John Horry Dent, Jr., Letters

John Horry Dent, Jr., was born on 2 May 1840 in Barbour County, Alabama, the son of John H. and Mary M. Dent, of Barbour County, Alabama. During the Civil War, Dent served as an Assistant Engineer on several Confederate Naval steamships, including C.S.S. McRae on the lower Mississippi River from March 1861 to late April 1862, when the McRae was involved in the battle as the Union fleet attempted to pass between Fort Jackson and Fort Saint Philip. In the battle the McRae was severely damaged and was allowed to take their wounded to New Orleans under a flag of truce with only a few officers and enough men to sail her. The rest of her officers and crew, including Dent, were taken as prisoners of war to Fort Warren in Boston harbor. He was part of a prisoner exchange and returned to duty in Richmond, Virginia on 6 August 1862.

In September 1862 he was assigned to the new gunboat, the C.S.S. Chattahoochee, as it was being constructed in Saffold, Georgia. While on the Chattahoochee, Dent suffered from severe chills and high fevers that left him debilitated but his captain would not allow him to transfer out. Shortly before 27 May 1863, Dent was finally transferred to the C.S.S. Hampton at Richmond, Virginia, so he was not aboard the Chattahoochee when one of her boilers exploded, killing 18 of her officers and crew.

Dent remained aboard the C.S.S. Hampton, a wooden gunboat, until late July 1863 when he was dispatched to the ironclad ram C.S.S. Charleston at Charleston, South Carolina. In mid-September 1863 he was once again transferred, this time to the C.S.S. Juno, a blockade runner preparing to make a run for Nassau. On 28 October 1863 he was ordered back to the Charleston to replace another engineer. By 1 November 1863, Dent was back aboard the Juno, but only for a short while. He was ordered back to the Charleston in December and remained aboard her until 1864 March 1 when he went back to the Juno, which was preparing to sail for Nassau.

The Juno sailed on the evening of 9 March 1864 and on March 10 encountered a severe storm, so severe in fact, the ship broke apart and sank. The crew managed to get off in the life boats, but those capsized and sank with approximately 31 hands lost – the only two saved were a Mr. Burk, the pilot, and Dent. They were rescued the next day by another schooner, the Petrel, which had also run the Charleston blockade. They put into Nassau in early April 1864, where he soon took a berth on the C.S.S. Coquette out of Wilmington, North Carolina.

Dent arrived in Wilmington in mid May 1864 and remained on the Coquette as 1st Assistant Engineer. He made one more trip, possibly two, aboard the Coquette to Nassau or Bermuda, until his death, possibly from fever, on 15 July 1864. He was buried in Smithville (now Southport), North Carolina.