French-speaking Marylander Richard Thomas Zarnova was a hit as a cross-dresser in Rebel service who captured a Northern steamer and then used it to raid Federal ships. Courtesy of The Washington Times, October 6, 2007. “Rebel raider disguised in a hoop skirt” by Richard Cox. Cartoon by David Clark.
The crew and some sixty passengers boarding the steamer SS St. Nicholas at the Baltimore wharf that summer evening on June 28, 1861, were intrigued to see an elegantly dressed French lady boarding along with her angry-looking, bearded brother who served as her translator. She charmed the onlookers with her quaint broken English and fluent French. The purser personally escorted the French lady and her several large trunks. The tags were marked Madame LaForte. They were escorted to the ship’s best cabin located on the main deck. A while later when the ship was underway, the charming French lady emerged from her cabin. The captain, proudly demonstrating his knowledge of the French language, soon concluded the lady was a native of France. He and his fellow officers were led on by her coquettish demeanor. The enchanting Madame LaForte carried a fan and used it as a sort of naughty invitation to the numerous gentlemen vying for her attention, and who were eager to get a glimpse of her veil-covered face. Her body language confirmed her obvious flirting.
The steamship SS St. Nicholas carried passengers from Baltimore to various ports along the Potomac River. The ship also carried supplies for the Union gunboat, USS Pawnee, whose assignment was to disrupt the movement of people and supplies to Confederate sympathizers from Maryland down to Virginia. Unknown to the crew and passengers of the SS St. Nicholas was the fact that Madame LaForte was neither French nor a lady. The cross-dressing charmer was Robert Thomas Jr. aka Richard Thomas Zarnova. An article in the Washington Times dated October 6, 2007, titled “Rebel raider disguised in a hoop skirt,” describes him thusly, “Richard Thomas Jr. (his birth name) came from a notable southern Maryland family. His father had been Speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates and President of the Senate. An uncle had been governor. The Thomas estate, Mattapany, had once been the residence of Charles Calvert, the third Lord Baltimore and Lord Proprietor of Maryland. Thomas seems to have been born for adventure. He entered West Point at age 16, but his preference for the ‘martial arts’ instead of the civil engineering courses that dominated the curriculum led to his standing near the bottom of the first-year class. He resigned early in his second year.”
It is believed that Thomas went west and worked for a time as a surveyor. From there he traveled to China where he fought pirates and fought in the Taiping Rebellion. He then went to Italy where he joined Guiseppe Garibaldi’s army and engaged in fighting for Italian independence. His family stories relate that he spent time in France where he learned to speak French fluently. In France, he served with the French Zouaves, a military regiment who are well- known for their strict discipline and ability to fight. Zouaves wore unusual uniforms consisting of flared-out red pantaloons, blue doublets, crimson fezzes, and white gaiters. The members carried scimitar-like sabers. Thomas fell madly in love with a French girl named Zarnova. When she tragically drowned, he was heartbroken and, in her memory, changed his name to Richard Thomas Zarnova.
Thomas was back in Maryland forming the core of what he planned to be a Confederate Zouave regiment, designated as the 47th Regiment Virginia Volunteers. Thomas appealed to Virginia Governor John Letcher for financial assistance. At first, Governor Letcher was reluctant because he saw Thomas as a very eccentric young man. However, Letcher listened to Thomas’s plans and changed his mind. The plan was for Thomas to go to Baltimore and seek out southern sympathizers. They would then board the SS St. Nicholas dressed as passengers. Thomas would be disguised as an elegant French lady. Once the SS St. Nicholas was underway, they would take over the ship.
Governor Letcher gave Thomas an advance of $1,000 to buy arms and to pay his raiders. In addition, the governor contacted the Confederate Secretary of the Navy. The governor also promised Thomas a colonelcy if he succeeded and permitted him to use the rank during the raider’s escapades.
George Watts, one of the Confederate raiders, became alarmed when he did not recognize Thomas as they passed on the main deck. He was completely deceived by Thomas’s costume and imagined Thomas had missed boarding. Watts recalled, “I was up on deck a-wondering where it was all going to end and whether I’d be hung as a Rebel spy when someone touched me on the arm. I wheeled around like somebody had stuck a knife in me and saw Alexander who was a fellow conspirator. He grinned…and said: ‘You’re wanted in the second cabin’…. I hurried below deck and nearly had a fit when I found all our boys gathered around that frisky French lady. She looked at me when I came in, and, lordy, I knew those eyes in a minute! It was the Colonel.” (“Last Survivor of a Gallant Band”,) The Evening Sun, Baltimore, August 27, 1910.
Around midnight the Confederates assembled in the French lady’s stateroom. The SS St. Nicholas had by then reached Point Lookout, at the confluence of the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River. They opened the trunks which contained cutlasses, Colt revolvers, and carbines. Thomas confronted the captain. Realizing he was outnumbered, the captain quickly surrendered to the Confederates. They changed the course of the SS St. Nicholas and docked at the Coan River wharf. Passengers were permitted to leave with all their possessions, while about thirty Confederate soldiers came aboard. The raiders had learned a Union gunboat was to meet with the SS St. Nicholas to receive supplies. The raiders plan was to capture the gunboat, USS Pawnee. Meanwhile, fate intervened when a Confederate sharpshooter killed the captain of the USS Pawnee. The Union gunboat was ordered to return to Washington Naval Shipyard for the funeral of its captain.
Zarnova’s plan was thwarted when the USS Pawnee failed to meet the SS St. Nicholas. Thomas decided to search for whatever ships he could find in the Chesapeake Bay. The first was the Monticello, which was laden with coffee. She was headed for Baltimore en route from Brazil. Thomas landed the SS St. Nicholas with the Monticello’s cargo of 35,000 bags of coffee in Fredericksburg. Next was the Mary Pierce, headed for Washington with a cargo of ice when captured by Thomas. Luckily for Thomas, his next prize was the schooner Margaret bound for Alexandria with a cargo of coal. The SS St. Nicholas was by that time desperately in need of coal. Thomas sought safety in the Rappahannock River and towed the Margaret to Fredericksburg. He was met at the dock as a hero with cheering crowds. A ball was given in his honor. In Richmond, a parade was held in his honor.
Thomas was eager to get back to the business of raiding whatever ships he could find. The Mary Washington was Thomas’s next target. However, another success for Thomas was not to be. Union spies had learned of his plan and had already boarded the Mary Washington. Also waiting were Union troops and the old crew of the SS St. Nicholas. Realizing he had been discovered, Thomas attempted to escape in a lifeboat but was captured before he could escape. Thomas and his Confederate force were taken to Fort McHenry. However, Thomas managed to escape capture for a short time before passengers were allowed to leave the ship. A female Confederate passenger hid him for a time. She had stuffed him into a dresser drawer.
The article “Last Survivor of a Gallant Band,” The Evening Sun, Baltimore, August 27, 1910, relates the comments of George Watts who was one of the last survivors of Thomas’s band of Zouaves. Watts was living above a Chinese laundry in Baltimore when the newspaper reporter interviewed the seventy-eight-year-old veteran. Watts said that at first, he too had disliked and mistrusted Thomas, thinking that he “looked like one of [those] slick floorwalkers in a department store.” As Watts got to know Thomas during their early training, he had a change of heart. “Believe me, sir, that man had the quickest brain I ever ran across, and his eyes were just as quick. Eyes? Why, when that man looked at you it was like having an X-ray turned on you. It didn’t take us long to learn who was boss around there, so we got all our plans ready.”
Thomas was held in solitary confinement at Fort McHenry. Despite the presence of his Zouave uniform, and the letter confirming that he was a Confederate colonel on a commission from the volunteer forces of Virginia, he was held as a spy. Thomas was charged with piracy and treason. In December of 1861, Thomas was transferred to Fort Lafayette in New York Harbor. An entry in the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies of the Civil War described requests as follows, “In April, Zarnova’s mother pleaded in a series of letters to Lieutenant Colonel Burke to permit her to visit her son in prison. At one point, it seemed that her pleas were winning a favorable response. At the last moment, however, her requests were refused. On April 22, Burke received the following report. ‘At half past 9 o’clock last night Richard Thomas Zarnova, the French lady, a prisoner in close confinement at this post, informed the sergeant of the guard that he wanted to go to the water closet. The sergeant sent him out attended to by a member of the guard; when he reached the water closet (which is situated at the sea wall) instead of entering it he jumped overboard into stormy waters and attempted to escape by swimming to the Long Island shore. The guard immediately gave the alarm and the barge belonging to the post was manned. Thomas was captured before he had succeeded in getting but a short distance. To prevent a reoccurrence of this, I have had a police tub placed in his room.”
Zarnova, unable to swim, had attached a belt of tin cans to his waist to keep him afloat. After being recaptured, his confinement became more stringent than ever. He was not permitted to leave his cell under any circumstance and was constantly guarded by a sergeant known for his harshness. The sergeant was assisted by three tough privates. Another request by Zarnova’s mother to visit her son was at first summarily refused. Then the refusal was rescinded, and Mrs. Richard Thomas visited Fort Lafayette.
Richard P. Cox, reported in a Washington Times article, “Rebel raider disguised in a hoop skirt”,2007, “When Mrs. Thomas came into the commander’s office she did not recognize him at first, he was so changed. He looked so tall and was very thin and emaciated and had hardly the strength to speak. His hand, which you know was short and plump, is now long and bony. He held her hand all the time. She asked him how he was. He said he was as well as could be expected shut up without light or air, his cell partly underwater, with a place about the size of a dollar to admit the light; on cloudy days he could not see to walk about his room…”
As documented in correspondence from Captain George Thomas to General T. J. (Stonewall) Jackson, 1862, in which Thomas pleaded with Jackson to intercede while Zarnova continued in solitary confinement. “There were numerous requests from Confederate officers, friends, and his family for a prisoner exchange, but they were ignored. When word reached then-Virginia Governor Letcher he then threatened that he would place some Union prisoners in solitary confinement unless Thomas was released from solitary and exchanged. True to his word, Governor Letcher did indeed place some Union prisoners in solitary. Friends and relatives of those prisoners were outraged and made their feelings known. Eventually, Union Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton authorized Thomas’s exchange.”
On April 11th, 1863, Thomas’s exchange was ordered. By that time, he had been moved to Fort Delaware. In poor mental, and physical condition, Thomas returned to France in the hope of restoring his family’s fortune. He was unsuccessful. In 1872, he then returned to Maryland. The following year he wrote his biography. Writer, Richard P. Cox, also reported in the article cited above, “He (Zarnova) lived his last years in anguish over his health and declining finances. He felt that his friends had abandoned him, and his gallantry had been forgotten.” Richard Thomas Zarnova died on March 17, 1875, and was buried at a family plot at the estate in St. Mary’s County, Maryland.