Saved By His Brother.

[The following article, under the title shown above, was published on page 2 of the New Orleans newspaper, the Daily Picayune, dated May 31, 1887.   I have not been able to verify the service, aboard the CSS Shenandoah, of either brother, John or Francis Turner, or of the assumed name of Francis, as Frederick Johnson.   Research is still continuing, and further details will be published, as they come to hand.   The shipping articles of the CSS Shenandoah, held at the Museum of the Confederacy, are known to be as complete as possible, and it is assumed that every enlisted person who ever served aboard the cruiser is named on this list.   Neither name is also shown on the crew lists of those known to have served on the CSS Florida, as well.]

A more curious meeting of brothers perhaps never took place than occurred on the deck of the Confederate States cruiser Shenandoah up among the ice in Behrings’ Straits on June 28, 1865.

Five years previously John and Francis Turner were a couple of smart young fellows in New Orleans, owning a pair of “floats,” as the large drays are called there, with which they made a business of hauling cotton on the river front.   On an afternoon in the autumn of 1860 John Turner, the elder brother, was passing along the lower levee, where a tow of sailing vessels, outward bound, was being made up, when he was called on board of one of them on some pretext and asked to go into the forecastle.   Before he understood what was going on the tow cast loose from the moorings and proceeded down the Mississippi.

When he appealed to the captain of the vessel to be put on shore he was laughed at, and he found that he had been “shanghaied” – that is, decoyed on the ship by a keeper of a sailors’ boarding-house, who had represented him as a seaman and drawn his advanced pay, which was nearly all his wages for the voyage to Liverpool, the port of destination.   Some of his mates advised him to do his duty on board and to go to the United States Consul at Liverpool, who would send him home.

Arrived in England, immediately upon landing he fell in with just such another rascal as had shipped him at New Orleans, and, stupefied with drink, was again “shanghaied” – this time on a vessel bound for China.   Before he reached Hong Kong the drayman had become a first-rate seaman and had taken a liking to the life.

Returning to England after the civil war had begun in America and good hands were offered double wages to ship on steamers running the blockade of Southern ports, he engaged in that dangerous and profitable service.   Unlike most of his shipmates in those days of making money fast and spending it quickly, he was prudent and economical.   By keeping out of the dives and groggeries of Nassau, the calling port of the blockade running ferry between Liverpool and the Southern sea coast, where sailor men then matched guineas for drinks, and one crew was known to spend 1000 pounds on a night’s liberty, he saved most of his earnings and soon opened an account at a Liverpool bank.

His luck ran along without a break until November, 1862, when he was an able seaman on the British steamer Banshee, one of the great fleet of swift ships dodging the United States blockading squadrons into Charleston or Wilmington, with war material, and slipping to sea again with the precious cotton that was sold at 500 per cent profit on the other side of the Atlantic, where it fed the Lancashire mills and stopped the mouths of the rioters and the hungry operatives.

On this trip the Banshee was chased into Charleston harbor by a United States gunboat, and by the bursting of one of her shells over the blockade runner Turner received a wound in the head that laid him up in a Charleston hospital until after the departure of his ship.

Recovering from his injuries, which had temporarily affected his brain, Turner became possessed of the impulse to make his way to New Orleans, then in the hands of the Federal forces, to seek for his brother and a young sister whom he had left there when he was kidnapped.   It was a perilous journey from the Confederate lines into those of the enemy, but he made his way safely across the Mississippi and reached New Orleans early in January, 1863.   There he could discover not the slightest vestige of his family.   They had vanished about the time of the Federal occupation, without leaving any traces of their departure.

From New Orleans Turner worked his passage to Mobile in one of the coasters that kept up an illicit traffic between the two cities by way of Lake Pontchartrain and Mississippi Sound, and at Mobile shipped on a blockade runner from Nassau.   On the voyage the mental aberrations caused by his wound increased.   He became unfit for duty and was put on shore at Nassau.

The Confederate ship of war Florida was then in the port coaling for a cruise down the Spanish main and to the “parting of the marine roads” north of the equator.   She was short-handed and her commander, Capt. Maffitt, was endeavouring to pick up seamen secretly so as to avoid violation of the British foreign enlistment law, which might have subjected him to detention.

Turner applied for enlistment, but was rejected on account of his feeble appearance, which resulted from his illness and disappointment.   He was determined to get into the ship, and on her second day out he was discovered to be a stowaway in the forward hold.   Capt. Maffitt was so incensed at finding him on board that he ordered him ironed, but Lieut. Reed [Charles W. Read], the third officer of the Florida, took a fancy to him and prevailed on Maffitt to give him a berth among the crew.   Turner proved an efficient seaman and won the confidence of his mates.   He remained in the ship during her work of burning and sinking American vessels on the coast of Brazil, and was still one of her company when she ran across the Atlantic to Brest, in August, 1863.

At that great French naval station he was among that portion of the Florida complement detached to go to England to help in manning the two huge and formidable armor-plated ships of war which the Laird firm had nearly completed at their Berkenhead [Birkenhead] dockyards for the Southern Confederacy.   The British Government seized the vessels before they could sail and the Confederate seamen were dispersed.   Turner had wearied of naval service and shipped on a merchantman for New York.   Thence he wandered up amongst the Massachusetts whalers and at New Bedford signed articles for the bark Waverley, bound for a three years’ cruise into the North Pacific and the Arctic Ocean.

At the outbreak of the war the younger brother, Francis Turner, had enlisted in a Louisiana artillery regiment, some of the companies of which, in the deficiency of trained seamen, were detailed as gunners on the Confederate gunboats that opposed Farragut’s passage up to New Orleans.   He was one of the few who escaped capture when the squadron was captured or destroyed, and accompanying Lieut. Baker and some other officers, he evaded the Federal pickets on the east side of the Mississippi and reached Mobile.

Not desiring to be returned to his regiment he concealed his identity by assuming the name of Frederick Johnson, and roamed about the country until he reached Fernandina, on the Florida coast.   After working awhile with the fishermen there he professed to an officer of a United States ship that had cast anchor in the river to be a loyalist, and was recruited as a landsman in the crew.   Within three months the vessel was ordered to the Philadelphia Navy Yard for repairs, and in that port he deserted.

His next berth was on an Italian craft sailing for the Mediterranean from New York, and after a year or more in the merchant service he was in Liverpool in September, 1864, when Capt. Bullock, the naval agent of the Confederate States, had his skirmishers out gathering every good seaman who could be persuaded to sign articles for a voyage in the steamship Sea King to Singapore and beyond.   Turner signed the articles with a correct suspicion, derived from his former experience in the Confederate service, that the Sea King was to be transformed in neutral waters into a rebel cruiser.   He still kept to his assumed name of Johnson, and when the steamer was transferred to the Confederate flag off the lonely island of Las Desertas, one of the Madeiras, he was the first man of the ostensibly British crew to step forward at the summons of Capt. Waddell and enrol his name for service on the Confederate man of war Shenandoah.   Waddell issued to him a warrant as a petty officer, and he stood as high as any man on board the ship outside the wardroom and cabin.

The Shenandoah ran down to Australia, and thence steamed up the Pacific to the high Northern latitudes.   She inflicted more damage upon the commerce of the United States than any Confederate cruiser except the Alabama, and in the boat parties that set fire to her many prizes Francis Turner was a conspicuous figure.   Towards the end of May, 1865, she was north of the Aleutian Islands, and had struck some of the New England whalers who were working into the Oshkosh Sea and the Arctic Ocean.

Having been severed from communication with either the Asiatic or American Continent for three months, Capt. Waddell knew nothing of the surrender of Lee’s army or the occupation of Richmond by the Union army, and so continued his career of devastation.

On June 28, 1865, coming out of Behring’s Straits, the Shenandoah captured and burned eight American whaling ships.   That far Northern sea and its floating fields of ice were illuminated by the flames of the immense conflagration, for the prizes had been closely huddled, and their oil saturated hulls burned fiercely, while their spars and rigging made a fiery tracery against the dull background of the Arctic sky.

One of the doomed ships was the New Bedford Waverly, and the boat commissioned to take the prisoners from her and to apply the torch was in command of Francis Turner.

The boat was loaded almost down to her gunwales, and in returning through the heavy sea to the Shenandoah a prisoner went overboard in one of the lurches that she made.   Coxswain Turner hauled him in over the stern, and as they came face to face the rescued man fixed an inquisitive look upon the face of the coxswain.

Huddled under a thwart, and covered with coats to keep from freezing, he said nothing then.   But when the prisoners were mustered on the deck of the Shenandoah and required to give their names, he answered loudly, “John Turner, of New Orleans.”   Francis Turner, who was among the crew clustered on the starboard side of the main deck, sprang forward as the name was given, but naval discipline restrained him from interfering with roll call.   The reunion of the brothers took place later in the day.

John Turner enlisted as a seaman of the Shenandoah, and the brothers were in the same watch, when a month later the ship made down the California coast and obtained from a passing Englishman information of the downfall of the rebel government.   He then headed for Liverpool, where she was surrendered to the British authorities, and eventually transferred to the United States.

On her arrival at Liverpool the reporters and correspondents of British newspapers were busy in interviewing her officers and crew, and among the many narratives they obtained was that of the adventures of the Turner brothers, which was printed in the Liverpool Mercury, and in papers published at Newcastle and Leeds.

Published online, April, 2008.