Fallen but not forgotten

A Civil War soldier speaks through time in his letters home.

The suffering you cannot imagine, what the sick and wounded suffered through that long weary night. Wet to the skin and nowhere to rest but the deep mud and in drenching rain. On the morning of the 3rd we left the mud hole and encamped 2 miles out. On the 4th the Pickets were attacked and we stood in line all day. But now we are comfortably encamped. The weather is very warm and this retreat has used up many of our Best men. The Regiment came out here 1 year ago 1,000 strong and now we can't muster 300 men for Duty. - Josiah C. Fish, July 1863, Hagerstown, Maryland

Josiah C. Fish dreamed of going to sea. Like most of the boys in the small town of West Barnstable, Massachusetts in the mid-1800s, his choices were limited: farming, fishing or sailing aboard a merchant ship, where you could see the world even if you couldn’t afford new clothes. His mostly absent father had spent his life criss-crossing oceans.

As soon as he could muster up enough cast-off clothing to suit him out for a year’s voyage, Josiah left his family’s small farmstead and boarded a merchant ship. He was 13 years old.

Seven years later, in October 1861, his life took an unexpected twist. The ship he sailed on had been scheduled to discharge her goods in Baltimore, but with war brewing between the North and the South, the harbor was deemed unsafe. Josiah’s ship was redirected to Peru, where he waited for weeks to rejoin his crew — or any crew. The trade routes had been interrupted by the war, and he could find no ship in need of sailors.

Josiah's sense of duty and love of family resonate with me as we test the backbone of our democracy.

Josiah had just made his mind up to board the next ship home to West Barnstable when he attended a meeting to raise volunteers for the Union Army. 

I thought it was my duty to do something for my country and by Enlisting there I should get clear of the crying spells that they would have about me. So I put my name down…

In a turn of the screw, Josiah became a soldier, fighting in the bloodiest war in our nation’s history. His voice echoes through time in The Drumbeats of War, the second book in my new historical fiction series, Tales of the Sea. 

In the first book, The Journey Begins, we meet Josiah as a child, along with his sister, Ruth, and the man who would figure prominently in her life, James Jenkins. Through letters written in iron gall or Prussian blue ink on stitched-together stacks of paper, they left behind an indelible record of the truth of their lives at a time of deep political division in our country. 

I felt compelled to breathe life into their letters, ship’s logs and personal journals. Their sense of duty, love of family and endurance in the face of hardship and loss resonate with me as we test the backbone of our democracy.

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