386 Chronicles of the Cape Fear River

immense projectiles per minute! were being hurled at the fort,
General Whiting was seen “standing with folded arms, smiling
upon a 400-pound shell, as it lay smoking and spinning like
a billiard ball on the sand, not twenty feet away, until it burst,
and he then moved quietly away.” During the fight General
Whiting saw the Federal flag planted on the traverses. . Call-
ing on the troops to follow him, they fought hand to hand with
clubbed muskets, and one traverse was taken. Just as he was
climbing the other, and had his hand upon the Federal flag to
tear it down, he fell, receiving two wounds. Colonel Lamb, a
half-hour later, fell with a desperate wound through the hip.
The troops fought on. Lamb, in the hospital, found voice
enough, though faint unto death, to say: “I will not surren-
der”; and Whiting, lying among the surgeons near by, re-
sponded: “Lamb, if you die, I will assume command, and I
will never surrender.”

After the fort was captured and General Whiting was made
prisoner, he was taken to Fort Columbus, on Governor’s Island,
and there died, March 10, 1865. The fearless defender of the
last stand at Fort Fisher, Maj. James Reilly, in after years

lived not far from the scene of his exploits until his death,
November 5, 1894.

1Rear-Admiral Porter’s official report of the second attack on Fort
Fisher contains the following statement: “We expended in the bom-
bardment about 50,000 shells,” but in commenting on this the compil-
ers of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the
War of the Rebellion, Series 1, Vol. XI, p. 441, say “An examination of
reports and logs shows that in the first attack on Fort Fisher by the
Federal fleet there were expended 20,271 projectiles, weighing 1,275,299
pounds. In the second attack there were expended 19,682 projectiles,
weight, 1,652,638 pounds. It is estimated that the above statement

includes between 90 and 95 per cent of the projectiles actually
expended.”

Blockade Running

FINANCIAL ESTIMATES OF BLOCKADE
RUNNING.

Some idea of the magnitude of the blockade-running interests
involving the Cape Fear alone may be gathered from Badeau’s
statement that ‘in little more than a year before the capture of
Fort Fisher, the ventures of British capitalists and speculators
with Wilmington alone had amounted to sixty-six million dol-
lars in gold, and sixty-five million dollars worth of cotton in gold

had been exported in return.”
In the same period 397 steamers had run the blockade at Wil-

mington. Ridpath says that the number of prizes of blockade
runners made during the four years’ war was 1,504 vessels
captured, stranded, or destroyed.

Admiral Porter, who directed the naval operations against
Fort Fisher, says that a telegraphic dispatch from General Lée
to Colonel Lamb at Fort Fisher was captured which read as
follows: “If Fort Fisher falls, I shall have to evacuate Rich-
mond.”

In “Tales of the Cape Fear Blockade,” published in the
North Carolina Booklet, February 10, 1902, page 20, under the
caption “Financial Estimates,” the writer said:

I have not been able to obtain an approximate estimate of
the value of supplies brought by blockade runners into the
Confederacy during the four years’ war, nor the amount of the
losses by shipowners who failed to make a successful voyage
through the Federal fleet. I have, however, carefully computed
the actual sum realized by the United States Government from
public sales of prizes, recorded by Admiral Porter in his Naval
History of the Civil War, which aggregates $21,759,595.05; to
which may reasonably be added $10,000,000 for prizes to my
knowledge not included in this report, and $10,000,000 more
for valuable ships and cargoes stranded or destroyed by design
or accident while attempting to escape from the blockading
Squadron. This total of $42,000,000 represents only a part, per-
haps one-half, of the capital invested. Many successful steamers
ran up their profits into millions. A steamer carrying 1,000

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