| History | |
|---|---|
| Name: | The Dancing Molly |
| In service: | 1883 |
The Dancing Molly was a pirate sloop famous during the Oyster Wars for humiliating Virginia Governor William E. Cameron as he personally attempted its capture on 28 February 1883. [1] [2] Crewed solely by "plucky petticoated pirates" in the form of the captain's wife and two daughters, the single-masted sailboat outran the steamers Victoria J Peed and Pamlico while under fire. [3] [4] [2]
Having successfully captured seven oyster pirate boats in a raid the year before, Cameron set out to capture more in the steamers Victoria J Peed and Pamlico. [2] To ensure media attention, the latter ship contained Cameron, his staff, and reporters from the New York Herald , Norfolk Evening Ledger , and Norfolk Virginian . [1] Spotting the apparently abandoned Molly in an inlet (the other crew were gathering wood on shore), Cameron's ships headed to capture it, not knowing the wife and two daughters of Molly's captain were still aboard. [4] A contemporary newspaper account describes:
[A]s the steady splash of the wheels of the Virginia steamer were distinctly heard, the plucky females determined to attempt to run the blockage and reach neutral waters, despite the three frowning cannons which were already visible. … The race was nip and tuck between the Virginia gunboat and the piratical sloop, the first trying to reach the mouth of the inlet and blockade it, while the latter was straining every sail to get out. … The chase, which was witnessed from shore, was very exiting, and, although the people on the Virginia side are sworn enemies of the oyster pirates, they really wished for the escape of the tiny craft. … [W]hen the Dancing Molly got safely out the group of Virginians chivalrously gave three cheers for the pirate's wife and daughters. [4]
The encounter led to a series of letters and editorials ridiculing Cameron, as the "laughing maidens of the 'Dancing Molly,' so completely outmaneuvered him" and jesting that Cameron's official report "on the oyster question" would be "replete with references to … the laughing lassies of the Dancing Molly." [5] [6] Combined with other difficulties in capturing oyster pirates, the embarrassed Cameron never sent an expedition against them again. [7]
Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, was an English pirate who operated around the West Indies and the eastern coast of Britain's North American colonies. Little is known about his early life, but he may have been a sailor on privateer ships during Queen Anne's War before settling on the Bahamian island of New Providence, a base for Captain Benjamin Hornigold, whose crew Teach joined around 1716. Hornigold placed him in command of a sloop that he had captured, and the two engaged in numerous acts of piracy. Their numbers were boosted by the addition to their fleet of two more ships, one of which was commanded by Stede Bonnet; but Hornigold retired from piracy towards the end of 1717, taking two vessels with him.
CSS Raleigh was originally a small, iron-hulled, propeller-driven towing steamer operating on the Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal. She was taken over by the State of North Carolina in May 1861, and transferred to the Confederate States the following July. Her commanding officer during 1861–1862 was Lieutenant Joseph W. Alexander. Her entire service was in coastal waters of North Carolina and Virginia and in the James River as part of the James River Squadron.
William Evelyn Cameron was an American soldier, lawyer, journalist, and politician. He served as the 39th Governor of Virginia from 1882–1886, elected as the candidate of the Readjuster Party headed by William Mahone.
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The first USS Pocahontas, a screw steamer built at Medford, Massachusetts in 1852 as City of Boston, and purchased by the Navy at Boston, Massachusetts on 20 March 1855, was the first United States Navy ship to be named for Pocahontas, the Algonquian wife of Virginia colonist John Rolfe. She was originally commissioned as USS Despatch – the second U.S. Navy ship of that name – on 17 January 1856, with Lieutenant T. M. Crossan in command, and was recommissioned and renamed in 1860, seeing action in the American Civil War. As Pocahontas, one of her junior officers was Alfred Thayer Mahan, who would later achieve international fame as a military writer and theorist of naval power.
USSWhitehead, a screw steamer built in 1861 at New Brunswick, New Jersey, served as a gunboat in the United States Navy during the American Civil War.
Thomas Stowell Phelps was an officer in the United States Navy. He served in the United States Navy from 1840 to 1884, attaining the rank of Captain in 1871 and Rear Admiral in 1884. He served in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the Pacific, and commanded the sloop Juniata during the critical battle to capture Fort Fisher in January 1865.
The Norfolk Southern Railway was the final name of a railroad that ran from Norfolk, Virginia, southwest and west to Charlotte, North Carolina. It was acquired by the Southern Railway in 1974, which merged with the Norfolk and Western Railway in 1982 to form the current Norfolk Southern Railway.
William H. Cabell was a Virginia lawyer, politician and judge aligned with the Democratic-Republican party. He served as Member of the Assembly, as Governor of Virginia, and as judge on what later became the Virginia Supreme Court. Cabell adopted his middle initial, which did not stand for anything, in 1795, to distinguish himself from other William Cabells, including his uncle William Cabell Sr. and first cousin William Cabell Jr. (1759-1822)
Edmund Jenings was a Virginian politician. He was President of the Council of Virginia and later became the acting governor from August 23, 1706, to June 10, 1710.
William Haley Face served as Acting Master of CSS Teaser during the Battle of Hampton Roads. He was also at the center of an international incident in 1885 when, serving as a pilot with the Virginia Pilot Association, he was abducted by the Captain of a Russian warship.
Israel Hands was an 18th-century pirate, also known as Basilica Hands. He is best known for being second in command to the infamous pirate Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard. His name serves as the basis for the name of the villainous sidekick Israel Hands in Robert Louis Stevenson's 1883 novel Treasure Island; other than this, the fictional character has no other connection to the real Israel Hands.
USS Anacostia (1856) was a steamer, constructed as a tugboat, that was first chartered by the United States Navy for service during the Paraguay crisis of the 1850s and then commissioned as a U.S. Navy ship. She later served prominently in the Union Navy during the American Civil War.
The third USS Union was a heavy (1,114-ton) steamer with a powerful 12-inch rifled gun purchased by the United States Navy during the American Civil War.
The Baltimore Steam Packet Company, nicknamed the Old Bay Line, was an American steamship line from 1840 to 1962 that provided overnight steamboat service on the Chesapeake Bay, primarily between Baltimore, Maryland, and Norfolk, Virginia. Called a "packet" for the mail packets carried on government mail contracts, the term in the 19th century came to mean a steamer line operating on a regular, fixed daily schedule between two or more cities. When it closed in 1962 after 122 years of existence, it was the last surviving overnight steamship passenger service in the United States.
Governor R. M. McLane, was a steamboat built in 1884 that served the state of Maryland as an enforcement and survey vessel.
The Battle of Cockle Creek, October 5, 1861, was a minor naval engagement off Chincoteague, Virginia early in the American Civil War.
The Oyster Wars were a series of sometimes violent disputes between oyster pirates and authorities and legal watermen from Maryland and Virginia in the waters of the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River from 1865 until about 1959.
Julia Hamilton was a Maryland State Oyster Police Force schooner, part of the force established to enforce state conservation laws designed to protect Maryland's oyster resources when out of state, often New England, dredgers began destroying reefs in the Chesapeake Bay. Later local opposition to licenses turned to open "warfare" in the "oyster wars" when a fleet of state vessels fought "oyster pirates" in armed conflicts.
