Brigadier-General Ellison Capers, Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 5, South Carolina
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

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[613] flagship Macedonian, and remained two years in those waters. Then returning home, he resigned upon the secession of his State and tendered her his services. He was on duty at Fort Moultrie when the Star of the West was fired upon and compelled to abandon the attempt to victual Fort Sumter. Subsequently he was commissioned first lieutenant Confederate States navy, and assigned to the Lady Davis, under command of Capt. John Rutledge, with which he participated in the defense of Port Royal and other encounters. From the Lady Davis he was transferred as first lieutenant to the ram Arkansas, built on the Yazoo river, near Greenwood, Miss., during the Federal operations against Vicksburg, under the command of Lieut. Isaac N. Brown. He and Lieut. G. W. Gift commanded the eight-inch columbiads and the two forward broadside guns on this vessel during her memorable trip down the Yazoo into the Mississippi, and through the combined fleets of Farragut and Davis to Vicksburg. The guns commanded by Grimball did most effective action in the running fight, and when steam had gone down, and on account of defective construction the fire-room was a hell of red-hot iron, the heroic Grimball headed a party to relieve the exhausted and almost roasted firemen. He remained on the Arkansas during the attempt of the Federal fleet to destroy her while running the Vicksburg batteries, and Took a conspicuous part in repelling the attack of the Essex and Queen of the West. Subsequently he was transferred to the ram Baltic, at Mobile, Admiral Buchanan's flagship prior to the completion of the Tennessee, and thence he was ordered abroad in charge of a detachment of naval officers who were to go on duty on one of the vessels then building in England. But these were seized by the British government soon after his arrival, and some time later he was ordered as one of the first lieutenants to the cruiser Shenandoah. From Madeira he sailed on this famous vessel, the last of the Confederate cruisers, to Australia, and thence to the North Pacific, and into the Arctic ocean, destroying the American whaling fleet. She captured in all thirty-eight ships, and on June 28, 1865, burned eight prizes near the mouth of Bering's strait. On August 2d they met the British bark Barracouta, from San Francisco, and learned of the capture of President Davis and the end of