Reconnaissance-in-Force
26-29 JANUARY 1862
RECONNAISSANCE-IN-FORCE
By January 1862, Union MGEN Thomas W. Sherman was ready to attempt to close the Savannah River, isolating the city of Savannah lying 15 miles upstream. But the mouth of that river was guarded by masonry Fort Pulaski, built before the war as a federal installation, now in Confederate hands.
Union planners noted that from the Tybee Roads, where the Savannah River reached the Atlantic, and from Wassaw Sound just a bit south, several tidal creeks and channels penetrated the marshlands parallel to the Savannah River. To determine whether these might be used to bypass Fort Pulaski, as well as cut off communications between the fort and Savannah, Sherman sent his Chief Engineer, BGEN Horatio G. Wright, USA, with Union Naval escort to scout the area.
On this day, Fleet Captain Charles H. Davis led a flotilla of the Union gunboats USS WABASH, SENECA, OTTAWA, ISAAC SMITH, POTOMSKA, ELLEN, and WESTERN WORLD with the transports SS Delaware, Boston, and Cosmopolitan in a two-pronged entry of the Little Tybee River from Tybee Roads and the Cooper and Wright Rivers from Wassaw Sound. The 6th Connecticut, 97th Pennsylvania, and 4th New Hampshire Regiments totaling 2400 men were embarked. They succeeded in circumventing Pulaski and passed harmlessly at the edge of the fort’s range. Then at Wall’s Cut near modern Wilmington Island, they encountered a double row of obstructing pilings and a sunken hulk. Here the troops landed hoping to isolate the fort from resupply. The only resistance was from a half-dozen boys of the Savannah City Light Guards, who were dispersed with a single shot from one of the gunboats. However, the terrain proved to be marshy mud flats unsuited for military operations.
On the 28th, five Confederate gunboats dropped downstream from Savannah in a parallel channel. Gunfire erupted at 1115 as Commodore Josiah Tatnall, CSN, attempted to pass the Union force and reach Fort Pulaski. Two of the Rebel boats were turned back, but three pressed onward. Around 1700, at low tide, the boats returned upstream, briefly taken under fire again and damaged by Davis’ forces. All three escaped, as the low water provided the cover of high marsh grass. It was later learned that one of these gunboats sank after reaching Savannah.
This joint reconnaissance-in-force returned on the 29th having accomplished the entirely of its mission without a casualty. Bypass channels that lacked defensive positions were charted, while SENECA cut the telegraph lines from Fort Pulaski to Savannah. Fort Pulaski would ultimately fall three months later, on 11 April, after a two-day Union bombardment.
Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 01 FEB 22
CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
Cooney, David M. A Chronology of the U.S. Navy: 1775-1965. New York, NY: Franklin Watts, Inc., 1965, p. 89.
Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Civil War Naval Chronology 1861-1865. Washington, DC: GPO, 1961, pp. II-12, II-47.
“Joint Reconnaissance in Wilmington Narrows, Georgia, January 26-28, and naval engagement January 28, 1862.” IN: Rawson, Edward K., George P. Colvocoresses and Charles W. Stewart. Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 12, North Atlantic Blockading Squadron from February 2 to August 3, 1865; South Atlantic Blockading Squadron from October 29, 1861, to May 13, 1862. Washington, DC: GPO, 1901, pp. 523-28.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: General Robert E. Lee is quoted as saying of this effort, “If the enemy succeeds in removing the obstacles [in Walls’ Cut] there is nothing to prevent their reaching the Savannah River, and we have nothing afloat that can contend against them.”
Fort Pulaski was part of a large fortification effort intended to protect our river entrances. During the War of 1812, British forces entered the Chesapeake and proceeded to burn our nation’s capital. The memory of that affront spurred Congress to construct advanced masonry forts at the mouths of every river upon which a major city is situated. Fort Pulaski remembers Casimir Pulaski, a Polish cavalry officer who assisted GEN George Washington during our Revolutionary War. Pulaski is honored by our Navy with USS PULASKI, a screw gunboat mounting three 12-pounder howitzers commissioned in 1859 for a punitive expedition against Paraguay, and with the Lafayette-class ballistic missile submarine USS Casimir Pulaski (SSBN-633).
RADM Charles Henry Davis is remembered with the torpedo boat DAVIS (TB-12), the destroyers DD-65, DD-395 and DD-937, and the 1960s oceanographic research vessel USS CHARLES H. DAVIS (AGOR-5).
