Dear Mother,

I received your letter yesterday. I was very glad to hear from you.  We are at Hatteras Inlet. Most of the fleet has arrived.  I wrote to you at Fortress Monroe and sent $18 by express.  You will probably get it before you do this.  We sailed from Fortress Monroe at eleven o’clock at night.   The day I wrote was the 11th.  We sailed all night and till three the next day.

You have heard about the coast of North Carolina.  It is next to Cape Horn.  We had arrived first opposite Cape Hatteras.  The wind was right in front for about an hour.  We did not make any headway.  The boat pitched and hove.  The joints cracked.   It would ride way up a wave and then it would go down in the trough of the sea.  I stood on the bow of the boat.  The waves dashed over the boat and wet us all over.  The Major stood on the hurricane deck.  It wet him to the skin.   We all thought it very fine till the crew began to look sober and declared the boat would not hold together twenty minutes in so rough a sea.  They turned around and went back five or six miles under the protection of an island and cast anchor and laid there overnight.

In the morning, it was calmer.  We sailed into the inlet.  We had two bars to cross.  It seemed as though we should sink every minute but we got through safe.  Our craft is an old leaky boat.  It is very large and very heavy loaded.  It has been condemned as unseaworthy.

The weather has been cloudy and stormy since we have been here.   The wind blows hard most of the time.  Most of the steamers arrived about the same time as we did.  Schooners and vessels have been arriving ever since.  I guess they hear there is several vessels anchored a short distance from the forts.

Fort Clark contains about two acres.  It is nearly round.  It is made of sand turfed over.  It is situated clear out on the point.  Fort Hatteras is situated further back.  There has been nothing much of interest occurred since we have been here.  We expect to go to Wilmington.  I don’t know when we shall go.  It may be in an hour, a day or a week.

I should liked to have seen the company that went from Thompson.  There is not so poor men in our regiment. Connecticut must be pretty hard up to accept such officers.  Our youngest commissioned officers are twenty-one.  There is hardly any but have seen service before most of the non-commissioned officers were out three months.  Half the privates would be more qualified for officers than they are.  I would like to drill with them myself.

If you get the money, you and Electa can have the gold and more if you want it.  Colonel Morse is at Annapolis.  He will send the letters wherever we are.

Goodbye,