130

Proceedings of a Court of Inquiry to investigate the fatal wreck of the transport steamer Quinnebaugh.

Morehead City, NC, July 1865
30 manuscript pages, 12½ x 7¾ inches, on 8 unbound folding sheets, the first 7 sheets apparently a secretarial transcript and the final report in a different hand, signed by H.A. Oakman as president of the court; folds, minor wear. With full typed transcript. 

On 20 July 1865, the fighting was long over. The battered 76th Pennsylvania Infantry was ready to go home from garrison duty in North Carolina, and was loaded onto two transport steamers. The seas were a bit choppy as they cruised out of the Beaufort Inlet to the open ocean. The engine died on the USS Quinnebaugh, it drifted toward the rocks, and began to sink. The soldiers panicked and swamped the lifeboats; 13 men were lost.

Offered here are the minutes of the court of inquiry which was convened in nearby Morehead City the next day. Testimony is heard from the officers of both the Quinnebaugh and the 76th Pennsylvania, as well as the harbor master, maintenance crew, and participants in the rescue. A 76th captain testified that "when the boat became unmanageable, the captain left the wheel, and no one took his place, and no discipline was observed among the crew" (page 3). The Quinnebaugh's captain asserted that the boats were taken contrary to my orders . . . overloaded with men who did not understand handling them. . . . The ship did not go to pieces until during the night" (page 7). A pilot who had recently been on the ship pronounced that "I do not think she was a safe vessel for all weather in sea service . . . on account of her age and size" (pages 13-14). A local blacksmith testified that he had recently put a patch on the engine's steam drum, adding that "it was a common remark that she ought not to go to sea . . . I never heard so many remarks made about any other transport" (pages 15-16). An officer who examined the wreck the next day noted "the condition of the deck timbers lying on the beach" and their "rotten condition . . . pieces of it could be broken off with the hands without difficulty. . . . I never saw a vessel come ashore in so many pieces before" (page 26-27). The court concluded that the wreck was due to "unseaworthiness of the ship," and that the "panic which existed among a portion of the men we find to be largely owing to the belief generally existing aboard that they were on an old and weak ship." 

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