The Hunt for the Roanoke: Part I

It was late September of 1864, and the Civil War was not going well for the South. Many of the Confederacy’s Naval and supply ships had been captured or sunk by the Northern blockade of the Southern ports. In a bold move, Lieutenant John Braine of the Southern Navy boarded the Northern mail steamer Roanoke in Cuba, along with a number of confederate sailors, all in disguise. They waited until the ship had set sail for New York and then returned to their cabins, changed into their Confederate Naval uniforms and reemerged to take over the ship. The takeover was bloodless, except for a ship’s carpenter, who attacked one of the Southern officers with an axe and was shot and killed for his efforts. The original crew and passengers were by all accounts treated well as they were taken prisoner and the ship was diverted to Bermuda.

The Roanoke arrived off the east end of the island virtually out of coal, with the intention of releasing the crew and passengers and then refueling with coal and supplies to attempt a run through the blockade to one of the Southern ports. The then-governor of Bermuda refused the ship access to the harbor given, what he saw, as an act of piracy. As Bermuda was a British colony and thus neutral, he would not allow a vessel that had been subject to such an act on the high seas to refuel and re-provision. Lieutenant Braine was left in charge of a ship at anchor off Bermuda with no coal for its engines, and so placed all passengers, original crew and his sailors in boats and scuttled the ship so it wouldn’t fall into Northern hands.

Braine was promptly placed under arrest for piracy and tried at the next hearing of the magistrates’ court. The trial, by all accounts, lasted mere minutes as his commission and letter of instructions from his superiors were produced, and it was quickly determined — much to the outrage of the governor — that this was an act of war, and not of piracy. Despite being officially neutral, Bermuda was in fact quite supportive of the Confederacy, due to the fortunes that were being made by supplying war materials to the South. Braine was discharged and he and his crew eventually transported back to the States. For its part, the doomed Roanoke lies somewhere off the east end of Bermuda, suspected to be near Five Fathoms and, for reasons unknown no real effort has been made to find the shipwreck until the last few years. Stay tuned for Part II of our story on the hunt to find the wreck of the Roanoke.

By Mark Diel

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