Bat Assigned To The North Atlantic Blockade
Assigned to the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, Bat soon sailed for Hampton Roads, Virginia, but encountered a severe storm during her voyage south and lost her foremast. Sent to the Washington Navy Yard for repairs, the steamer remained there until mid January 1865. On the 23d, when Bat finally joined her squadron off Wilmington, North Carolina—where recently a fleet commanded by Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter had cooperated with Army troops in the final major combined operation of the Civil War, the capture of Fort Fisher—Porter decided to take advantage of her great speed by using her as a dispatch vessel.
On the day of the steamer's arrival, she began a cruise south through the Confederacy's inland waters as far down the coast as Georgetown, South Carolina. Her mission was to attempt to communicate with General William Tecumseh Sherman who—after completing his march from Atlanta, Georgia, through Georgia to the sea—had swung north to move his army toward Richmond, Virginia, in support of General Ulysses S. Grant's operations against the Confederate capital. This assignment kept the side wheeler busy through the end of January when Porter called her back to the Cape Fear River. For more than a month thereafter, the admiral used the steamer in maintaining quick communication within his squadron, occasionally breaking his flag in her.
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