Adventures With A Waterspout

(Maj. E. W. Everson in Philadelphia Times - reprinted in St Louis Globe Memorial, Dec. 1880)

Toward the close of the war it became necessary on account of the lack of capacity in the general hospital for Confederates – which was located on the extremity of the point – to place many of the sick prisoners in seven large frame buildings erected for that purpose in the pen. A startling event connected with those buildings is in record here. It was just after the dawn of the day when I strolled out of my quarters on the margin of the bay to find relief in the sea air from the oppressiveness of an unusually sultry night. It was at once evident from the peculiar atmosphere that something out of the usual routine was near at hand. Soon there was heard a rumbling, roaring and hissing sound. Looking across the Potomac about eight miles distant, the cause, in an alarming shape, was discovered in a huge waterspout attached to a large, angry cyclone, in form like the placing of the nozzles of two funnels together. It was making it’s way from the Virginia shore diagonally toward the prison enclosure.
About a mile out was anchored the three turreted monitor Roanoke, one of the largest in the service – the frigate of that name razed – and carrying an armament of one 15-inch and two 11-inch guns. On came the monster of wind and water, presenting an appearance never to be forgotten, the hideous seething increasing as it advanced. The destruction of the Roanoke seemed to be inevitable; her fate hung, as it were, in the balance, when a curl of smoke was seen to puff out from the center and largest turret. The 15-inch shell shattered the waterspout, and the huge tornado, like a liberated balloon, shot upward with lightning rapidity high in the heavens. Then with equal velocity it plunged downward, striking and wrecking the large commissiary building near the river, and carrying everything before it at the dock as if it were so much chaff in a September gale, including sentry boxes, in which one soldier was killed and two others mangled by being hurled many rods distant. Mounting in the air again in less time than it takes to record it, the cyclone descended to all appearances squarely down among the hospital buildings in the prison camp. By a singular freak, and fortunately, it struck the only building of the seven which was not occupied by the sick, and which was used for storing of clothing and other materials. This the cyclone carried out in the bay in the twinkling of an eye, so to speak, taking it as clean to the ground sills and flooring as if the boards and timbers had been sawed off. Neither was there seen of it afterward board or other article. This escape from a frightful disaster was almost miraculous, and the degree of readiness with which the closely and long-confined prisoners viewed their escape as an interposition of Divine Providence may readily be excused