when florida “Opened up the gates of hell” - Florida Humanities ...

REcoVERINg HIsToRy fRom a RIVER
A GLISTENING MOON
LIT THE wATER of the
St. Johns River as a Union
steamship stealthily pushed
toward Jacksonville in the
early morning hours of April
1, 1864. The Maple Leaf was
a spacious side-wheeler, 181
feet long and 25 wide, and
on this quiet night it carried
passengers, crew, Confederate
prisoners, and a massive shipment of military equipment
and soldiers’ personal belongings. Yet the heavy vessel moved
smoothly through the water, its paddles making only a
soothing whish. Then an explosion tore the night apart.
THE BLAST RIPPED
A HOLE in the ship’s
hull and collapsed the
decks. A torrent of
water rushed in and drowned the boiler
fires. In two minutes the ship settled—
leaving only the top of the wheelhouse
and part of a smokestack visible above
the water. A stench of black powder
fouled the air. A jammed steam whistle
shrieked. Fifty-eight passengers jumped
onto the lifeboats. The ship slipped
down into the murky depths of the St.
Johns with eight people still aboard:
four Confederate prisoners who were
not allowed on the lifeboats and
four crewmen killed in the blast. The
lifeboats took the survivors to safety in
Jacksonville; the Confederate prisoners
were rescued later.
“The Steamer Maple Leaf Blown
Up by a Torpedo,” blared the headline
in the New York Times. The device
that blew up the Maple Leaf would be
called a mine today. It was a keg-like
contraption holding 70 pounds of
small-grain cannon powder—one of
a dozen that Florida’s Confederates
had planted in the St. Johns to disrupt
Union boat traffic, prevent the resupply
of Yankee garrisons, and discourage
raids on river towns.
14 F O R U M F L O R I D A H U M A N I T I E S C O U N C I L
This is a colorized version of a drawing of the Maple Leaf based on an 1856 ambrotype and archaeological
evidence. Source: The Maple Leaf: An Extraordinary American Civil War Shipwreck, by Keith V. Holland
The story of the Maple Leaf was
largely forgotten as the Civil War
marched on to its grisly end. For the
next 120 years the ship lay under 20
feet of water and a protective blanket of
mud. But in 1984 amateur historians,
led by Keith V. Holland of Jacksonville,
found the site of the wreck. After a few
years of research and legal work, they
sent in divers who discovered the ship’s
hull. And within a few years this onceforgotten
Civil War casualty became
famous.
The river-bottom mud covering
the wreck all those years had acted as
a preservative, protecting the ship and
its contents from the destructive forces
of time. Its cargo was discovered to be
the most important cache of Civil War
artifacts ever found.
Divers salvaged nearly 3,000
items, among them mess plates, pails,
pans, camp stoves, and field desks;
toothbrushes, inkwells, dominoes,
and daguerreotypes; twists of tobacco,
fifes, flutes, and a clarinet; sea shell
collections and ornate dishware likely
looted from plantations. The Maple
Leaf was delivering the material to
soldiers who were encamped elsewhere
and not aboard the vessel.
Henry Dale, a civilian from Boston,
was captain of the Maple Leaf.
“The wreck of the Maple Leaf is
unsurpassed as a source for Civil War
material culture,” wrote Edwin C. Bearss,
former chief historian of the National
Park Service. “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…Considered
among Florida shipwrecks, Maple Leaf
is probably the best preserved site in
Florida.”
The Maple Leaf exploration yielded
the largest collection of Civil War relics
in the world and even includes recovered
sections of the wrecked ship. Displays can
be seen at the Jacksonville Museum of
Science and History and at the Mandarin
Museum and Historical Society.
—JON WILSON
Connect to more
For a link to the Maple Leaf website, visit FORUM EXTRA! at www.flahum.org
Image from MilitaryHistoryOnline.com