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Union side-wheeler exploded across the St Johns River from today’s Orange Park

Mary Jo McTammany
Posted 1/17/18

Clay County was still wet behind the ears when the Civil War commenced. The area had only been lopped off from southern Duval County a year or so before on the last day of 1858. Memories of being …

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Union side-wheeler exploded across the St Johns River from today’s Orange Park


Posted

Clay County was still wet behind the ears when the Civil War commenced. The area had only been lopped off from southern Duval County a year or so before on the last day of 1858. Memories of being immersed in bloody war with the Indians were barely two decades old.

Folks were just beginning to enjoy the trappings of civilization – regular delivery of mail and supplies, buildup of timber and farming industries, schools and churches – when they were suddenly catapulted back into the struggles of frontier survival.

From almost the very beginning of the Civil War, locals in Clay County lived with the hardships caused by the Federal blockade of the St. Johns River. The Union military strategists recognized that the blockade was not enough so, early in 1864, Union troops turned up the heat by permanently occupying Jacksonville and launching a major attack inland at Olustee.

After an embarrassing defeat with loss of men and equipment, Union military leadership was viciously lampooned by Northern newspapers for taking a thumping by Florida’s rag-tag soldiers. Florida suddenly became a prime target of The Army of the North’s military bigwigs.

Northern ships on the river increased and residents living on the western shore were subject to a forced inland migration. Houses and out buildings were burned along the river in Clay County.

Confederate military leaders smelled blood but by this time in the war, the Confederates had severely limited men and resources. They retaliated by planting 12 torpedoes each containing 70 pounds of small-grain cannon powder in the river channel and just before daylight on the night of April 1, 1864 the first of those charges exploded.

Local surveillance along the shore had observed the Union side-wheeler Maple Leaf with her two vessel escort slowly progress south to Palatka. Then hours later, they saw her return. Holding to the channel, she was hugging the shore at Mandarin Point when a flash of light at her waterline lit the sky followed by the piercing shriek of her whistle that split the air.

Surely watchers felt a chill from the grave as that keening wail went on and on like a dying beast. It seems that in her bow first dive, gravity pulled the steam whistle to constant “on.”

The captain and crew arrived in row boats at Jacksonville and returned to the site around noon aboard the USS Norwich with naval surveyors who declared the ship unsalvageable and lobbed a volley of 10-inch artillery shells at the west bank of the river just on principal.

Determined to guarantee the Maple Leaf would stay sunk, a Confederate artillery unit escorted by the 120th Infantry arrived at McIntosh Point (present day Holly Point in Orange Park) from Georgia after a forced overnight march and shelled the stranded Maple Leaf. Locals borrowed a well-hidden rowboat to approach the ship and burn her to the waterline.

The Federal troops withdrew from Palatka back to Jacksonville and a small Union contingent was located on the more friendly eastern side of the St. Johns River at Picolata to be supplied from St. Augustine which was firmly pro-Union.

The day after the Maple Leaf sank; a Union search party arrived at O’Hern’s home at the southwestern end of Doctors Lake. He and most of his team were asleep upstairs but his wife and daughters having spotted the group rowing on the lake met them at the shoreline where they were joined by a neighbor known to have opposed the war. He assured the troops that O’Hern was long gone.

Before the Union soldiers rowed half way up the lake O’Hern was gone to join troops fighting in Virginia.