Ben Butler’s Boat
For Benjamin Butler, the sea provided an escape from the demands of politics.
Benjamin Franklin Butler, the often controversial but always patriotic political general, returned to his ante-bellum activities in 1865. He resumed his legal practice, represented Massachusetts in the United States House of Representatives (1867-1875; 1877-1879), became Governor of Massachusetts in 1882, and ran as a third-party presidential candidate in 1884.
Butler relished life in the public eye but also prized private time to indulge his two loves– his family and the ocean. Perhaps because he had not known his own father, who died when Benjamin was only five months old, Butler seemed determined to spend significant time with his own children. In 1866, he built a summer home in the seaside city of Gloucester; seven years later, he purchased Bayview, a 47-acre estate on Ipswich Bay near Gloucester. It became the site of Butler family summers, and boating became a big part of those summers. Author Frank W. Sweet reports that Butler “kept two . . . yachts in his home anchorage at Ipswich Bay.” However, he sold them after purchasing a schooner from the United States Navy in 1873. Like the General himself, this new boat was a veteran of the Civil War, having served both the Confederacy and the Union.
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Henry Edward Decie, a flamboyant Brit of questionable origin, sailed his schooner Camilla to Savannah just days after Fort Sumter fell in April 1861. He dropped anchor, took a train to the early Confederate capital of Montgomery, and began rubbing elbows with the Southern elite, including Mary Chesnutt, who noted his attendance at a social event in her famous diary.
Decie’s real reason for being in Montgomery, however, was pure business. He had come to make a deal with Jefferson Davis and succeeded in negotiating a most advantageous arrangement with the rebel president. He sold Camilla to the Confederacy but retained her captaincy and sailed back to England carrying two Confederate agents and a commission to purchase goods. Once he filled Camilla’s hold, he recrossed the Atlantic, delivered the goods at Jacksonville, Florida, and collected a fee for his service. Simply put, Decie became a blockade runner with a distinct advantage: Because he no longer owned Camilla, he would suffer no financial reversal if she were destroyed or captured.
The arrangement yielded advantages for Davis as well. Denied access to manufactured goods from the North, the South looked to sleek, speedy ships filled with foreign cargo to run the Union blockade of southern ports. Davis knew Camilla fit the bill because he knew her history.
Decie was the latest of several owners of the yacht, which had been built in 1851 using innovative, speed-enhancing designs. Her builders, a group of New York yachtsmen, named her America and entered her in the Royal Yacht Squadron’s “One Hundred Guinea” or “One Hundred Sovereign Cup” race around the Isle of Wight on August 22. America embarrassed her British hosts by crossing the finish line 18 minutes ahead of her nearest competitor. She also impressed them. Ten days later a British nobleman purchased her; she would have two other British owners before Decie bought her in 1860. Although she was renamed Camilla in 1856, the British demonstrated admiration for her by later changing the name of the One Hundred Sovereign Cup to The America’s Cup.
Under Decie’s command, Camilla ran the blockade at Jacksonville at least twice, the last time in March 1862. Decie left his vessel and travelled north to Richmond, presumably to collect his fee and receive his next assignment. On March 11, as Union forces were about to occupy Jacksonville, a young officer of the Florida infantry ordered the Camilla scuttled in the shallow waters of the St. John’s River.
The federal Navy raised the sunken schooner and put her to work in the Union blockade squadron under her original name. Fitted with guns, the USS America helped in the destruction or capture of several blockade runners. In May 1863, she was ordered to Newport, Rhode Island, the war-time home of the U. S. Naval Academy, for use as a training vessel. In 1866, she was sent to Annapolis but saw no significant service.
However, Admiral David Porter, Commander of the Brooklyn Naval Yard in 1870, ordered America recommissioned — at a cost of $19,000 taxpayers’ dollars — so that she could compete in the first America’s Cup Race being held in New York Harbor. She placed fourth out of a field of 15 in her initial namesake race.
In 1873, Congressman Butler used — many would say abused — his political powers to have the yacht put up for auction. Lawyer Butler then publicly opined that perhaps the Navy did not have clear title to a blockade runner scuttled by the Confederates. Having planted this seed of doubt in the minds of would-be buyers, the devious Butler bought the yacht through an intermediary for a mere $5,000.
Butler showed little respect for ethics in obtaining her, but he treated America well. Author Frank Sweet in The America: War Service of a Racing Yacht, reports Butler had five cabins installed to accommodate his family and kept the yacht in pristine condition during the twenty years he owned her. After Butler’s death in 1893, his son Paul inherited America. Lacking his father’s enthusiasm for sailing, Paul turned her over to his sister’s son, Butler Ames, in 1897. Ames sailed and raced America for several years, but by the early twentieth century, she had fallen into disuse and disrepair.
After Ames finally put America up for sale, a group of civic-minded individuals collected funds to purchase and repair her. They donated her to the U. S. Naval Academy in Annapolis in 1921, thinking they had saved her for posterity. Unfortunately, the Navy allowed her to fall into disrepair once again, so much so that during World War II she was taken out of water and stored in a shed. While yet another group of preservationists began raising funds to refurbish America, this veteran of the Civil War was crushed beyond repair when the roof of her protective shed collapsed under the weight of heavy snow in 1942.
America is her early days.