The Maple Leaf Adventure
A Florida Civil War Shipwreck Reveals Civilian and Soldier Life in the
by Thomas M. Fleming
The sinking of the troop transport Maple Leaf on April 1, 1864, by a
Confederate mine floating in the St. Johns River near Jacksonville, Florida, is
an event unknown even to most people well-versed in the history of the American
Civil War. It took place in a relative backwater of that conflict, resulted in
comparatively few casualties, and determined the outcome of no major battle or
campaign. Yet, a colorful story lies behind the Maple Leaf and the
people she carried, on dinner cruises and later to war, in cool Northern waters
and in warm Southern ones. It is a story of bustling commerce and small-town
recreation in the mid-19th century Northeast, as well as of military daring,
frustration, and suffering along the coasts and rivers of the rebellious
Southeast. The story ties together the lives and fortunes of people from
Canada, through upstate New York to the Midwest, and across the South from
Virginia to Florida and beyond. The prodigious research and labor that
uncovered this story, as well as the remarkable physical record that it
produced, has left us with a vivid picture of life as it was lived by the
ordinary soldier and civilian family a century and a half ago.
The Life of a Steamer on Lake Ontario
The Maple Leaf's beginnings were about as far removed from Florida and
war as they could be. She was constructed in Kingston, Ontario for a Canadian
shipping firm and launched there in June, 1851. A wooden side-wheel steamer
built to carry passengers, freight, and mail among the growing communities
lining both sides of Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River, the Maple Leaf
displaced 398 tons and was 181 feet long and 25 feet wide at the beam, and had
a loaded draft of about 8 feet. The main deck was covered by a second or
passenger deck for its entire length, which held a pilot house forward and a
central "saloon" 130 feet long, surrounded by passenger staterooms. In the
front of the saloon were the main dining room and officers' quarters, and on
top of the saloon deck was a hurricane deck on which were stored the ship's
Maple Leaf plied several different passenger and mail routes across
and along the length of Lake Ontario during her first four years, but in April
1855, with her Canadian owners in severe financial straits, she was sold to a
new joint stock company based in Rochester, New York. For the next seven years
the Port of Rochester at Charlotte, New York, at the confluence of the Genesee
River and Lake Ontario, was Maple Leaf's home. These were her greatest
days as a lake steamer, and she would have "the attention of daily news
coverage, announcing her every arrival and departure, and every detail of her
career" during her following years on Lake Ontario.
Several times a week, the Maple Leaf ferried passengers and freight
between Rochester and Toronto, Cobourg, and other Canadian and American ports.
But she provided far more than just practical transportation:
Among the most popular cruises from Rochester were the "moonlight excursions"
scheduled about once a week during the warm summer seasons. The Maple Leaf
would leave Charlotte about dusk, after the arrival of the train from the city.
Cost of the excursion, including round trip train fare, was usually 75 cents. A
"good band" was always on board "to enliven the party, and give an opportunity
for dancing." After some three hours spent cruising about on the waters of the
open lake, the Maple Leaf would head back to port where the
excursionists could board the train for return to the city depot about
When the Prince of Wales toured Canada in September, 1860, the Maple Leaf
conducted two special excursions from Rochester to meet the Royal entourage on
its voyage from Kingston to Toronto on the steamer Kingston--just a
few weeks before Michael Corcoran and the 69th New York State Militia delighted
Irishmen across America by refusing to parade before the Prince during his
visit to New York City. Another popular trip for north shore Canadians was an
excursion on the Maple Leaf to Niagara to see the celebrated Blondin
perform on the tight rope high above Niagara Falls.
The Maple Leaf Goes to War
But the glory days of steamboats on Lake Ontario were numbered. Competition
from the railroads increased as lines were extended along the lake shore
throughout the 1850s. By 1860 railroad competition and the economic panic of
1857 caused a major decline in lake commerce, while the outbreak of civil
war in the United States put a damper on excursion business. By 1862, business
was poor and profits sparse, and the route to the north shore had become a
problem because of the hostile attitudes of many Canadians sympathetic to the
Confederate cause. Indeed, the Maple Leaf's last Fourth of July
excursion to Cobourg was marred when rowdies on the dock pelted the ship's band
with sticks after it started playing "Yankee Doodle" instead of "Dixie"; on its
return to drop off Canadian passengers two days later, another such gang "threw
eggs at the band, cheered for Jeff Davis and Beauregard and made themselves
ridiculous generally, a cheap way they have of showing their sympathy with the
Under these conditions, Great Lakes ship owners were eager to accept the large
amounts of cash being offered for their vessels by ship brokers looking to
charter them to the federal government for use in the widening Civil War. The
brokers, on the other hand, could easily afford to offer attractive sums,
knowing what prices the government was willing to pay to obtain use of ships
for hauling troops and supplies along the East Coast. The times finally caught
up with the Maple Leaf in August 1862, when she was sold to a Boston
firm and then chartered into United States service. Late in the evening of the
14th, after discharging passengers in Charlotte from her last excursion up the
Lake shore, the Maple Leaf steamed quietly out of the Genesee forever.
She made her way up the St. Lawrence River and then down the coast to Boston,
where she was thoroughly overhauled. On September 8 she arrived at Fort Monroe
on the Union-held Virginia coast, where she began her new life as a military
Most of the Maple Leaf's service along the Atlantic coast was routine,
ferrying troops, equipment, and supplies between such places as Baltimore, Fort
Monroe, Fort Delaware, Norfolk, and Folly Island, South Carolina. On occasion
she also transported Confederate prisoners of war, and one such assignment
proved anything but routine. On the afternoon of June 9, 1863, as the Maple
Leaf was transporting 97 Confederate officers from Fort Monroe toward
indefinite confinement at Fort Delaware, the prisoners--among whom was Captain
Oliver J. Semmes, son of Raphael Semmes, commander of the famous commerce
raider CSS Alabama -- hatched a plot among themselves to overpower the
12-man detachment guarding them and escape. They were encouraged in this plan
upon discovering that the guards' muskets weren't loaded. At a given signal the
prisoners subdued their guards, informed the Maple Leaf's captain that one of
their number--a rebel gunboat commander--was now in charge, and told him to
turn the vessel around and head south. After abandoning an idea to sail to
Nassau due to a lack of coal and the risk of interception by federal blockading
squadrons, the prisoners decided to make their way ashore and try to reach
Confederate lines from there. Leaving behind 27 prisoners who elected to stay
with the Maple Leaf, the remaining 70 took the Maple Leaf 's
small boats and rowed to the North Carolina shore on or near Knott's Island,
about 10 miles south of Cape Henry, Virginia.
After their departure, the Maple Leaf returned immediately to Fort
Monroe. The escape was reported to the acting fort commandant, who wired
federal commanders in the area where the Rebel officers were thought to be,
asking that cavalry be sent in pursuit. Not long after, Confederate Secretary
of War James .A. Seddon sent a message to C.S.A. Gen. D.H. Hill, asking him to
send a cavalry diversion to Camden County to help the prisoners avoid
capture. Meanwhile, the prisoners had travelled south down Knott's Island,
where they were fed at the home of a rebel sympathizer, who then took them by
boat accross Currituck Sound to the mainland. Eluding the federal cavalry
pursuit, they broke into smaller groups and made their way through the woods
and swamps with the help of rebel guerillas and sympathizers in the area.
Finally meeting up in Weldon, North Carolina, they took a train back to
Richmond on June 22, and after several days' rest there returned to their
Upon his return the day after Maple Leaf landed at Fort Monroe, post
commander Major General John A. Dix sent a message about the incident to
General Henry W. Halleck, the Union army's general-in-chief in Washington.
A federal Army investigation subsequently determined that blame for the escape
rested with the lieutenant of the guard detachment aboard Maple Leaf, for
failure to assure that the guards' muskets were loaded, and he was
administratively dismissed from the Army at the direction of President
Lincoln. Nevertheless, "[t]he 'Capture of the Maple Leaf' became one of the
most oft-recited adventures of the war in Virginia."
The Maple Leaf Meets the 112th New York
Two months after the embarrassing escape incident, the destiny of the Maple
Leaf first became unhappily entwined with that of the 112th New York
Volunteer Infantry, a regiment raised in the summer of 1862 in the wooded hills
of Chautauqua County, New York, only about 100 miles southwest of the Maple
Leaf's former home port in Rochester. Among her passengers from
Portsmouth, Virginia to Hilton Head, South Carolina in August 1863, in support
of Major General Quincy Gillmore's siege of Charleston, were several companies
from the 112th. The boat and her crew did not make the most favorable
impression on the men of the 112th, according to their chaplain:
On board the Maple Leaf , the only object, from the Captain down to
the deck hands, seemed to be to make money out of the necessities of the
Regiment. Men were charged five cents for the privilege of boiling their
coffee, and officers the highest New York prices for board of the meanest sort;
and this on board of a boat receiving an enormous sum from the government for
As events would prove, this would not be the most unfortunate experience the
men of the 112th would have with the ship that once plied the waters of Lake
Ontario near their home.
The 112th's sojourn near Charleston over the following months was not a
pleasant one. Camped on Folly Island between the Atlantic and the swamps of
southeastern South Carolina, the men were dogged by oppressive heat, blowing
sand, and voracious mosquitoes, and sought distraction from their suffering by
combing the island's beaches in search of unusual and attractive seashells.
Relief of sorts from their boredom came in an expedition to Johns Island, South
Carolina in February 1864. Brigaded with the 169th New York Volunteers in a
force under the command of Brigadier General Alexander Schimmelfennig, the
operation's objective was to strike quickly across Johns Island and destroy the
Savannah & Charleston Railroad bridge at Rantowle's Creek, an action which
would threaten Charleston from the rear and cause the Confederates to withhold
troops which might otherwise be sent to oppose General Truman Seymour's
simultaneous expedition to Jacksonville, Florida. From February 7 to the 12th,
the federal force marched across several islands, skirmishing with small
detachments of Confederate defenders, and passed by or camped near as many 17
abandoned plantation houses. Along the way the men may have helped themselves
to dishes, glasses, silver, fancy doorknobs, and other items from these homes,
some of which had been imported from Europe and the Orient. Their diversionary
object (if not the bridge's destruction) accomplished, the men returned to
their Folly Island camp on the 12th.
The 112th's rest back at Folly, however, was brief. On February 22, orders were
received to move to the Florida area of operations in support of General
Seymour's expedition to seal off that state, and its supplies, from Confederate
forces further north. The men of the 112th were not unhappy about leaving Folly
Island; as one private ruefully declared, "Goodbye, old sand-patch, the fleas
and mosquitoes and fiddlers are welcome to you."
Meanwhile on February 7, just as the 112th and its brethren were beginning
their diversionary move across Johns Island, the Maple Leaf was
delivering General Seymour to Jacksonville to launch the main thrust of the
expedition. A force of about 5500 federal troops started inching its way
west from Jacksonville on February 8, headed for the Suwannee River and perhaps
even Tallahassee. On February 20, however, they collided with a well-prepared
Confederate force of almost equal size about ten miles east of Lake City, near
the railroad station at Olustee, under the command of Brig. Gen. Joseph
Finegan. After a day-long battle that cost them almost 2000 casualties, and a
desperate rearguard stand by the 35th United States Colored Troops and the
famous 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry, the federals were forced to retreat
back to Jacksonville.
Hurriedly dispatched from Folly Island, the 112th disembarked at Jacksonville
on February 25, five days after the Olustee debacle. The men were immediately
put to work digging rifle pits and entrenchments outside the city, but the
ensuing few weeks were otherwise pleasant for them after their previous South
Carolina service. Cpl. Manhattan Pickett of Company B wrote home to his parents
in Charlotte, New York--the Maple Leaf's former home port--that:
Jacksonville is quite a pretty place, or was. The town has been sadly
disfigured by fire. The rebels burned all the mills, which were owned by
Northern men, and in revenge, a Maine regiment set fire to the town and burned
a number of buildings. This was in the spring of 1863. The weather here now is
similar to June in Chautauqua. Oranges are plenty; peaches and cherries grow
It so happened that when the 112th and the rest of its brigade (the 169th New
York and the 13th Indiana Volunteers) were rushed south to support General
Seymour's Florida expedition, much of their camp equipage and personal baggage
was left behind in South Carolina. On March 26, 1864, this property--along with
thousands of dollars in sutler's stores--was loaded aboard the Maple Leaf
at Folly Island. After a stop at Hilton Head, she turned south and arrived at
Jacksonville about 5 p.m. on March 30. Her deck cargo, as well as 60 soldiers
of the 112th who had stayed behind at Folly Island, came off the ship at this
time. But the cargo in the holds, including the brigade's camp equipment and
baggage, was not unloaded. Instead, the boat was ordered to proceed immediately
further up the St. Johns River to Palatka, a little over 45 miles (as the crow
flies) south, with a detachment of Massachusetts cavalry, its horses and
equipment, and ten soldiers detailed from the 112th to guard the baggage and
the stores in the cargo holds. The Maple Leaf left for Palatka at 9 p.m. in
convoy with two other steamers, the General Hunter and Harriet Weed
The Sinking of the Maple Leaf
The convoy enjoyed a quiet trip up the St. Johns that night, but Confederate
forces on the river's western bank were not sleeping. Perhaps even as the ships
passed, a dozen "torpedoes" (what we would call "mines" today), each packed
with 70 pounds of small-grain cannon powder, were being placed in the river off
Mandarin Point, about 12 miles south of Jacksonville. The work was done by five
soldiers from the Second Florida Battalion and Captain E. Pliny Bryan, an
experienced intelligence operative detached for duty in Florida from General
Pierre G.T. Beauregard's staff at Charleston. The device consisted of a
tar-coated wooden keg two feet long and a foot and a half in diameter, with six
iron hoops around it and two solid wood cones a foot and a quarter high secured
at each end of the keg to provide flotation. A brass fitting was screwed into
the keg, which contained the trigger-plunger and the percussion cap to ignite
the black powder in the keg. The torpedoes were held in place by moorings
just below the surface of the water where they were concealed from view.
The evident purpose of their placement was to disrupt Union army boat traffic
on the St. Johns, thereby preventing reinforcement and supply of Federal
outposts like that at Palatka, and discouraging Federal raids against river
towns and plantations harboring Confederate troops and guerillas.
The convoy from Jacksonville, including the Maple Leaf, arrived at
Palatka about 4 a.m. on March 31 and discharged the cavalry detachment and
supplies it had picked up in Jacksonville. As standing orders required night
travel on the St. Johns, the Maple Leaf left for the return trip to
Jacksonville at 11:15 p.m. without the General Hunter and Harriet Weed
, which had been held in Palatka. Her holds were still full of equipment and
property belonging to the 112th New York and the other regiments in its
brigade, as well as the sutler's stores.
It was a clear, moonlit night as the Maple Leaf wended its way north.
The river was still and smooth, except for the boat's paddle wheels softly
thrashing the water. About 4 a.m., as the pilot neared Mandarin Point and eased
the boat toward the eastern side of the channel, she glided over or struck one
of Captain Bryan's torpedoes. The device exploded with a tremendous roar near
the keel, about 30 feet from the bow of the ship. The pilot and quartermaster
were lifted off their feet by the force of the blast and struck their heads on
the roof of the pilot house, which pitched forward and caused the ship's steam
whistle to begin screaming incessantly. The air was filled with the stench of
black powder smoke and the crack of breaking timbers. In less than two minutes
the decks gave way, inrushing water extinguished the boiler fires, and the
craft settled into the river bottom, with nothing but the top of her wheelhouse
and part of the smokestack visible above the surface. All those aboard could do
was man the lifeboats. In short order, 58 passengers and crewmen were loaded
into the boats, which were headed for Jacksonville by 4:30 a.m. Eight people
remained aboard: four Confederate prisoners who were refused places on the
lifeboats, and four black crewmen who were killed in the forecastle by the
blast of the torpedo.
A Navy gunboat carrying officers from the Maple Leaf returned to the
place of her sinking a few hours after the lifeboats arrived in Jacksonville.
After examining what was left, they deemed the ship and all her cargo a total
loss. The next day, Captain Bryan and his compatriots boarded what remained of
the boat above the river's surface, and burned it to the water line.
One can only imagine the dismay felt by the men of the 112th New York, 169th
New York, and 13th Indiana back in Jacksonville, upon learning that all of
their regimental property and many of their personal belongings now rested on
the muddy bottom of the St. Johns River. Some men lost more than others, as one
corporal of the 112th wryly observed in a letter home to his parents:
. . . all the baggage [was] lost. All the co. books of the regt & all of
the officers clothing was lost. The 13 Ind sutler lost all his goods & 2000
dollars in money. All the tents for the brigade were lost. The most of my loss
was a dress coat.
The shattered remnants of the Maple Leaf , including her cargo of
sutler's stores and equipment for three Union regiments, sat undisturbed on the
bottom of the St. Johns River for 124 years. Most of it remains there to this
Resurrecting the Maple Leaf
But that isn't the end of the Maple Leaf story. In 1984, a group of
amateur historians led by Dr. Keith V. Holland of Jacksonville located the site
of the wreck at the bottom of the St. Johns. Soon after, the group formed a
company, St. Johns Archaeological Expeditions, Inc.(SJAEI), to further research
and develop the site, obtain the necessary legal authorizations, and work with
various public authorities to determine the ownership and presentation of
materials recovered. In 1988, after years of research, legal proceedings, and
negotiations with state and federal agencies, divers finally entered the intact
hull, located under 20 feet of water and 3 to 7 feet of mud, to remove a core
sample of material. Nearly 3000 individual objects were brought to the surface
in a much larger excavation the following year.
What the searchers recovered was just a fraction of a treasure-trove of Civil
War artifacts, remarkably well-preserved in anaerobic mud and tannin-suffused
water, consisting of the equipment and belongings of officers and men in a
brigade headquarters and three U.S. Army infantry regiments (the 112th New York
Volunteers, the 169th New York Volunteers, and the 13th Indiana Infantry), as
well as the stock of at least two sutlers. Among the types of items
Also found in the Maple Leaf's holds were sea shells, apparently
collected by the soldiers during their long service on the Atlantic shore in
South Carolina. Even more unusual were the numerous items of civilian (and
sometimes ornate) dishware and cutlery found, including many plates, platters,
serving bowls, pitchers, cups, and saucers, as well as fancy door knobs and
window panes. The circumstances indicate that these items were looted from
plantation homes during the brigade's expedition into the South Carolina
Camp equipment: tents (including shelter halves); tent poles
(including side and ridge poles); camp stoves; lanterns; shovels, axes,
hatchets, hammers, and other camp tools; wooden matches; field desks
Mess equipment: mess plates, pails and pans; forks; spoons;
and knives; tin cups; ladles; coffee pots
Accoutrements, clothing, and other issued items: canteens;
belts; belt plates and buckles; cartridge boxes; cap pouches; knapsacks;
haversacks; gum blankets; buttons (coat and shirt); shoes (and pieces of
Soldier's personal items: smoking pipes; twists of tobacco;
toothbrushes; razors; shaving paste jars; shaving mirrors; combs (mustache,
lice and hair) and hair brushes; shoe blacking; candles and candlesticks; pens,
pencils, ink, and inkwells; dominoes; checker pieces; daguerreotypes;
housewives (personal sewing kits)
Officer's items: spurs; officers' belts; wool sashes; boots;
shoulder straps; dress swords; pocket watch
Medical supplies: medicine bottles; sponges; tourniquets;
mortar and pestle; boxes of surgeon's supplies
Other items: musical instruments (fifes, flutes, a clarinet, a
violin); scales and balances; funnels; wooden barrels.
After completing site work in 1989, SJAEI spent two years developing a
conservation laboratory to preserve the artifacts, with funding from the state
of Florida and with the assistance of the East Carolina University Program in
Maritime History and Nautical Archaeology, and the Jacksonville Museum of
Science and History (MOSH). A permanent, interactive exhibit was opened at MOSH
in 1991, featuring a large collection of artifacts recovered from the Maple
Leaf, displays presenting the boat's history and the science involved
in the artifacts' conservation, and a video documentary on the Maple Leaf
Project. A smaller, traveling version of the exhibit is maintained through
the Museum of Florida History, and recently appeared for several months at
the Fenton History Center in Jamestown, Chautauqua County, New York--home of
the 112th New York.
According to Edwin C. Bearss, former Chief Historian of the United States
Department of Interior, National Park Service, "the Wreck of the Maple Leaf
is unsurpassed as a source for Civil War material culture. The site combines
one of the largest ships sunk during the war, carrying all the worldly goods of
more than a thousand soldiers, with a river bottom environment that perfectly
preserved the ship and cargo. It is the most important repository of Civil War
artifacts ever found and probably will remain so."
From a broader perspective, perhaps the most striking thing about the Maple
Leaf is how superb a vehicle she is for insight into the day-to-day
lives of ordinary Americans, at peace and in war, in the mid-19th century. The
extensive record of her peacetime service reflects the important roles,
commercial and recreational, she played in the daily lives of people on both
sides of Lake Ontario. The record of her wartime service, both written and in
the thousands of artifacts now recovered from her holds, shows us how the
common soldier lived and suffered, and the remarkable exploits of which he was
Show Footnotes and
. The following narrative is based
primarily on Keith V. Holland, et al., The Maple Leaf: An Extraordinary
American Civil War Shipwreck
(Jacksonville, FL: St. Johns
Archeological Expeditions, Inc. (1993)). Heavy reliance on this excellent work
is unavoidable, as it is the only comprehensive body of scholarship on the Maple
in existence. My thanks go to Dr. Keith V. Holland, the editor,
for his kind permission to make extensive use of the text and graphics from
that book for purposes of this article.
. Towart, James W., "The Maple Leaf in Historical Perspective," in Keith V.
Holland, et al., The Maple Leaf: An Extraordinary American Civil War Shipwreck
, p. 4 (Jacksonville, FL: St. Johns Archeological Expeditions, Inc. (1993))
[hereinafter Towart]; Holland, Keith Vaughn, United States Department of the
Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places
Registration Form, reproduced at
. Girvin, Gerald T. "The Maple Leaf Story Prior to the Civil War," in Keith
V. Holland, et al., The Maple Leaf: An Extraordinary American Civil War
, p. 78 (Jacksonville, FL: St. Johns Archeological
Expeditions, Inc. (1993)) [hereinafter Girvin].
. Girvin, n.3, pp. 92-93.
. East Carolina University Program in Maritime History and Nautical
Archaeology (ECU)--Introduction, reproduced at
. Girvin, n.3, p. 101.
. Id., pp. 103-104.
. Id., pp. 105-107.
. Casstevens, Frances Harding, Edward A. Wild and the African Brigade in
the Civil War,
pp. 128-129 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. (2003)
[hereinafter Casstevens]; Towart, James W. and Col. J.V. Witt, USA (Ret.),
"Maple Leaf as a Union Army Transport," in Keith V. Holland, et al., The Maple
Leaf: An Extraordinary American Civil War Shipwreck,
(Jacksonville, FL: St. Johns Archeological Expeditions, Inc. (1993))
[hereinafter Towart and Witt].
. The war of the rebellion: a compilation of the official records of the
Union and Confederate armies, Series 1, Volume 27 (Part III), p. 901
(Washington, D.C.: Govt. Print. Off. (1889)) [hereinafter Official Records].
. Casstevens, n. 10, pp. 129-130; Towart and Witt, n. 10, pp. 10-12.
. Official Records, n. 11, Series 1, Volume 27 (Part II), p. 786.
. Towart and Witt, n. 10, pp. 11-12.
. Parramore, Thomas C., Tommy L. Bogger and Peter C. Stewart, Norfolk: The
First Four Centuries,
p. 222 (Charlottesville, VA: University of
Virginia Press (1994)).
. For a collection of photographs of men who served in the 112th NY during
the events described in this article, see
. For a
web site containing letters, photographs, and a comprehensive history of the
112th NY, see http://www.112thnyvi.com/
. Ryberg, D.K., "Regiments With Baggage Aboard the Maple Leaf," in Keith V.
Holland, et al., The Maple Leaf: An Extraordinary American Civil ar Shipwreck
, pp. 31-34 (Jacksonville, FL: St. Johns Archeological Expeditions, Inc.
(1993)) [hereinafter Ryberg].
. Towart and Witt, n. 10, pp. 12-14, quoting William L. Hyde, History of
the 112th Regiment, New York Volunteers
, pp. 47, 48 (Fredonia, N.Y.:
McKinistry & Co., 1866).
. Ryberg, n. 17, p. 34.
. Towart, James W., "The Johns Island Expedition," in Keith V. Holland, et
al., The Maple Leaf: An Extraordinary American Civil War Shipwreck
pp. 45-52 (Jacksonville, FL: St. Johns Archeological Expeditions, Inc. (1993)).
. Ryberg, n. 17, p. 34.
. Towart and Witt, n. 10, p. 14.
. For a detailed review of the Battle of Olustee and the events leading up
to it, see the Battle of Olustee Home Page at
. Ryberg, n. 17, pp. 34-35.
. Towart and Witt, n. 10, pp. 14-15.
. Id., p. 16; Martin, Richard A., "The Great River War on the St. Johns,"
in Keith V. Holland, et al., The Maple Leaf: An Extraordinary American Civil
, p. 26 (Jacksonville, FL: St. Johns Archeological
Expeditions, Inc. (1993)) [hereinafter Martin]. For an interesting account of
Capt. Bryan's life and espionage work for Gens. Robert E. Lee and E. Porter
. Towart and Witt, n. 10, p. 17.
. Martin, n. 26, p. 25.
. Id. p. 23.
. Towart and Witt, n. 10, pp. 14-15.
. This description of the sinking is based on testimony given at the Board
of Survey convened by Brigadier General Jonathan P. Hatch by Special Order
No.60, at Jacksonville, Florida, on April 2, 1864, to investigate and report on
the loss of the Maple Leaf
, reproduced as "Army Report on the Loss of
the Maple Leaf
" in Keith V. Holland, et al., The Maple Leaf: An
Extraordinary American Civil War Shipwreck
, pp. 55-62 (Jacksonville,
FL: St. Johns Archeological Expeditions, Inc. (1993)).
. Towart and Witt, n. 10, p. 7; Official Records, n. 11, Volume 35 (Part I), p. 381 (report of Capt. E. Pliny Bryan to Maj. Gen. Patton Anderson, Apr 4, 1864).
The sinking of the Maple Leaf
only the opening salvo of the Confederacy's war on Union shipping on the St.
Johns. Ironically, both of the ships that accompanied Maple Leaf on her trip
from Jacksonville to Palatka on the night of March 30, 1864, the General Hunter
and Harriet Weed
, were destroyed by Confederate torpedoes within a few
days: the former on April 16 near Mandarin Point and only a few feet away from
the wreck of the Maple Leaf
(and apparently by another of Capt.
Bryan's devices), and the latter on May 9, near St. Johns Bluff about 12 miles
east of Jacksonville. Id. p. 17; Martin, n. 26, pp. 26-27.
. Letter from Cpl. Robert L. Coe, Co. H, 112th NYVI, April 3, 1864,
reproduced at http://www.112thnyvi.com/page18.html
used with the kind permission of the site owner, Joel Babcock.
. Holland, Keith V., "The Long Successful Search for the Maple Leaf" (pp.
127-138), and Lee B. Manley, "Development of Field and Conservation Procedures
for the Maple Leaf Site" (pp. 145-157) [hereinafter Manley], in Keith V.
Holland, et al., The Maple Leaf: An Extraordinary American Civil War Shipwreck
(Jacksonville, FL: St. Johns Archeological Expeditions, Inc. (1993)).
. Lord, Francis A., "Significance of the Artifacts," in Keith V. Holland,
et al., The Maple Leaf: An Extraordinary American Civil War Shipwreck
p. 159 (Jacksonville, FL: St. Johns Archeological Expeditions, Inc. (1993))
[hereinafter Lord]. See also United States Department of the Interior, National
Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, at
. Lord, n. 35, pp.161-163. For a collection of photographs of some of the
artifacts recovered from the Maple Leaf, see
an exhaustive catalog of all items recovered, see
. Ryberg, n. 17, p. 34. The soldiers' "mania" for collecting sea shells
while camped on Folly Island is described in Hyde, William L., History of the
One Hundred and Twelfth Regiment N.Y. Volunteers
, excerpted at
. Lord, n. 35, p. 163.
. Manley, n. 34, pp. 153-154.
. Quoted at http://www.mapleleafshipwreck.com/
Copyright © 2007 Thomas M. Fleming.
Written by Thomas M. Fleming. If you have questions or comments on this
article, please contact Thomas Fleming at:
About the author:
Thomas Fleming is an attorney-editor for a major legal publishing company, but
devotes most of his free time to reading, researching, writing, and--when the
opportunity arises, teaching others--about history. A reenactor of the American
Civil War with the 155th New York Volunteer Infantry and the Columbia Rifles,
Mr. Fleming has several personal connections with the Maple Leaf story, having
grown up in Western New York near the 112th NY’s home in Chautauqua County, and
lived years later less than two miles from the Port of Rochester, where the
Maple Leaf made its pre-war home. His parents now live in Mandarin, Florida,
just a few miles east of the spot in the St. Johns River where the Maple Leaf
sank. His mother grew up in Jacksonville, and is the great-great granddaughter
of a lieutenant in the 8th Florida Infantry.
Published online: 02/25/2007. Last updated: 09/09/2007.
* Views expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent
those of MHO.