by Myron J. Smith, Jr.
Library Director and Professor of Library Science/History
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The bell that periodically resides in the McCormick
Hall bell tower began its sojourn in quite different circumstances.
This article, part of a longer work on the bell by Tusculum Librarian
Jack Smith, chronicles a fascinating history.
Anyone who has ever climbed the stairway to the third
floor of McCormick Hall has, consciously or unconsciously, come
in contact with the end of a rope swaying at the curve of the bannister
between the first and second floors. Today, if one looks up the
line of that rope, the cord will be seen to disappear into the ceiling
of the third floor; if he or she pulls on the rope, a bell tolls.
Bells have been rung at Tusculum almost since the beginning of education
here. Hand bells were employed for summons from the Doak House and
at Tusculum Academy. When Old College, now the President Andrew
Johnson Museum and Library, was completed in l841, a cast iron bell
was hung in the ornamental cupola at the middle of the roof ridge
and it could be heard from some distance. That iron bell was transferred
to newly-finished McCormick Hall in 1887, where it would ring out
for class changes, athletic victories, or special events for three
more years before its replacement with a finer brass instrument.
...
The most important account of the
McCormick bell was told from memory by Dr. Landon C. "Daddy" Haynes;
here reprinted from the 1942 Tuscalana is his "The Story of the
Bell":
After the Civil War, a Capt. Lytton, a retired sea captain from
the East, became interested in the iron furnaces near Greeneville,
and so made his home here in Tennessee. He noticed that there was
no adequate way of calling workers to meals so he had a Philadelphia
bell company make him a bell from the brass of one of the cannons
from his old ship. Silver was added to give a finer tone. The furnaces
were abandoned later, but the company was indebted to a local man,Tom
Snapp, who accepted the bell as his payment. A few years later,
Mr. Snapp sent his son and daughter to Tusculum. Upon visiting them,
he heard the old cast iron bell then in use and decided his bell
was far superior. He made the proper negotiation with the president
[Dr. Jeremiah Moore--Smith] and the bell again changed hands as
a payment of a debt, this time on the College account of the Snapps.
So in 1890, Tusculum received the bell with a history, that has
rung out to many College generations down through the years.
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| A view of the Niswonger Commons and the surrounding countryside
from the McCormick Hall bell tower. |
Armed with insight from the Haynes
story and with assistance from our Maintenance Department staff,
I determined to see the brass bell and thus, one beautiful July
day, made my way up the dark, enclosed third floor stairway and
on to the tiny McCormick Hall bell tower platform. The first thing
I saw was a breathtakingly beautiful panorama of the campus to the
west. When I looked back to the left, there was the bell in its
waist-high cradle. Although the chime was tarnished, it was still
possible to faintly see what had earlier been stamped on its side,
clear for all to read "U.S.S. Wyalusing C.H.&W.M. Cramp Builders
Phila. 1863." Having written a little naval history, I immediately
knew that this was not a bell cast from an old cannon but, undoubtedly,
one from a Civil War vessel. Back down the stairs I climbed and
returning to the stacks of Tate Library, quickly learned that, in
one spring month in 1864, our bell ship had fought the mighty Confederate
ironclad Albemarle and five of her crewmen had, in a daring
but unsuccessful raid, won Medals of Honor for trying to blow her
up.
The most pressing need of the U.S. Navy upon the outbreak of the
Civil War was for small, relatively-shallow draft gunboats which
could not only help insure the blockade declared against the Confederacy,
but actively work close inshore up and down rivers and support various
Union Army amphibious operations. Here in Tennessee and on the rivers
to our north and west, passenger steamers were purchased and converted
to war purposes; likewise, civil vessels were acquired along the
eastern seaboard. In both military theaters, however, it was necessary
to build fighting craft.
Nowhere were the inland waterways so sinuous as in the Virginia/North
Carolina area. Turning a large boat around in the rivers there was
often hazardous, if not impossible, and yet this feat had to be
accomplished in order for the US Navy to perform its mission. From
this physical necessity was born a unique type of Yankee warship,
the "double-ender" gunboat, which was equipped with a reversible
engine and an enclosed rudder at both bow and stern that made it
as simple to steer a course backward as straight ahead.
Conceived by USN Engineer in Chief Benjamin Isherwood and based
on a type he had recommended the Russians build for use on the Amur
River, ten distinct classes of "double-enders" were undertaken.
Construction of the twenty-eight mostly wooden-hulled ships of the
largest group, the Sassacus class (warships classes are named
for the first vessel to be laid down), was started in the fall of
1862; all of these were named for rivers or communities bearing
Indian names. ...
"Wyalusing" is an Indian word meaning "at the dwelling of the ancient
warrior." In Colonial times, this was a Susquehanna River site,
in Bradford County, Pennsylvania, of a Munsee and Iroquois settlement.
Today, the town of just over 700 is located at the junctions of
US 6 and state highway 706 some 50 miles northwest of Scranton.
The contract to build the hull of the U.S. gunboat Wyalusing
was awarded to the Cramp shipyard at Philadelphia, where the
$157,000 craft was laid down on in the winter of 1862. The price
included a specially-cast brass bell of approximately 400 pounds,
which would signal time of day, changes of watch, orders below,
etc.
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When launched on May 12, 1863, the
new ship was 205 feet long, with a beam (width) of 35 feet and a
depth of 11 feet, 6 inches. Her sidewheel propulsion machinery was
built under a subcontract to Pusey, Jones & Co. of Wilmington, Delaware;
the suit consisted of two vertical, tubular boilers and one inclined,
direct action steam engine with a cylinder dimension of 4 feet,
10 inches and a stroke of 8 feet, 9 inches. Due to a shortage of
engines for the northern fleet, completion of our vessel would be
delayed. When Lt. Cmdr. Walter W. Queen's 154-man gunboat was commissioned
at the Philadelphia Navy Yard on February 8, 1864, she weighed 974
tons, had a draft of 9 feet - and, because USN doctrine still required
sails in case of necessity, was schooner-rigged with a suit of appropriate
tarpaulin. ...
While the Wyalusing was under construction by Charles H.
Cramp in the north, Gilbert Elliot of Elizabeth City, NC, was contracted
by Richmond to build an armored ship, complete with an iron ram
on its bow, to help the Confederacy regain the North Carolina sounds
and hence repossession of control over eastern North Carolina. Work
on the Southern ironclad, modeled, bow ram and all after the famous
Merrimack/Virginia (which had battled the Union ship Monitor),
began in January 1863 in a shipyard built in a cornfield up the
Roanoke River at a place called Edwards Ferry where the water was
too shallow to permit the approach of Yankee gunboats. First captain
Cmdr. James W Cooke designed the octagonal casemate for the flat-hulled
two-propeller steamer named Albemarle after the body of water
into which the Roanoke empties.
Builder Elliott's Tar Heel defender, 158 feet long with a beam of
35 feet and a depth of 8 feet, 2 inches, was damaged during its
July 1 launch and was towed to Halifax, N.C. for completion. Here
she received her two boilers and two engines and her armament of
just two 8-inch rifled cannon (one Brooke and one Whitworth) on
pivot mountings. For over a year after the Edwards Ferry site was
first cleared, Union officers aboard the watching gunboats of Adm.
S. P. Lee's North Atlantic Blockading Squadron followed the Albemarle's
march to completion and constantly appealed to Washington for an
expedition to destroy what would ultimately prove to be one of the
South's two or three most effective armorclads; they sought a similar
solution for the problem of another armorclad, the Neuse,
abuilding not-too-far away at Whitehall. The War Department's local
commander, MG Benjamin Butler never could spare the troops; "I do
not much believe in the ram, either in the Roanoake or the Neuse,"
he told Lee. ...
As was the case with the sudden
appearances in 1862 of the Rebel rams Merrimack/Virginia
and Arkansas, there was very little the Union Navy could
do about the Albemarle. The shallow bars at the mouth of
the Roanoke River prevented the introduction of Union monitors,
although a somewhat panicked Asst. Navy Secretary Gustavus Fox did
take the time on April 20 to wire Monitor inventor John Ericcson
and ask if the Tecumseh might be towed down from the James
River and gotten over the bars with the aid of a herd of camels
(Fox quickly realized there was neither time or camels sufficient
for the task). Adm. Lee now temporarily appointed the "spunky old
gentleman" Capt. Melancton Smith, James River NABS division CO,
to stop the Confederate ironclads. Smith, who had captained the
U.S.S. Mississippi and Monongahela under Tennessee's
own Adm. David Farragut at New Orleans and up the Mississippi toward
Vicksburg in 1862-1863, had fought the ironclads Manassas
and Arkansas in the west and could be expected, if anyone
could, to know how to hold the Roanoke against these new iron threats.
Capt. Smith, like Farragut at New Orleans and Vicksburg . . . believed
that if enough firepower could be concentrated against the hulls
of the armorclads, their casemates could be cracked and the ships
destroyed. ...
As attack options were considered, Smith's force was beefed up and
he was sent three new units of the Sassacus class, the lead
ship herself (outfitted with a three- ton ram affixed to her bow)
plus the Mattabesset and the Wyalusing. The latter,
most heavily-armed of the three, arrived off the mouth of the Roanoke
River on April 29, the same day the Albemarle made a brief
sortie and scared all of the light Yankee picket ships out of the
river.
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May 5 was the day anointed for an
attempt by Cmdr. Cooke's ironclad to reach New Bern. At 2 o'clock
in the afternoon, accompanied by two troop-laden steamers, the 376
ton Albemarle steamed out of her haven. Warned that the Confederate
ship was loose, Capt. Smith took his seven available ships on the
attack in two columns, the "double-enders" led by his Mattabesset
to take out the armorclad and the lighter Yankee ships to dispose
of her consorts. The Wyalusing, Sassacus, Mattabesset,
and the Whitehead opened on Cooke's ship simultaneously at
4:40 p.m. and as all four passed the Albemarle at 150 yards
in line of battle, firing broadsides as they came to bear. ...
After some twenty minutes of inconclusive gun battle, an opening
was presented about 5:05 p.m. and the Sassacus, pounding
full ahead at ten knots speed, gallantly rammed the Southern ship,
but with little effect. As the "double-ender's" engines continuing
to shove the attacker into the stern of Cooke's ironclad, the two
ships remained in a death lock for some five minutes, pouring cannon
fire into each other at point-blank range. The Confederate vessel's
casemate held, but the Yankee took a direct hit in her starboard
boiler which killed several sailors and enveloped the ship in steam,
forcing Cmdr. Francis Roe to back off. At about the same time, the
Albemarle's colors were shot away by a shell from the Wyalusing
and were not rehoisted during the action.
The Wyalusing, Mattabesset,
and Whitehead, for fear of hurting their companion, had slowed
or held back on their fire during the Sassacus contact, but
now initiated a much-heavier gun action. They were joined in a what
became a general melee by the smaller Yankee warships which had
previously stood off. Smoke and noise covered the water as, for
over two more hours, the gunboats hammered the Albemarle.
About 6:45 p.m., Capt. Queen received an erroneous report from his
executive officer Acting Master William R. Hathaway, stationed near
the ship's bell, that the Wyalusing was sinking; the pumps
were started and a signal to this effect made to the flagship before
Queen discovered the mistake. With the confusion sorted out, Wyalusing
and a smaller consort again bore down upon the Confederate; a southern
sailor inside the Albemarle's casemate later reported "The
Miami, attended by the Wyalusing, came up in line
and opened on us with their entire armament and with the other boats
doing all they could for thirty minutes, the shot striking our sides
produced such a concussion nearly every man on board bled from the
ears and nose."
The cannonade between the Union ships and the southern armorclad
continued until 7:30 p.m. when it grew too dark to continue; at
this point, the inconclusive fight was over and the contestants
simply steered away from one another. The massed Union bombardment
(the Wyalusing alone had fired 315 projectiles of all sizes)
resulted in a reported 280 hits on the Albemarle (in fact,
she was struck just 44 times) with but one Confederate sailor killed.
Still, the cannonballs of the Wyalusing and her companions
did damage the ironclad's steering and so perforated her smokestack
that Cmdr. Cooke was forced to burn all manner of interior structures
(including doors and cabin furniture) plus his lard, bacon, and
butter supply just to keep steam pressure high enough to get the
ship back to her Plymouth anchorage.
Capt. Smith's ships were all damaged
by the Albemarle's gunners, with eight Federal sailors killed
and twenty-one wounded. Remarkably, the southern ship had fired
just twenty seven rounds. The Wyalusing was hit five times.
. . . Despite [minor damage and the loss of one life] the Wyalusing
and the other "double-enders" had gained a strategic victory and
allowed overall control of the N.C. sounds to be maintained by the
Union.
Like the German battleship Tirpitz in World War II, the Albemarle
now became a "force in being," a threat by her mere existence
to nautical activities, that had to be contained and, if possible,
destroyed. ...
On the afternoon of May 25, five crewmen approached Cmdr. Queen
and Capt. Smith with a plan to blow up the Albemarle. The
scheme of Coxswain John W. Lloyd, Coal Heaver Charles Baldwin, and
Firemen John Laverty, Benjamin Lloyd (John's brother), and Alexander
Crawford, wrote Smith later, ". . . was entirely their own, except
in some minor details." Having been part of yet another secret scout
made two days earlier, the five, according to the ship's logbook,
departed at 11:30 a.m. on May 26 "on an expedition to destroy the
ram."
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The five tars rowed up the Middle
River with two 100-pound "torpedoes" in a nondescript skiff and,
upon landing, transported the bombs by stretcher through the swamps
to Roanoke River and on to a point opposite and a short ways above
the Albemarle's lair. Coxswain Lloyd and Charles Baldwin
then swam across (naked) with a tow line attached to the explosives
which were then hauled over. Working quietly after dark, Lloyd and
Baldwin joined the torpedoes together with a bridle and Baldwin
guided them down toward the ironclad hoping to place the bridle
across her bow, thus positioning an explosive on each side of the
bow. The plan then called for him to swim clear and allow Alexander
Crawford to detonate the ordnance electrically. Just a few yards
short of the goal, the daring mission came apart. Baldwin fouled
a schooner and gained the attention of and a hail from a Confederate
sentry on the wharf. The five Union sailors were now forced to scatter.
Failing to answer the challenge, Baldwin became the target of two
shots from the sentry followed by a hail of musketry. Coxswain Lloyd
quickly cut the guideline, threw away the coil, and reswam the river
to meet John Laverty, who was guarding the men's clothes and arms
on the far shore. The two found Ben Lloyd and made it back to the
Wyalusing on the morning of May 28 after suffering a rainy
day and night hiding out in the swamp. Capt. Smith ordered the ships
of his flotilla to undertake a search for Baldwin and Alexander
and, on the morning of May 28, the two were rescued by the Commodore
Hull and returned to their ship. ... Capt. Smith in his report
of the mission not only commended the party for its "courage, zeal,
and unwearied exertion," but recommended promotions and, for all
five, Congressional Medals of Honor. Ultimately, each medal was
presented. ...
A month after Gen. Lee's surrender, the Wyalusing departed
the Albemarle Sound/Cape Hatteras areas, and arrived at the New
York Navy Yard on May 21, 1865. She was placed out of commission
there on June 10. The U.S. Navy began a rapid downsizing as the
Civil War ended, selling off hundreds of vessels at auction for
bargain prices. Disposal of the "double-enders" began in government
auctions in 1866. One of the largest one day sales of naval vessels
occurred in several east coast cities on October 15, 1867. At Philadelphia,
to which she had been transferred, the Wyalusing was sold
for $15,000. ...
The Wyalusing, schooner-rigged as she was, may have entered
commercial service as a freighter or collier [after the war]. We
do know that it was and remains common practice for important pieces
of warships to be preserved and bells have always been among the
most highly-prized display items rescued from the torch. The bell
from the Wyalusing is, as far as is known, the largest remaining
piece from a Sassacus-class "double-ender" in existence.
...
Following its positioning in the McCormick Hall bell tower in 1890,
the Wyalusing bell was "liberated" on several occasions by
groups of pranksters. A number of these enterprising and playful
conspirators were bold enough to record their deeds on the graffiti-covered
walls of the third floor stairway which leads to the bell platform.
Each disappearance occasioned some concern, but each incident was
"forgotten" when the bell returned. In 1979, the Civil War instrument
was polished, formally rededicated by the Board of Trustees, and
securely remounted. Every time it rings out, as "Daddy" Haynes put
it, to many college generations down through the years, it is appropriate
to recall the brave men who first served under its peal.
For information and images of the U.S.S. Wyalusing,
please try this link:
http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-w/wylusng.htm
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