In the predawn hours of October 1, 1863, the darkness is tinged by a shard of moonlight on the horizon, the air is unusually still, and no breeze is blowing through or around the island when a mysterious, heavily armed frigate enters the harbor. Steady on it comes, towed by rowboats, not dropping anchor, steady on toward Raccoon Straits, a highly unusual direction, it seems. Benicia and the massive arsenal are that way. What was it? A Confederate vessel? A foreign ship? The city and harbor are and have been on edge since the J. M. Chapman affair. And why was there no sign of the side-wheel steamer, the Shubrick, assigned to the Revenue Cutter Service? Naval regulations mandated a cutter for harbor patrol. According to one historian, “At one hundred and forty feet and eight inches long . . . weighing 339 tons, carrying a crew of thirty-five, made of live and white oak, she carried a single-expansion steam engine. Fleet and well-armed, but small.”1 Revenue cutters were the equivalent of today’s U.S. Coast Guard patrol ships, but remarkably the Shubrick was the sole vessel tasked with patrolling and protecting the harbor, not just from Confederate “raiding cruisers” like the Alabama, responsible for “damaging the Union maritime trade” in the East, and the Sumter, a stealth rebel ship. Rumored to be prowling the waters as well were “privateers fitted out in French-occupied Mexico or British Columbia.”2
Thus this open, badly guarded bay that was the main approach to the city was in the hands of a small cutter, its guns, and its crew. Enemies were thought to be circling like sharks, and many residents of San Francisco were fearing the worst. But there were friends, of a sort, who were in the area as guests of the United States: the brave, bold, swaggering, colorful Russian navy men and their ships—firm allies, defying their government’s mandate of neutrality and defying England and France to declare allegiance to the Union in the Civil War. The arrival of Adm. Andrei Alexandrovich Popov’s fleet—exotics, heralded, gawked at, admired—was both spectacle and hoped-for aid, or at least comfort, should the enemy come.
But in the haze and stillness of that morning, the first of October, no Russian ships, no revenue cutter, only the huge mystery frigate breaching the Golden Gate. Had the Shubrick been in the area, it would have approached the frigate, signaled, examined it, and determined its purpose. But the Shubrick is nowhere to be seen, having rushed to the aid of a Russian corvette, the Novic, aground in pieces on a sandbar at Point Reyes, miles away from Alcatraz.
It is just William A. and his men on Alcatraz, and they are tasked with the defense of that island, the bay, and the city. On this windless morning the mysterious frigate’s flags hang limp, its nationality indiscernible. As the vessel nears, Winder watches, his men watch—where is it headed? And he acts. Precipitously, perhaps. He fires a warning shot at the frigate. Rear Adm. John Kingcome of the Royal Navy is furious that the HMS Sutlej, the flagship of the British squadron stationed in the Pacific, has been attacked. And the port authorities should have been well aware of its arrival. The Sutlej is the “leviathian [sic] of the fleet, 4,060 tons . . . [actually 3,066] . . . with a crew of five hundred and fifty men,” the Marysville Daily Appeal reported, with “engines of five hundred horsepower. . . . On her main deck she carries four 110-pound Armstrong guns, and twenty-two 68 pounders,” more than fifty guns in all.3
From the time of the capture of the J. M. Chapman, Thomas O. Selfridge, captain of the Cyane, had been asking General Wright to have a “man of war [the Cyane] . . . anchored in those waters to cooperate with the forts under attack, and to afford protection to that part of the city lying behind the range of the fort’s guns.” Selfridge’s letter of February 10, 1863, indicating the need for the cutter to be at the ready and on call, was reinforced on the same day in another letter to Wright, in which Selfridge adds that “the collector [John Taylor McClean] of the port of San Francisco [should] have all inward bound steamers boarded . . . this would effectually preclude the possibility of any steamers getting in under false colors.”4 False colors? The ship flew no visible colors at all. When the frigate gave no response and no sign of stopping, Winder fires a blank shell at the vessel. It lands perilously close to the bow of the Sutlej. Rear Admiral Kingcome and his crew don’t know the shell is a blank. The tow ships stop, the frigate stops. What next? Is the United States trying to provoke a major incident? After all, Britain sided with the Confederacy and, though it was not widely known, was supplying guns in exchange for cotton. But the rear admiral thinks better of a fight with the cannons of Alcatraz, and he fires—one, two, three—and keeps firing. And firing. The count is up to nineteen, twenty, finally, twenty-one. A twenty-one-gun salute, an acknowledgment that this frigate bristling with guns on every deck is not the enemy. But in the smoke, in the chaos and cacophony, the cannons of Fort Point join in thinking this is indeed an invasion. A barrage of fire, loud and long, booming across the water. The Sutlej does not venture any farther. The incident seems over. It isn’t.
On the morning of October 7 an urgent message arrives at General Wright’s office. Rear Admiral Kingcome demands an explanation. Couched in abundant, pro-forma politeness—“I have the honor,” et cetera—but seething with indignation, Kingcome writes, “When her majesty’s ship Sutlej, bearing my flag, was about to drop anchor at this place . . . a shotted [loaded] gun was fired from the batteries on the island of Alcatraz in the direction of the ship, and that the shot fell within three hundred yards of her.” Kingcome went on to say that “there was no other vessel in the line of fire. . . . I am forced to the conclusion that the shot must have been directed toward the ship.” He goes on to demand that, though the shot must have been a misunderstanding, Wright should “institute inquir[i]es into the matter.”5
Wright answered almost immediately. He understood that Kingcome had asked for an inquiry and will demand that Winder give one. But he must explain the rules. Although Kingcome will feign ignorance, it is surprising that this high-ranking naval officer is unaware of these harbor mandates. Wright tells him that “the port regulation adopted by the Government of the United States for the harbor of San Francisco require[s] that all vessels shall be brought to, and inspected by a Government steamer from her usual position on the outer harbor. . . . The orders of my government require that all vessels of whatever character be examined before being permitted to pass the forts.” Wright goes on to say that in the absence of the Shubrick, the island commander bore responsibility for the decision to fire on his ship.6
William A. had his orders. He must “bring to all ships entering the Port in order that their character must be ascertained before being allowed to approach the city.” Even so, Assistant Adjutant General Drum demands an explanation from Winder. He must “make a special and full report as to the matter of firing certain signal guns from Alcatraz on the arrival of her Britannic Majesty’s ship Sutlej in this harbor.”7
On October 6 Winder sent back a reply and a recounting with all his strength summoned. His report of the incident on that uneasy morning when booming guns shattered the dawn quiet is his own shot across the bow for everyone who’d questioned him. He is in the right. This time there can be no suspicion. He has followed orders. He had no other choice. The message is terse, stating that because the Shubrick was otherwise occupied, aiding a wrecked Russian corvette (a small warship), and that the mystery frigate’s flag “fell in folds,” even when he presumed that the Sutlej fired the salute “to our flag,” he kept his men at the ready as the Sutlej was enveloped in the “smoke from her guns.” When he learned from a “boatman that the U.S. flag was flying at the masthead when she fired,” he returned the “national salute of twenty-one guns,” but not before. And then Fort Point joined the action with loud cannon booms. “I have only to add that I should consider it my duty to bring to any ship pursuing so unusual a course,” William A. continued, adding, “I trust that my action may be approved by the commanding general.”8
It is as though the past months, so wearying and so painful for William A. Winder, are not any longer to be endured. Back and forth the communications between Kingcome and Wright went until Kingcome admitted he had misunderstood the rules and did not mean to be in error, though he believed two hours had passed for Winder to ascertain the nationality of his ship before firing. He added in an appeasing tone, “Had I known port regulations I most certainly should not have attempted to infringe [on] them in any way.”9
The historian John Martini has elaborated on the event: “By all appearances it looked like the Sutlej was deciding on her own anchorage site.” The rear admiral offered the excuse that visiting warships often dropped anchor at what was then known as the Rancho Saucelito. As for whether the ship’s approach would have been noted, Martini adds, “a semaphore signal atop Telegraph Hill would announce the ship’s approach to downtown merchants and waterfront businesses . . . all kinds of small craft would then head out to meet the ship to offer various services.” He concludes, “Perhaps the Sutlej crew rowed out and towed the frigate or previously arranged for tugs to meet the ship.”10
Without specific first-hand witness accounts, it may never be known just how or why the ship went unnoticed until it was almost too late.
Without knowing the Sutlej had departed, by October 15 Wright had once more written to Kingcome, responding to his letter of October 7, again asserting that “it has been the usual arrival of foreign ships in the Harbor of San Francisco that the commander [Winder], should communicate the fact to my headquarters.” With a measure of obsequiousness, he made a final effort to keep and strengthen the “bonds of friendship” between the two governments. Ruffled feathers and misunderstandings notwithstanding, not to mention relief that an international incident was finally averted, Kingcome did not respond. The affair was over. Kingcome’s “leviathian” was gone.11
With William A. in the clear after the Sutlej incident, might he finally be free of suspicion? Or better yet, has he permanently cleared his name and thus is forever separated from his enemy-kin in the minds of the public? Perhaps he could believe so, if he read no newspapers and spoke little if at all to anyone on the island or in the city.
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If William A. were to secure a post on the front, be captured in battle, and find himself a prisoner of war among the souls trapped in his father’s keep, he could be severely punished for his betrayal or be spared. He might see other prisoner-officers exchanged and paroled. And if he survived, he would witness the abject cruelty and torture of black soldiers and their white officers. After Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, the Union began recruiting black troops in 1863. This move was anathema to the Confederacy. Then came the issuance of laws of conduct for troops in the field and the first codified rules of war, which forbade discrimination based on skin color if a soldier was captured. These new rules, known as General Orders No. 100, compiled for the Union Army by Francis Lieber, a German immigrant and humanitarian, contained one article that stated, “The law of nations knows of no distinction of color, and if an enemy of the United States should enslave and sell any captured persons of their army, it would be a case for the severest retaliation, if not redressed upon complaint.”12
In fact, even when exchanges were permitted under the Dix-Hill Cartel, created by Union general John A. Dix and Confederate general Daniel H. Hill and stipulating one officer in exchange for an officer and a like number of privates—the Confederate government eventually refused to treat black soldiers as POWs but instead treated them as mere chattel and deemed their officers worthy of execution. When the Confederacy refused to abide by these rules and vowed never to exchange any black troops or their officers, an outraged General Grant eventually shut down the program on August 18, 1864.
The historian Arch Blakey writes that before the exchanges were stopped “the Confederacy viewed the Emancipation Proclamation as an attempt by Lincoln to incite servile insurrection, the worst form of treason.”13
Maltreatment of black and white captives in Richmond grew worse as hundreds of new men stumbled into the hell of Libby Prison and into the island camp called Belle Isle in the James River at Richmond. With scant food rations and little to no medical care, many men at both prisons died of exposure and disease each day. Horrified Northerners and Southerners saw photographs of men reduced to skeletons.
Charges of deliberate extermination were made. John H. Winder, though not wholly responsible—provisions were scarce in the city, scarcer yet in the prisons—was blamed. And blamed. And excoriated. It was now literally impossible for most in the country to escape the news from Richmond. Included in an article headlined “Horrors of the Libby Prison at Richmond–Belle Isle” and leveling a hard blast of blame and disgust at William A.’s father, the San Francisco Bulletin reported that Libby Prison was “under the supreme control of Gen. Winder . . . a man of middle height, or slightly under it, rather stoutly built, hair quite white, florid in complexion, with a red nose and a cold, cruel gray eye; and his acts from the first prove clearly that he is precisely what that eye indicates to the observer—cold, cruel and vindictive.”14
With literally no more space to house the captives—Richmond residents feared their escape or liberation at the hands of Yankee invaders—Robert E. Lee urged the Confederacy’s secretary of war, James A. Seddon, to ship Winder’s prisoners south from Richmond.
Meanwhile Gen. John H. Winder, W. Sidney Winder, and another relative, Richard Bayley Winder, were ensconced in the Confederate capital. Union authorities wanted to rein in the Winder family, and unless and until those in Richmond could be captured and punished, those authorities satisfied its urge by rounding up another family member then at large in the East.
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On November 21 William A.’s eighty-four-year-old grandmother, Gertrude, the widow of W. H. Winder of the Bladensburg debacle, was arrested in Baltimore. The Baltimore Gazette edition of November 23 spelled out the particulars.
“Colonel Fish’s detectives went to the boardinghouse of Mrs. Hughes, No. 77 North Charles Street, on Saturday afternoon, and arrested Mrs. Gertrude Winder, a very old and feeble lady, mother of General Winder, Provost Marshal of Richmond,” the article stated. Gertrude Winder was charged with “corresponding with persons in the South . . . several letters of a disloyal character were found in her trunks, all of which are retained by the military authorities and for other offenses of a grave character.” She “was taken to the Provost Marshal’s office, accompanied by her son, Charles H. Winder of Washington (who happened to be in the city upon professional business).” Gertrude Winder was interrogated, “which resulted in her being sent back to her boarding house where she remains under guard. It is very probable that she will be sent south, not to return during the war.” Gertrude Winder “exhibited the most stolid indifference with regard to what was said or done in relation to her individual case; but when Colonel Fish intimated that it would be necessary to detain under guard the son who had accompanied her, she endeavored to dissuade him from such a course, and offer to do anything in her power to render his detention unnecessary.” Charles Winder was not charged. “But for the extreme age and enfeebled condition of Mrs. Winder she would have been sent off at once.” However, the authorities were “satisfied that she could not stand the fatigue of a trip South by way of Harper’s Ferry.”15
Gertrude Winder remained in her boardinghouse under surveillance, defiant and defending her Confederate relations to the end of her days. With this arrest, and with no way to capture the remaining Winders, would William A., the lone Union loyalist among them, survive a purge?