State

By Ralph VV. Donnelly The North Carolina Navy Bows Out The force sailed the waters for only a couple of months before being absorbed into the Confederate Navy. Between the secession of Vir¬ ginia on April 17, 1861, and North Carolina on May 20. the North Carolina Board of Military and Naval Affairs took steps to reestablish the military and naval capabilities of the state. This involved re-creatingan official North Carolina Navy, com¬ plete with craft, officers, ship sur¬ geons and money awards for captured vessels. Given time, the state navy may have been able to achieve promi¬ nence. But as North Carolina was in¬ corporated into the Confederacy, its shipsalso joined the larger cause. Few major figures emerged in the state force’s brief existence, and little has been written of its few skirmishes. Perhaps the best known officer in the state navy was David Alexander Coleman. Coleman, whose maternal uncle was the former Governor Davis Swain, led a prominent public life himself. After graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy, serving in the Mexican War and earning a law de¬ gree from UNC, he ran against the formidable Zeb Vance for the 1854-56 term of the state senate and won. Photo. N C Stoto Anhivr.. lhv»Ko of Arrhtv*. & Hulory Coleman failed to defeat Vance for a seat in the 36th U.S. Congress, how¬ ever. Vance later served two terms as governor. Coleman apparently entered duty in the state navy before North Caro¬ lina seceded. On the day before. May 19, he wrote Governor John W. Ellis from Norfolk that he was waiting for the delivery of 12 gun carriages, which he expected on the 22nd. On the 21st, the State Military and Naval Board approved his commission as a lieutenant. back¬ dated to May 16. Under Cole¬ man's command, the steamer Fair- field arrived at Hatteras from Norfolk on May 24 with a cargo of 20 32-pound guns and six 8-inch shell guns. That mission completed, however, the rest of Coleman’s tenure was considerably less eventful. He spent most of the summer in pursuit of ships to command. In June, Coleman received orders to the Sfale/Januaiy ХУ 14 take charge of the Uncle Ben at Wilmington and to bring it to the port of Beaufort, probably so the ship could be refitted as an armed vessel. Uncle Ben had been part of the U.S. Navy’s expedition to reinforce Fort Sumter in April, but bad weather had forced it to return to Wilmington. There, it was seized by the local citizenry, who in¬ tended to arm it for North Carolina service. Uncle Ben s greatest contribution to the Confederacy occurred when its engines were removed late in 1862 and installed in the ironclad Norih Carolina, built at Wilmington. Uncle Ben’s stern was patched where the propeller shaft had gone through the hull, masts were added, and it soon North Carolina seamen were expected to engage in battle, and doctors ( or surgeons, as they were called ) were needed to help those wounded in the line of fire.