![]() Through his hard work and professionalism, he finally earned his first command. Later the service assigned him to the Gem of the Sea, part of the East Gulf Blockading Squadron. ![]() ![]() His exceptional service gained him a transfer to a larger warship, the USS Montgomery, again on the blockade of Wilmington. ![]() During this April 1863 attack, Henry was instrumental in the town’s defense, commanding a naval battery ashore during the latter part of the fight. Henry was on board during the Confederate attempt to capture Washington, North Carolina. He travelled back to Brookline, and soon thereafter the Navy Department assigned him to the gunboat Ceres, which operated on the sounds and rivers of North Carolina, protecting army positions ashore. After a short prison stay in the infamous Libby Prison in Richmond, his Confederate captors paroled Henry. Pindar ashore during her attempt to run the blockade, and Confederate forces captured Henry’s boarding party. In one instance, the warship chased the schooner J. Next, the Cambridge assisted in the blockade of Wilmington, North Carolina. He witnessed the Battle of Hampton Roads and the fight between the ironclads CSS Virginia and the USS Monitor. Wells joined the navy shortly after the war began, initially on board the Cambridge, attached to the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, which patrolled the waters of the Chesapeake Bay. He wrote to his family frequently that he considered military service a necessary and patriotic duty, and the career that ensued was a dramatic one, astutely and articulately documented by Wells in more than 200 letters home, leaving an invaluable account of daily life in the Union Navy. ![]() An insightful, detailed, and invaluable account of daily life in the Union Navy On May 18, 1862, Henry Willis Wells wrote a letter to his mother telling her in clear terms, “I am fighting for the Union.” Since August 1861, when he joined the US Navy as a master’s mate he never wavered in his loyalty. ![]()
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