Joseph Fry (captain)
Joseph Fry was a former U.S. Naval Officer, Confederate Civil War veteran, and commander of the ill-fated Virginius.
Early history
Joseph Fry was born on June 14, 1826, in Tampa Bay, Florida in the United States. According to a non-scholarly 19th century biography, which draws heavily on his ",journals," he moved about a great deal in his youth, spending time with relatives in Pensacola, Mobile, and Albany, and attending a boarding school at Ballston Spa, New York. In 1841, he ostensibly met with President John Tyler, who personally granted him an appointment as a midshipman in the U.S. Navy. It is not clear how much formal training he received, as the Naval Academy did not yet exist, although a precursor did exist at Philadelphia. As a midshipman he lived for a time at the New York Navy Yard, aboard the receiving ship North Carolina, and went on training cruises on a number of other vessels, including one which ended with the burning of the sidewheeler USS Missouri off Gibraltar in 1843. Shortly thereafter, he was promoted to the rank of passed midshipman. This was apparently the highest he rose in the U.S. Navy.During the Mexican–American War, the Siege of Veracruz in March 1847 was his first experience of naval warfare on board the USS Vixen. Upon his return home, he served on vessels of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey for several years.
By 1861, Fry had 14 years of experience as an officer in the US Navy before joining the Confederacy during the American Civil War. With the Confederate Navy Fry initially served on the lower Mississippi, first as an aide to the aging Commodore Lawrence Rousseau, and later commanding a small steamer, CSS Ivy. This vessel served largely as an observer during the October 1861 battle at the Head of the Passes, in the Mississippi Delta. Later, in March 1862, Fry was sent upstream to the vicinity of New Madrid, Missouri and given a new command, CSS Maurepas. Confederate naval forces, including Maurepas, participated in ineffectual defenses of New Madrid and of Island No. 10 in March and April, and then, in June, retired up the White River to oppose Union Navy penetration into territory west of the Mississippi, ultimately sinking the ships to close the channel and creating a short-lived defensive position using their guns. Fry was wounded and then captured during these last operations; he was, however, soon exchanged and sent to Georgia to convalesce with his family.
Upon regaining his health, Fry was placed in command of the government blockade runner Eugenie. This vessel ran the blockade several times between March and October of 1863 before being returned, damaged, to Britain. Fry subsequently served on a naval examining board and then as an agent of the Confederate Navy in Bermuda before moving on to Scotland, where, in late 1864, he took command of a new blockade runner, named after his wife, the Agnes E. Fry.
After making several runs in the new vessel, in the spring of 1865 Fry was sent to Mobile, initially to make one more run through the blockade, in the steamer Red Gauntlet; but then it was decided that, with the situation dire, he should instead transfer over to a proper warship, CSS Morgan, to engage the Union Navy in one final battle. The ship went down fighting.
Postbellum career
Fry was underemployed once that post vanished with the conclusion of the American Civil War in 1865. He entered the Cuban blockade service. During the late war, he made several blockading trips.Ten Years' War
The Virginius Expedition
In July 1873, Captain Fry went to New York in hopes of finding employment with an ocean steamer. Upon meeting Cuban General Manuel de Quesada y Loynaz, he left New York on October 4, 1873, for Kingston, Jamaica, to take command of the Virginius as a blockade runner to aid the Cuban rebellion. The expedition was led under the direction of Mambí general Bernabé Varona and Jesús del Sol, W.A.C. Ryan, and Pedro de Céspedes were among the passengers. While in port, the Virginius was repaired and coaled at the expense of the Cubans. On October 24, 1873, the North American steamer left Kingston Harbor commanded by Captain Joseph Fry. The vessel was reported by the Spanish consul for its suspicious movements on the 30th of October. On October 31, the Spanish corvette Tornado dispatched by Spanish General Juan N. Burriel spotted Fry's vessel and pursued it, forcing Fry to flee back towards Jamaica. Fry instructed W.A.C Ryan and Varona to throw the heavy ammunition, horses, artillery, and gun carriages overboard to lighten the load of the steamer during the pursuit. 12 miles from British waters, Fry ignored a blank shot fired by the Tornado as a warning. A short while later, several shells whistled over the Virginius. At that point, Fry realized he could not escape and stopped the vessel between Cabo Cruz and Santiago, surrendering to the Tornado's captain. The ship was taken over by two armed boats that approached from the side. Presenting his documentation to the boarding officer, Captain Fry objected to the legality of his ship's seizure. The Tornado's commander revealed that the Virginius would have avoided capture if it had had another hour to enter a Jamaican port.On November 1, 1873, the vessel, along with the leaders of the Cuban insurgency, crew members, and passengers, arrived at the port of Santiago de Cuba. In the following days, the crew was tried as pirates by a tribunal on board the Tornado and then confined to the city jail.