With Confederates boarding his ship near Monhegan Island, Daniel Merryman, captain of the Harpswell-built P.C. Alexander, threw his money overboard rather than let the rebels have it. In total, Merryman consigned about $100 to Davy Jones’ locker that day in August 1864. In today’s money, the captain’s cash would be worth nearly $1,000.
According to contemporary newspaper accounts, Merryman later regretted his actions, as the Confederates allowed his entire crew to keep their personal possessions. However, the rebel pirates stole Merryman’s expensive navigation equipment and burned his ship, of which he was part owner. It was not insured.
The sinking of the P.C. Alexander was just part of a swift but devastating run up the Maine coast by the ultrafast rebel steamship CSS Tallahassee during the Civil War’s waning months. The Tallahassee burned or scuttled at least a half-dozen Maine merchant and fishing vessels as it brought the war home to the Union’s northeasternmost waters.
From the late 1700s through the 1800s, Harspwell boasted at least 13 small shipyards. Between 1781 and 1897, at least 156 sailing vessels were built, including 27 barks, 37 brigs, seven sloops and 77 schooners.
The town’s shipyards were not grand. Some were just flat spots, adjacent to the water, with access to a road, where supplies such as logs and ballast could be hauled in. Most of the shipyards were on Harpswell Neck. One was in, or near, Cundy’s Harbor, and at least two vessels were built on Ragged Island.
“Few, if any, shipyards in this area had any riggers or sailmakers, the hulls being towed to Portland or Bath after launching for rigging and outfitting,” wrote retired U.S. Navy Rear Adm. William T. Alexander in his 1973 book “Harpswell on Casco Bay.”
Merryman’s ship, the P.C. Alexander, was a bark built by Paul R. Curtis and Albion Estes’ shipyard at Lookout Point in 1856. The single-decked merchant vessel was named for prominent local resident Paul C. Alexander, of Allen Point.
At 262 tons, it was small for a 19th-century bark. Merryman (often misspelled as Merriman in newspaper stories) came from a Harpswell family of merchant captains and took command of the Alexander in 1861.
Up until its fateful meeting with the Tallahassee, the Alexander appeared in newspaper shipping columns on a regular basis, delivering various cargoes to ports as far away as South America, but usually sticking to the Caribbean and the East Coast.
The Tallahassee was built far away, in England, supposedly as a merchant vessel. It was a steamship designed for speed. It could make 17 knots — much faster than most sailing vessels — and didn’t need the wind. It was also low, sleek and painted to blend in with the water and sky on any horizon. The Tallahassee was fitted with two then-newfangled propellers under its stern that could move in opposite directions, allowing it to turn on a dime.
On one of its first voyages, in July 1864, the Confederate navy “captured” the Tallahassee. The government then compensated its builders well above the vessel’s actual value, paying them what would now be valued at $2.5 million.
By the next month, the Tallahassee was headed northeast from North Carolina, fitted with a 32-pound cannon on her bow, a rifled 100-pounder amidships and a heavy Parrott gun on her stern. It wasn’t much as armaments went, but more than enough to scare merchant ships into surrendering without a fight. Her unmatched speed also would keep her ahead of Union warships while she made for the neutral port of Halifax, Nova Scotia, to load up with coal.
On Aug. 11, flying a false American flag, the Tallahassee took its first prize off New York City, an unarmed coasting schooner called the Sarah A. Boyce. The Confederates took two more ships that same day and six more the following day before heading further north.
Off Boston on Aug. 13, the Tallahassee captured the Thomaston-based bark Glenarvon, which was hauling iron from New York to Glasgow. After stealing everything of value aboard, including pigs and chickens, the rebels scuttled the vessel.
“We watched the bark as she slowly settled, strake by strake, until her deck was awash, and then her stern sank gradually out of sight until she was in an upright position, and one mast after another disappeared with all sail set, sinking quietly as if human hands were lowering her into the depths,” wrote the Tallahassee’s captain, John Taylor Wood, in what might be one of the most romantic descriptions of state-sanctioned piracy.
By the next day, the Tallahassee was burning and scuttling boats off Maine’s coast. On Monday, Aug. 15, it captured the P.C. Alexander between Matinicus Rock and Monhegan Island as it was headed for Pictou, Nova Scotia, in ballast. The rebels then drenched the Alexander in turpentine before setting it alight.
As the Alexander burned, Merryman and his crew were put aboard one of their own lifeboats. They made it to Monhegan without injury, two days later. The following day, Aug. 18, a local captain gave them a lift to Harpswell.
“They were kindly treated on board the Tallahassee, and her commander was not backwards in exercising his conversational powers,” wrote Portland’s Daily Eastern Argus newspaper before quoting the poet George, Lord Byron: “As mild a mannered man as ever scuttled a ship or cut a throat.”
The Argus also noted that the Alexander’s cook, a Black man, was well treated, too. The paper calculated the uninsured ship’s worth at approximately $10,000 — which works out to a little more than $206,000 today.
It’s unclear whether Merryman ever captained another ship. He died in 1894, at age 75, and is buried in the West Harpswell Cemetery. The Tallahassee made it safely to Halifax, taking nearly 50 Union ships along the way.
Thinking there were Union warships in pursuit, the Tallahassee later made a daring escape from Halifax, taking a hidden and treacherous route behind ledges and islands to reach the open sea with the help of a local harbor pilot.
The audacious, back-channel journey became the stuff of legend. A nearby elementary school was named in honor of the Tallahassee until 2021, when it changed its name to the New Horizon School.
Wood, the ship’s captain, came back to Halifax after the war, flying the Confederate flag at his place of business until he died in 1904.
