West African coast. The British squadron already existed, but the Americans had to create theirs.

In 1843 Commodore Matthew C. Perry was sent with several ships to Africa to begin squadron operations. The mission was twofold: to intercept American vessels engaged in the slave trade and to protect growing American commercial interests in the region. The intent of the U.S. administration was that setting up the new squadron would not increase the Navy budget. With a huge global merchant fleet but a small navy of only a few dozen effective ships, the United States maintained squadrons around the world—the Home Squadron in home waters and the Caribbean, the Pacific Squadron, the Brazil Squadron, and the Mediterranean Squadron—and the U.S. Navy now stretched to add the stepchild African Squadron.

For most of its existence, the U.S. African Squadron was more a political token than a serious effort to interdict the slave trade. Between its establishment and the Constellation’s deployment in 1859, the strength and effectiveness of the squadron fluctuated. Occasionally it mounted slightly more than eighty guns, but more often fewer, and several factors caused those few to be even less effective than they might have been. Though clearly a dozen small ships with a half-dozen guns each would be more effective than three or four ships mounting twenty to forty guns each, the squadron for most of its existence followed the latter model, despite repeated recommendations by experienced naval officers. Steam vessels were recommended too, but none were sent. The squadron’s base of operations (its rendezvous) at Porto Praya in the Cape Verde Islands was a thousand miles from the main patrol area, so the transit ate up time that might have been spent on station.

In the early 1850s, British involvement in the Crimean War drew attention and resources from the Royal Navy’s African Squadron, while the American squadron continued as more a token than an effort. Brazil outlawed the slave trade in 1850, and by the mid-1850s the trade into that country was effectively over. However, burgeoning demand in Cuba under the nonchalant Spanish rule, coupled with the sievelike naval interdiction, invited slave traders to make huge profits by shipping tens of thousands of slaves a year across the Atlantic to that island’s plantations. The ships, crews, and capital involved were frequently American, with New York a major clandestine center. The American flag also remained a convenient device for keeping the British at bay, with very little risk of interference from the U.S. Navy. But in the late 1850s, the Crimean War ended, and Britain renewed attention to the Atlantic slave trade, now running almost entirely to Cuba. Increased British pressure stimulated the American government under President James Buchanan into meaningful action on the African coast. Secretary of the Navy Isaac Toucey began steps to increase the size of the squadron, add steamships, and move the base of operations. Conveniently a number of small coastal steamers acquired for an expedition to Paraguay became available when that force returned home. Sailing ships were still valuable, though, and the Constellation was chosen to be the new squadron flagship.

While domestic events moved swiftly from crisis to crisis toward the open civil war that would lead to the extinction of slavery in the United States, the Constellation raised anchor and sailed to patrol the West African waters as flagship of the African Squadron. It was tedious work in often miserable weather. Yet there was success—some of the most notorious slavers were stopped, and thousands of slaves were freed from unimaginably wretched conditions. What was it like to live and work aboard such a ship at such a time? William Leonard can tell us.

Boston born and bred, young Billy Leonard served aboard the Constellation from beginning to end of the African cruise and recorded all of it in his journal. The shipboard experience itself is what most interested him and what he expected to interest his reader. He paid very little attention to the inhabitants, flora, fauna, or physical geography of the African coast. Writing every day and often several times a day—sometimes by lantern light on the berth deck and sometimes sitting in the gig waiting for the captain—he illuminated the daily life of the enlisted sailor. Herein lies the great value of his book. Viewing his journal as a report to his reader, Leonard made special efforts to acquaint us with other members of the crew and to seek out and record details of how the crew was organized, where they worked, and what they ate. He also shared the exciting pursuit and capture of the slave ship Cora, the poignant farewell of the Constellation’s captain to his command, and his own thoughts on the life of a navy sailor. As we turn the pages, we step into his world.

USS Constellation spar deck. Based on 1859 Yard Drawing in National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland.

USS Constellation gun deck. Based on 1859 Yard Drawing in National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland.

USS Constellation berth deck. Based on 1859 Yard Drawing in National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland.

June 1859

William Leonard had gone to sea once as a thirteen-year old, on a China clipper. Now, at age twenty-one, he joined the Navy. An easy walk from Leonard’s Bunker Hill neighborhood was Charlestown Navy Yard, one of the U.S. Navy’s most important bases. From there ships got under way for duty in the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the Orient, or the African coast. Since Leonard did not enlist for a particular ship, he could not know where he might be going. Clearly, though, he thought the experience would be interesting enough to record, and his friends had urged him to do so. By the time he had finished going about the Boston area making preparations on a cool rainy June day, he had acquired a large blank journal and written in it his first entry.

Though the twenty-first-century reader may be keenly aware that the America of mid-1859 was nearing civil war, at the time other topics claimed much public attention. Newspapers and illustrated weeklies headlined the sensational trial of Congressman Daniel Sickles, who had shot and killed his wife’s lover in front of their house on Lafayette Square, across the street from the White House. The victim was the D.C. district attorney and a son of Francis Scott Key, while Sickles was a notorious womanizer, but a great deal of public sentiment favored Sickles as a defender of domestic virtue. Using the plea of temporary insanity for the first time ever in American jurisprudence, Sickles won acquittal. A few years later, the aggrieved husband, having become a Union general, lost a leg at Gettysburg.

For now, though, warfare in Europe absorbed American readers’ attention. The battalions of French emperor Napoleon III, Austrian emperor Franz Joseph, and Italian hero Garibaldi maneuvered across the pages of city newspapers and Leslie’s Illustrated. A Bostonian’s finger might trace the troop movements through woodcut maps and panoramas accompanied by portraits of bemedaled leaders. Modern Italy was coalescing in the process of the Austro-Sardinian War, also to be known as the Second War of Italian Independence.

Readers wishing to be entertsained by a historical cataclysm more remote in time might have turned to Harper’s Weekly for installments of Charles Dickens’s new novel, A Tale of Two Cities.

Of U.S. naval interest was the return of the successful Paraguay Expedition. The American government had sent nineteen ships with two hundred guns and 2,500 men to South America to demand indemnity for the death of an American seaman. The fleet sent to Paraguay included seven shallow-draft steamers leased for the purpose of projecting American power up the Rio Plata. Upon their return the navy exercised a purchase option, making these ships available for antislaving work, two for the coast of Cuba and four to join the African Squadron. That squadron had been created to meet U.S. obligations under the 1842 Webster-Ashburton Treaty with Great Britain. After years of neglect, the squadron’s mission of interdicting the Middle Passage slave trade was now in 1859 getting serious interest from the Buchanan administration.

Slavery continued to vex the United States, as it had from the beginning. As the Boston Daily Advertiser observed, As usual of late years, the subject of slavery furnishes the chief question concerning our national politics at present.1 Yet for all the dissension, the country was still a union in 1859, and most people expected matters to remain so. Even when Mr. Lincoln of Illinois had warned in his speech the previous year that a house divided against itself cannot stand, he had explained, I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. In its column on newly published books, the Daily Advertiser mentioned a volume describing twenty-one men seen as possible U.S. presidential candidates in the coming year. The list included William Seward, Stephen Douglas, and Jefferson Davis—but not Abraham Lincoln.2

On the day Leonard began his journal, he undoubtedly looked out at the ships in Charlestown Navy Yard and wondered which of those present might soon be taking him far from home. Each ship flew an American flag with thirty-two stars, representing the states in the Union. At noon over the stern of a twenty-two-gun sloop, a new flag rose to join the others. The USS Constellation had been put back into commission, and preparations were beginning for its next voyage.

June 13th

Shipped in the United States Naval Service in Boston and got a fit out from Moses Ingols.

Moses Ingolls owned a clothing store at 244 North Street, Boston.3

June 14th

At 10 A.M. went on board the U.S. Receiving Ship Ohio, laying at Charlestown Navy Yard. The U.S. Sloop of war Constellation and steam sloop Hartford are in the stream at anchor and are going to sea in a few days. The U.S. steam Frigates Minnesota and Colorado are here laid up in ordinary. The new steam gun boat Narragansett, built at this yard, is in the dry dock getting coppered. Besides there are three Line of Battle ships here: the Ohio, which is used as a receiving ship; the Vermont, which has never been out of the harbor; and the Virginia, which is on the stocks and has been there the last 34 years.

This being my first time on board a man of war, I of course was very green; however, by the kindness of an old salt who swung my hammock and showed me what to do I got along very well. At sundown all hands were called to muster, after which we got our hammocks, and were allowed till nine o’clock to do what we pleased. I being tired and very homesick, I went to my hammock to turn in. It was a more difficult job than I imagined, for on trying to get in I pitched head foremost on the deck at the other side of it. After trying several more times with the same results, I was shown how to get in by a fellow who seemed to have great sport at my mishaps.

June 15th

The flag officer of the U.S. Ship Constellation went on board of his ship; immediately on his arrival they hoisted his flag, and fired a salute of 13 guns. The U.S. Sloop of war Hartford also saluted him, and another from the Navy Yard, which salutes were returned by the Constellation. I was told today that I am going aboard the Constellation. She is going to the Coast of Africa, to relieve the U.S. Ship Cumberland, which vessel had been over two years in commission. The U.S. Ship Hartford is also going to be a Flag Ship; she is a splendid ship—she is destined for the China Station.

Flag Officer William Inman reported on June 16 that he had hoisted his flag aboard the Constellation this day.4

Carrying the name of an illustrious eighteenth-century predecessor, this is the second Constellation. Launched only five years earlier, this twenty-gun sailing sloop is the last all-sail ship built for the U.S. Navy, as the service continued its shift to steam. The Boston Daily Advertiser described it as follows: This vessel is the finest corvette in the United States Navy, and carries a more formidable battery than any sailing ship of her size, in the world. She was inspected while cruising up the Mediterranean a few years ago, by all the British and French naval authorities on that station, who pronounced it the ‘crack sloop.’5

The Constellation’s new mission would be to serve as flagship of the U.S. African Squadron. By the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, the United States and Great Britain had agreed that each would keep a naval force of eighty guns off the West African coast to interdict slave ships. The reality proved to be that neither side consistently maintained the full force, though the Americans were more desultory than the British. The Royal Navy was nearly ten times the size of the U.S. Navy, and the British had considerable commercial interests as well as actual colonies in West Africa. They also had for decades pursued a clear policy of eliminating slavery and the slave trade in their empire and throughout the world.

Charlestown Navy Yard. Gleason’s Pictorial, February 1854. Gilliland Collection.

Though retaining slavery in its southern states, the United States too wished to suppress the transatlantic slave trade. A stronger motive for the United States to maintain an African Squadron was to prevent a regional vacuum into which the British would step, interfering with U.S.-flagged ships. The British had treaty arrangements permitting them to police the ships of various other nations as well as their own. However, the United States had no such agreement with Britain or any other country. Indeed quite the contrary—the Americans were vehement about permitting no interference with ships flying the American flag. The War of 1812 had been fought partly over that very issue. The net effect was that normally a U.S.-flagged ship could be stopped only by a U.S. Navy ship. At the same time, the U.S. Navy could not stop any ship legitimately flying the flag of another nation; they could arrest only American-flagged ships or ships claiming no flag at all, which were automatically considered illicit. Given a feeble U.S. Navy presence off the West African coast, plus the fact that American-built ships were of high quality and readily available, much—likely most—of the transatlantic slave traffic in this period moved on American ships and under the American flag. Their human cargoes were not shipped to the United States, however; the markets were Cuba and Brazil.

In the mid-1850s the Crimean War had drawn heavily on Britain’s naval resources, distracting from its West African effort. Now, that conflict over, more Royal Navy ships are available for Africa. Now too, prodded by the British, President James Buchanan has determined to put some muscle into the U.S. African Squadron.

June 16th

Leonard provided here a table of the ship’s officers. In the American navy at the time, the only ranks between midshipman and captain were lieutenant and commander, though when a lieutenant was in command of a ship he was titled lieutenant commanding. The Constellation rated a captain as commanding officer. Below Captain Nicholas came the lieutenants in order of seniority, with the most senior—the first lieutenant—being the executive officer. Eastman, the master, ranked just below the lieutenants. The four midshipmen were all recent graduates of the Naval Academy. Though Leonard listed Nicholas as the captain here in his entry for June 16, Nicholas did not take command until June 22, as will be seen in that day’s entry.

The captain normally occupied in solitary splendor a spacious cabin taking up the after end of the gun deck. It was divided for this voyage, giving half to the squadron commodore, Flag Officer Inman. Directly below, aft on the berth deck, cabins on either side of the central wardroom space went to the lieutenants and other more senior officers. Midshipmen and other junior (steerage) officers occupied sleeping and dining spaces further forward.

Leonard joined the two hundred enlisted crew sleeping and eating on the large, open enlisted berth deck space.

Was drafted on board the U.S. Flag Ship Constellation, and went aboard of her in the afternoon.

Midshipmen

Wilburn B. Hall, Walter R. Butt, George Borchert,

and Theodore F. Kane7

On my arriving aboard all hands were very busy taking in powder and ammunition. I was called aft by the 1st lieutenant and put into the After Guard, No. 238, and was also put into the steerage boat, the 3d cutter. On account of taking in powder there was no fire allowed in the ship, we therefore had a very late supper.

The least experienced crew members were generally assigned to the afterguard. No. 238 was Leonard’s billet and hammock number. The steerage boat, in this case the third cutter, was the one assigned for use of the junior officers; the senior officers’ boat was the wardroom boat, and the captain’s boat was the gig.

June 17th

Being the anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, we fired a national salute of thirty-three guns. The weather was very bad all day, raining all the time, thereby preventing a great many people from visiting the ship. It was very dull on board. Our captain’s boat, the gig, went up the Mystic River to witness the regatta. In the afternoon all hands were called aft and spliced the main brace.8 [Oregon had become the 33rd state in February; however, the ship was likely still flying a 32-star flag, because the new flag would not be in effect until July 4.]

The rain also prevented many planned activities ashore. Most public institutions in the city of Boston closed on that day so Bostonians could join the commemoration in Charlestown of the Battle of Bunker Hill. At sunrise, noon, and sunset, bells rang, and at noon an artillery salute was fired. Various parades, fireworks, and balloon ascensions were postponed, and the regatta Leonard mentioned (consisting of three rowing events for prize money) was one part of the celebration that rain did not prevent.9

June 18th

Being Saturday, all hands are very busy holystoning all the decks and cleaning the ship for tomorrow. Today one of the Marines was taken sick suddenly; his complaint proved to be the small pox. He was immediately taken to the hospital in Chelsea in our boat (3d cutter). Some of the boat’s crew improving the opportunity by taking a run to the nearest rum shop and getting pretty well drunk, the consequence was a rough and tumble fight between the stroke oarsman and the bowman before we got into the boat, and a general row on our way to the ship, which was participated in by the coxswain and all hands. After closing up several of each other’s eyes and knocking each other’s noses out of joint, we concluded to go to the navy yard and have another drink all round, after which we returned on board.

June 19th

Being Sunday, the ship’s company are preparing themselves for a general muster. At half past nine o’clock all hands were called to quarters for inspection, after which visitors were allowed to visit the ship in the afternoon. Some of the men went aboard the Ohio to visit.

The crew received their general quarters assignments. Each of the Constellation’s eight-inch shell guns required a crew of fourteen men plus a boy acting as powder monkey. As side tackleman Leonard would stand to the left side of his gun, hauling on a rope (the side-tackle) used to point the gun left or right and to run it in or out. If the order were given to board or to repel boarders, the gun crew would take up small arms and Leonard would serve as a pikeman, which by 1859 could mean he would be armed with either a pike or a carbine.10

June 20

Was stationed today at Quarters, at No. 4 gun of the First Division as first side tackle man and pikeman. At eleven o’clock the Governor of Rhode Island paid our ship a visit, and we fired a salute of 17 guns, all hands dressed in white frocks and blue pants.

June 21st

The gun deck divisions were called to quarters at nine o’clock, to drill at the large guns, and tell the guns’ crews what to do. After drilling about an hour, we secured the guns. All the Top men are to work in the rigging. Went ashore in the boat in the afternoon and had a run.

June 22nd

The port watch are to work cleaning hawse, or taking the turns out of the chain cables. We have got both anchors down and at every turn of the tide, the ship swings, thereby taking a turn in them every time she swings. Every other day we clear them. Our Captain, S. Wilson, came on board today. We fired a salute of nine guns. He is very lame and has to be supported when he walks; Capt. John S. Nicholas is appointed to take his place.

Captain Wilson had fallen on ice in front of his house in January and severely injured his hip; he was still using crutches. Though he still had hoped to go to sea with the Constellation, the doctors and secretary of the navy decided otherwise. However, his son, whom he had brought on as captain’s clerk, remained aboard for the cruise to Africa.

Capt. John S. Nicholas, fifty-nine, handsome, and of a distinguished Virginia family (his father had been governor), had been in the navy for forty-five years and commanded five ships prior to the Constellation. His career had seemed to be finished in 1855 when the Navy Efficiency Board, established to remove excess officers, had plucked Nicholas, among others. Lobbying by some of the affected officers and their friends succeeded in reversing the decision of the board in some cases, including that of then-commander Nicholas, whose restoration to the active list brought promotion to captain. Perhaps suspecting he could not get a more desirable command, he had then specifically asked for assignment to the African Squadron.

June 23

We are taking in wood and provisions, that come in launches from the navy yard. At 3 o’clock, roll. Our new captain, John S. Nicholas, came on board, and we honored him with a salute of nine guns. After looking at the ship, he gave orders for all hands to be called to exercise sail. He had the sails furled and loosed, reefed and mast headed several times, when he had the men piped down. He was very well satisfied with the exercise and made the remark that he would make a smart ship’s company of them.

June 24th

Before the Civil War, the highest rank in the U.S. Navy was captain, with captains in command of squadrons being given the courtesy title commodore. This still left such men at a disadvantage when meeting their counterparts from other nations, who could hold the rank of admiral, but sentiment in the United States associated that rank with undesirable class distinctions. In 1857 the navy came up with the odd compromise title of flag officer, given a captain when commanding a squadron. (The rear admiral rank was established in 1862.)

Flag Officer William H. Inman was sixty-two, having begun his navy service as a midshipman on the Great Lakes in 1812. Like Captain Nicholas, he too had been plucked by the Navy Efficiency Board of 1855 but then restored by Congress in 1859. He had experience with steamships, useful now that the African Squadron was getting its first steamers. It can be noted, though, that not only was his flagship a sailing sloop but also throughout his time in command of the squadron, he never shifted his flag to one of the various steamers at his disposal.11

Our flag officer is living ashore and his boat goes ashore after him at 1 A.M. Today the boat’s crew took French leave. At sundown, the boat not returning, the 3d cutter was sent in search of her. After pulling along the wharves for some time we found her at Long Wharf. Three of her men being in her, we took her and towed her alongside of the ship.12

June 25th

The U.S. Steam Sloop of war Hartford went past us on her way to China, where she is going to be flagship. Her officers gave a grand ball last evening on board of her, which was attended by several ladies and gentlemen from shore and all our officers. One of our gig’s crew deserted after carrying our captain ashore. We manned the rigging and gave her three hearty cheers.

The USS Hartford was a brand-new twenty-four-gun screw steam sloop. In 1864 in the Battle of Mobile Bay, while clinging to Hartford’s rigging, Adm. David Farragut gave the command famously remembered as Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!

June 26th

Being Sunday, the boatswain’s mate called the divisions to quarters to be inspected by the officers of the divisions. In the afternoon visitors were allowed to come on board and some of my friends came on board to see me. At sundown went ashore in the boat.

June 27th

The U.S. Sloop of war Savannah came to an anchor today astern of us; she saluted the navy yard and our flag officer. [She is] here to recruit ship [that is, to improve the health of the crew], as she has 100 men sick. We had several distinguished visitors on board. The ship Rufus Choate arrived here today from Liverpool.

A fifty-eight-gun frigate (not a sloop) with a 480-man crew, the USS Savannah had just returned from two years off the coast of Mexico as flagship of the Home Squadron, monitoring the Mexican civil war known as the War of Reform. In addition to a great many cases of various other diseases, hundreds of the crew had been stricken with intermittent fever, and Leonard’s estimate of a hundred on the sick list when he visited is close to the number officially reported. Exposure to the debilitating climate with absolutely no liberty ashore for a year would surely have worsened not only the crew’s health but its morale.13

When the Constellation joined the African Squadron, it was operating in what was commonly believed an especially unhealthy environment. African fever or coast fever (malaria or other fevers) took a steady toll on newcomers to the African coast. The navy had established strict sanitary regulations for operations on the African coast. The most important of these was that no sailor or officer could be ashore in Africa from late afternoon until late morning of the following day. Intended to avoid the bad air from which malaria takes its name, this regulation meant that navy personnel could not normally go much further up any African river than just past the mouth. However, the result was to keep everyone offshore during the morning and evening hours when mosquitoes, the real disease carriers, were active. What it also meant, of course, is that the crew of the Constellation could have overnight liberty only when their ship visited locations away from their patrol area. These dismal liberty conditions were another reason the African Squadron was not a navy favorite.

June 28th 1859

Went aboard of the U.S. Sloop of war Savannah. Her men are going to have liberty. They give a very bad account of her officers. She has been twelve months in commission and have not had one hour’s liberty. At one o’clock we returned on board of our own ship. All hands are to work clearing hawse.

June 29th

This day we done hardly anything in. The Boatswain piped to breakfast, after which we spread the awnings. All hands done what they liked. There are some of the workmen from the navy yard making several alterations.

June 30th

Sent down the main Topsail yard, to alter it in order to try a new patent reefing concern.14 We are getting in more provisions and water. My boatkeeping day. At sundown we sent up the main Topsail yard.

The provisions, including barrels of bread and salted beef and pork were hoisted aboard from boats alongside and stowed below. The ship’s water supply was pumped down into large iron tanks in the hold.

Each boat had a regularly assigned crew, Leonard having been assigned to the third cutter. When a boat was in the water awaiting use (they were stacked on the spar deck when the ship was underway), one man of the boat’s crew, the boatkeeper, was tasked with staying in the boat to keep an eye on it.

July 1859

July 1st

Today all hands were exercised at making sail in the afternoon. Small stores were served out to the messes by the purser’s steward.

July 2nd

Being Saturday all hands are very busy cleaning the ship for tomorrow. Several recruits came aboard today from the receiving ship Ohio. Had a run ashore today in the boat. At sundown exercised the men at sending up and down topgallant and Royal yards.

July 3rd

Being Sunday were called to quarters for inspection, after which visitors were allowed to come on board. I had the pleasure of seeing my father and sisters; felt very lonesome after they went and tried very hard to get ashore in order to spend the 4th of July at home, had a very kind friend to stand my security, thanks to him, but it was no use—the 1st lieutenant gave orders for nobody to leave the ship that day.

Last to take his hand in farewell was Miss Bella Blood, who smiled as she descended the port side of the Constellation and said, Goodbye, Billy, keep a good heart, two years are not long.1

July 4th

Being Independence Day, we dressed ship and fired a national salute of thirty-three guns. Our mess had a first rate dinner. I am boatkeeper today.

Fully dressed, the ship made a gay spectacle—American flags flew from the foremast, the mizzenmast, and the gaff, with the flag officer’s broad pennant atop the mainmast and the jack at the bow; additionally multitudinous other flags flew on a line running in an arc from the bowsprit across the tops of the three masts and down to the spanker boom over the stern.

Gun salutes from other navy ships resounded as well, and the city of Boston fired salutes morning, noon, and dusk as part of a general celebration.

July 5th

Getting in provisions and water, our boat had a very narrow escape from being run over by the East Boston Ferry boat. One of our men was put in the brig for being drunk.

July 6th

The flag officer’s official boat (his barge, as an admiral’s boat was called) having been seriously damaged, substitutions occurred that affected Leonard.

About thirty more recruits came on board from the Ohio. Our barge got stove, so they are using the ward room boat for a barge until she gets fixed and we are used as the ward room boat and go ashore two or three times a day.

July 7th

A navy ship carried enough crew to man half of its guns—either port or starboard—as normally only one side of the ship would be engaged. If, as sometimes did happen, opposing ships engaged both sides, the order would be Man both sides! and each gun crew would work a pair of guns on opposite sides, with most of the men running back and forth. The men of the Constellation practiced that evolution.

At nine o’clock the drum beat to general quarters; we worked both batteries.

July 8th

Leonard and some of the other new recruits had to wear the ill-fitting uniform items they got from the rendezvous, as a naval base or recruiting station was called.

All hands are dressed in white frocks and blue pants today. Some of us cut a very ridiculous figure, having nothing but rendezvous clothes; the frock I have got on is like a meal sack, it comes all over me.

July 9th

Saturday holystoned the spar and gun decks, very busy all cleaning up, for tomorrow we get fresh meat and vegetables; every day we are living first rate.

July 11th

Sunday, all hands were called to quarters for to be inspected, after which had a general muster round the capstan. The ship’s company’s names are called by the purser, each man answers to his name and rate, and passes round the capstan hat in hand. After muster we had a divine service, all hands attending. There were several ladies and gentlemen from the city; a clergyman from Charlestown officiated. During the service some noise was made in the port gangway and I was picked out by the officer of the deck as the one that made it. I was ordered to stand at the mast until the service was over. While standing there, a coasting schooner ran afoul of us, which broke up the service and got me clear of the mast. After getting her clear the visitors were allowed to come aboard. Had the pleasure of some of my friends. All hands dressed in white frocks and blue trousers and caps.

July 11th 1859

Leonard had an unpleasant encounter with Second Lieutenant Alexander Colden Rhind, who apparently had impressed officers on his previous ships as being arrogant, foul-mouthed, and generally difficult. By the time Leonard met him, Rhind had been court-martialed three times for such things as profane language, insubordination, and abuse of crewmen. Dismissed from the navy by the same board that had plucked Captain Nicholas and Flag Officer Inman, he too was reinstated in January 1859, after nearly four years out of the service. Though Rhind came from a distinguished New York family, he spent some of his formative years in the South. Now thirty-seven, he was engaged to Miss Fannie Page Hume, age twenty-three, who resided at Selma, her grandfather’s farm, near Orange, Virginia.

At 10 o’clock this day was called aft upon the quarter deck and reprimanded for what was done yesterday. On my denying the charge was told by him the least I said in a man of war the better it would be for me. After giving me a severe lecture, he told me that he would keep a sharp lookout for me, and if he did catch me foul, he would sweeten me, which I thought was not very encouraging in the beginning of a two years’ cruise. This officer was our 2nd lieutenant, A.C. Rhind. I came to the conclusion that if he was going to watch me I could not do any better than to keep myself very strait or else I might be sorry for it. Nothing else occurred this day.

July 12th

At eight A.M. two launch loads of provisions came alongside from the navy yard, which took all hands all the forenoon to get them in, with the yard and stay. The fifer plays a tune and they walk away with the yard and stay; everything in a man of war is done with music.

The Constellation had thirteen musicians.

July 13th

Very busy all this day getting ready for sea, hove up one of our anchors took our barge and dinghy inboard, and at sundown sent up top gallant, and royal yards. At seven o’clock in the evening the pleasure yacht Surprise with a party of my friends from Charlestown just coming from a fishing excursion went by us singing three cheers for the red, white, and blue and Billy Leonard too, which made me very homesick all that night.

July 14th

At half past eight o’clock we were all ready for sea. We hove short and then our boat went up to the navy yard for the 1st lieutenant. Met my father and bid him good life, we returned on board at half past nine. The steaming boat Walpole is alongside of us. At ten o’clock we hove up the anchor, and was towed down the harbor to Nantasket Roads, where we came at an anchor. At four o’clock we went to the town of Hull with some of our officers, and then returned on board. We are going to sea tomorrow. Wrote two letters up home to M.L.M. [Mary L. Moloney became Mrs. William Leonard.]

July 15th

Going to sea/put back

At 10 o’clock we hove up our anchor and went to sea, having a pilot on board. We had a very light wind all day. Towards night it began to freshen and at 7 P.M. there was a good 9 knot breeze. The pilot now wished to leave us, but at the request of the flag officer he remained on board. The reason was the ship was very crank and it was necessary to put back to get in more ballast. At half past 12 we tacked ship and stood in for Nantasket Roads again.

A ship that was crank would roll quickly and not sail well; in the extreme case, it could easily capsize. Lowering the ship’s center of gravity by adding ballast below or subtracting topside weight ameliorated the condition. Besides removing the two ten-inch pivot guns from the top (spar) deck, Inman ordered sixty tons of ballast added below.

July 16th

taking in more ballast

Early in the morning we came to an anchor in Nantasket Roads. In the afternoon we made preparations to take out our two large pivot guns, which being done we commenced taking in ballast which came down to us in a lighter from the navy yard.

July 17th

Sunday. We were taking in ballast all this day. In the afternoon all hands spliced the main brace, which is a glass of liquor. It is a beautiful day.

July 18th

The ballast is all in. We took out the shot and shell belonging to the pivot guns and put them in the lighter and then made preparations for sea.

Removing the pivot guns left the Constellation with the twenty guns for which it was rated: sixteen eight-inch shell guns in broadside and four long guns firing thirty-two-pound solid shot—two aft and two in the bows.2

July 19th

left the Pilot

At 10 o’clock we got underweigh [sic], with a good breeze, at 2 o’clock we hove aback the main topsail and left the pilot. Now our voyage commenced in earnest. Had about an eight knot breeze; the weather is very pleasant.

20th

The watch are to work in the rigging putting on chafing gear and the other watch putting the cables down the chain lockers. Had a good breeze all this [time] and going our course.

Chafing gear was canvas covering on parts of the rigging that might rub together. The cables were the anchor chains.

July 21st

At 10 o’clock the drum beat to general quarters and exercised the starboard battery. In the afternoon a bill was put up in the barber’s shop telling the prices of articles required in the navy, which will be seen on next page.

The last item on the list, a hand of grass, may be mysterious to many readers. The official uniform hat for sailors in the tropics, like the hats worn there by civilian sailors as well, was a flat straw hat. Sailors wove their own from straw purchased from the ship’s store.

July 22nd 1859

at sea/Sail Ho.

The first column is the division bill. They come out once a month and those who want any of the articles put down on their own division bill and has it charged to his account by the purser. The ship’s company are divided into five divisions. The second column is the mess bill and comes out the first of every month, the cook of each mess takes charge of them and is handed in to the purser’s steward by him. At eleven o’clock this day a sail was reported from the main Topsail yard, by the lookout, bearing two points on our lee bow, made her out to be a large ship, lost sight of her in the evening. Good wind and very pleasant weather all this day.

July 23d 1859

The wind died away and at 12 o’clock it was a dead calm, in the afternoon exercised sail at night had a good wind again. I had a lee wheel this day and a quarter lookout at night. The After Guard takes the lee wheel, the port gangway and the Starboard quarter lookouts. Very pleasant weather.

The after guard consisted of the men—usually less experienced—who handled the sails on the after masts and also had the duties Leonard mentioned. Standing the lee wheel watch, Leonard assisted a more senior man at the wheel, in whose lee he would normally stand.

July 24th

Sunday all hands were called to quarters for inspection, after which all hands were called to muster on the quarter deck, and the Articles of War were read by the 1st Lieutenant, after which we mustered round the capstan. Very fine weather.

The standard routine was to read the Articles of War (actually Rules for the Better Government of the Navy of the United States, passed by Congress in 1800) on the first Sunday of each month. This is the first time Leonard mentioned the practice, and the Articles were often be read on days other than the first Sunday of the month. However, they were read at least once a month, which was the real requirement. The complete Articles took nearly an hour to read aloud. A printed copy was posted where anyone could read it, but of course not all in the crew could be expected to be literate.3

July 25th

sea Sickness

We are now in the Gulf Stream and are having some delightful weather, the wind is fair and we have got the fore topmast studding sail set. There is a very heavy sea running which makes the ship pitch heavily, causing some of our green hands to pay their compliments to old Neptune.

July 26th

This morning the port watch scrubbed hammocks. We have got a good breeze, and we are in hopes of making a quick passage to Madeira, where we are going to have 24 hours liberty.

July 27th 1859

at sea

The Starboard watch scrubbed hammocks. A sail in sight on our weather beam but cannot make her out. We made some very fine sailing this day, logging it fourteen knots an hour.

July 28th

This day the gun deck divisions were called aft on the quarter deck and were formed into companies for musket drill. I