USS SASSACUS vs. NUTFIELD

Blockade running was a complicated pursuit even for the most skilled of seamen.  European goods were shipped to staging points in Bermuda, the Bahamas, or the Caribbean.  Here, smaller, sleek, fast ships would load for the dash into Southern ports.  Runners would skirt Union blockaders as best they could, then run close inshore where their shallow draft proved an advantage.  Only the luckiest threaded the thin line between uncharted shoals and dogged blockaders.  The paddle-wheel steamer Wild Dayrell for example, ran aground the night of 31 January 1864 at New Topsail Inlet, North Carolina, where she was discovered the following day by LCDR Francis A. Roe in USS SASSACUS.  Roe worked in vain until the 3^rd trying to free the steamer but ultimately had to burn her.

By 0700 this day SASSACUS had returned to her station on the Bermuda Line when she sighted another suspicious vessel about 12 miles to the northwest.  Roe fired his boilers and set his 205-foot, double-ender sidewheel gunboat in hot pursuit.  Through the morning, SASSACUS sustained 12.5-13 knots, enough to steadily gain on the blockade runner.  This was obviously noted aboard the pursued vessel, for through his spyglass Roe observed cargo being thrown overboard to lighten ship.  Around noon SASSACUS had closed within range of her forward 100-pounder.  Union shells began splashing around the still fleeing runner.  Tellingly, she turned sharply toward shore to duck into shallower water.

Perhaps accidently, perhaps not, the mystery ship ran aground at New Inlet, North Carolina.  Her crew set her aflame and fled to the lifeboats, leaving her engines running.  As SASSACUS pulled to within musket range one of the lifeboats capsized, spilling rebel crewmen.  Roe lowered a boat but was only able to save the blockade runner’s purser.  From him he learned the vessel was the brand-new iron-hulled steamer Nutfield, making her first run from Bermuda.  She measured 750 tons burden and carried munitions, Enfield rifles, a battery of eight Whitworth rifled cannon, quinine, assorted merchandise and a quantity of pig lead to be recast into musket balls.  The cannon and the lead had been the cargo Roe observed being thrown overboard.

Recognizing Nutfield to be one of the newest and best steamers off the Thames ways, Roe worked through the night to free the runner.  But alas she was too fast to be re-floated.  Roe off-loaded the Enfield rifles, the quinine, and several compasses, then set her afire.  USS FLORIDA shortly arrived, and together they pummeled the stranded runner with gunfire.  Finally, convinced the steamer was completely wrecked, SASSACUS departed about 1900 the evening of the 5^th.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  9 FEB 26

CAPT James Bloom, Ret

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Civil War Naval Chronology 1861-1865.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1961, pp. IV-12, IV-15.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 6 “R-S”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1976, p. 350.

“Report of Commander Crosby, U.S. Navy, Commanding U.S.S. Florida.”  IN: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 9, North Atlantic Blockading Squadron from May 5, 1863, to May 4, 1864.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1899, pp. 460-61.

“Report of Lieutenant-Commander Roe, U.S. Navy, commanding U.S.S. Sassacus.”  IN: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 9, North Atlantic Blockading Squadron from May 5, 1863, to May 4, 1864.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1899, pp. 459-60.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  SASSACUS survived the war, seeing subsequent duty in North Carolina’s sounds against the Confederate ironclad CSS Albemarle.  She participated in the siege of Fort Fisher and patrolled the Chesapeake in April 1865 in search of conspirators in the Lincoln assassination.  She was sold in 1868.  Sassacus remembers a great sachem of the Pequot tribe of Massachusetts in the early 1600s.  He endured the rebellion of the Mohegans, a subjugated tribe, who eventually defeated Sassacus with the help of the English and Narragansett Indian allies in what is known today as the Pequot War.  Sassacus fled to Iroquois lands near present-day Long Island, New York, but there was betrayed and killed by the Mohawk of the Iroquois Confederation.

The wreck of Wild Dayrell was surveyed in 2006 by Tidewater Atlantic Research, Inc., as a North Carolina cultural resource.  She lies in Rich Inlet, about 20 miles north of Fort Fisher.  The wreck of Nutfield has not been surveyed to this writer’s knowledge.

Pig lead is lead in ingot form.  Molten lead is smelted from lead ore, galena.  A channel conducts the molten lead from the smelting furnace and into multiple side channels coming off perpendicularly, all in the same direction.   As such, the side channels resemble piglets suckling from a sow.

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                                                 USS PATAPSCO

The Rebel-controlled guns of Forts Sumter, Moultrie, and Johnson straddling the entrance to Charleston harbor anchored the Confederate defenses in the late Civil War.  The mouth of the harbor and the entrance channel were obstructed with log booms, pilings, and “torpedoes” (underwater mines).  The Civil War saw the first effective use of fixed underwater mines, and Union warships off Charleston had learned a healthy respect for torpedoes.  Working parties in rowboats regularly dragged the approaches to Charleston with grappling hooks to find and remove these “infernal devices.”  Because these parties worked within range of Confederates on Morris and Sullivan’s Islands, a Union gunboat was usually detailed to provide cover.  Such was the ironclad monitor PATAPSCO’s duty after sunset this evening.

As the rowboats worked 100-200 yards off her beams, PATAPSCO occupied the channel, drifting seaward with the ebbing tide, then steaming back up to the Lehigh buoy.  Her commanding officer, LCDR Stephen P. Quackenbush, and about 40 sailors were out on the monitor’s deck, directing the boats sweeping for torpedoes.  The XO, LT William T. Sampson, conned the monitor from atop the rotating turret.  This night there was no pestering fire from the shore and three times, PATAPSCO drifted lazily down the channel with the tide.  Three times she turned and steamed back up.  But as she made her third return about 2010 hours, a sudden, sharp explosion rocked her port bow.  The cloud of steam and a geyser of seawater immediately alerted Sampson that he had struck a torpedo.  He had no time to react.  Within 15 seconds the forward deck flooded, and in another 30 seconds the monitor rested on the bottom of the 50-foot-deep channel.  Curiously, Sampson only got his feet wet, for when all motion stopped the top of the turret was only ankle-deep.  He simply stepped into the rescuing launch.  Quackenbush and 42 sailors on deck were fished from the water, but the crewmen below decks were not so lucky.  Civil War monitors did not have escape hatches.  To protect against boarders, such ships were built with only one or two hatches leading below deck.  As a result, only two sailors from below were able to scramble to safety.  Sixty-four men, including the Assistant Surgeon Samuel H. Peltz, the surgeon’s steward; the sick nurse; most of the engineers, firemen, and coal heavers; the paymaster; and all the cooks were trapped and died.

Visitors to modern Fort Moultrie National Historical Park on Sullivan’s Island will notice an obelisk commemorating the Union sailors lost with PATAPSCO.  In fact, the monitor still lies today where she sank on this date, having since been partially salvaged, then blasted flat to clear the channel.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  21 JAN 26

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Civil War Naval Chronology 1861-1865.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1961, p. V-16.

“Report of Lieutenant-Commander Quackenbush, U.S. Navy, commanding U.S.S. PATAPSCO” dtd. 16 January 1865.  IN:  Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of Rebellion, Series I, Vol 16, South Atlantic Blockading Squadron from October 1, 1864, to August 8, 1865.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1903, pp. 175-76.

“Report of Lieutenant Sampson, U.S. Navy, executive officer of the U.S.S. PATAPSCO” dtd. 16 January 1865.  IN:  Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of Rebellion, Series I, Vol 16, South Atlantic Blockading Squadron from October 1, 1864, to August 8, 1865.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1903, pp. 176-78.

“Report of Rear-Admiral Dahlgren, U.S. Navy,” dtd. 16 January 1865.  IN:  Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of Rebellion, Series I, Vol 16, South Atlantic Blockading Squadron from October 1, 1864, to August 8, 1865.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1903, pp. 171-75.

“Report of Rear-Admiral Dahlgren, U.S. Navy, transmitting report of proceedings of a court of enquiry,” dtd. 29 January 1865.  IN:  Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of Rebellion, Series I, Vol 16, South Atlantic Blockading Squadron from October 1, 1864, to August 8, 1865.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1903, pp. 178-80.

Sweetman, Jack.  American Naval History:  An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present, 3^rd ed.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 2002, p. 81.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  This sinking marked the fourth loss of a monitor during the war, the second to torpedoes.  It prompted both tactical and strategic changes to the Union’s campaign against Charleston.  From this date, only tugboats and launches were used to protect sweepers clearing Charleston’s channels, and the strategy for the joint Army/Navy assault on Charleston was altered.  The point of attack was shifted northward, away from Charleston Harbor, to the less protected waters of Bull’s Bay about 10 miles up the coast.

PATAPSCO’s executive officer, William T. Sampson, is of course better remembered for his action as the senior in command of US Navy forces off Santiago, Cuba, three decades later in the Spanish-American War.  He is one of several Navy veterans of the Civil War who remained on Active Duty to fight in that latter conflict.

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                                           THE FIRING OF JUDAH

Had other theaters of the early Civil War not been in the limelight, the tension at Pensacola might have been keener.  The Confederates held the Pensacola Navy Yard and Forts Barrancas and McRee guarding the harbor, but a Union garrison had secured Fort Pickens on the Santa Rosa barrier island at the outbreak of fighting.  Pickens was the strongest position in the Pensacola area.  Her guns could reach all of the other installations, and from atop Pickens’ walls Union soldiers and sailors regularly monitored the goings-on across the bay.  In fact, when a large floating drydock was moved into the bay, Pickens’ guns bombarded and sank it, lest it be used as an artillery platform.

In September 1861. the Federals observed more activity at the Navy Yard.  The schooner William H. Judah had been moved to the yard and was apparently being fitted out and armed for privateering.  CAPT William Mervine, responsible for the Union blockade of that portion of the Florida coast, decided on a daring raid that would prevent Judah from ever getting underway.  He landed 100 sailors and Marines from USS COLORADO at Fort Pickens, who on this moonless night shoved off to cross the bay.  LT John H. Russell led the four longboats, detaching one to the dock to quiet the guard and spike a 10-inch Columbiad mounted there.  The other three boats slid up to Judah completely unnoticed.  The men swarmed across and quickly overpowered the only two rebels aboard the schooner.  Meanwhile, the men of the single boat ably dispatched the guard on the dock and disabled the gun with an iron spike driven down the firing hole.  In a short 15 minutes Judah was ablaze and the attackers were pulling away.  But the activity roused other Confederates who reached the dock in time to open fire on the departing Federals.  Three Union sailors slumped over in their boats, 13 were wounded.  Judah drifted into the bay where she burned and sank.

Local Confederate commander MGEN Braxton Bragg was furious over the affair and on 8 October launched a retaliatory strike on the Federals.  At 2200 that night 1000 Confederate volunteers boarded three steamers and several barges and crossed the bay to Santa Rosa Island.  They landed east of Fort Pickens and sneaked upon the 6^th Regiment of New York Zouaves, bivouacked outside the walls at Camp Brown.  In a classic example of “the boy who cried wolf,” 6^th Regiment pickets had been in the habit of shooting game while on duty, so the fire at the advancing Johnny Rebs did not raise an alarm with the Yankees.  The Zouaves were overrun, and only after troops inside Fort Pickens rallied to their aid did the Federals turn back the attack.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  20 SEP 25

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 2 “C-F”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, p. 144.

Ogden, David P.  The Fort Barrancas Story.  Pensacola, FL: Eastern National, 1998, p. 19.

Parks, Virginia, Alan Rick and Norman Simons.  Pensacola in the Civil War.  Pensacola, FL: Pensacola Historical Society,  1978, pp. 16-18.

Pearce, George F.  Pensacola During the Civil War:  A Thorn in the Side of the Confederacy.  Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2000, pp. 111-13.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Western Florida remained a quiet theater throughout the Civil War, in fact the above action anywhere else would likely have been labeled only a skirmish.  In the battle of Santa Rosa Island, Bragg suffered 18 killed, 39 wounded and 30 captured.  Fourteen Zouaves lost their lives, 29 were wounded and 24 were taken prisoner.  The engagement was characterized by ineptitude on both sides.  Part of the reason the Confederates were so easily reversed was that discipline broke down when rebels began looting the tents they had overrun in Camp Brown.

CAPT Mervine is best remembered for his earlier actions in California during the Mexican War.  By 1861 he had been on active duty for 52 years, indeed ill health forced his retirement on 16 July the following year.  He was subsequently promoted to RADM on the retired list.  His name has graced two Navy destroyers, DD-322 and DD-489.  John Henry Russell also reached the rank of RADM before retiring from active duty 27 August 1886.  For this and other actions he is remembered with the pre-WWII Sims-class destroyer RUSSELL (DD-414).  Braxton Bragg is of course the namesake of the US Army’s Fort Bragg in North Carolina (“Bragg” restored in 2025 from “Fort Liberty”).

Spiking was a means of permanently disabling a muzzle-loading cannon.  An iron spike was driven into the tiny touch hole in the breech of the gun.  This blocked the hole from being used to ignite the powder charge.  The action often cracked or weakened the breech, and at the very least left a large hole that vented the firing pressure.  Once spiked, the only way to “repair” the gun was to melt it down for re-casting.

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                                   NOT ABOVE MAKING A BUCK!

Blockade running during our Civil War was a profitable enterprise for those who were successful.  The running of war materials brought a handsome price, but even higher profit margins accompanied “luxury” items, such as silks, lace, fine liquors, and porcelains.  Southern sea captains, like the fictional Rhett Butler, were of course involved in running.  But foreign nationals, lured by the advent of windfall profits, engaged in blockade running purely as a business venture.  Galveston, Texas, was one of several American ports at which the Confederation of Switzerland maintained a diplomatic legation.  The Galveston consul was Dr. Jacob C. Kuhn, originally of St. Gall, Switzerland.  Kuhn had lived for 20 years prior to the Civil War in Galveston and was well acquainted with the local business community.  When the blockade running schooner Wave reached Galveston in the summer of 1863, Dr. Kuhn saw an opportunity.  He purchased Wave and set about collecting cargo for an outbound run.

By this day, 80 bales of cotton had been shipped aboard Wave.  A captain, four crewmen, and three paying passengers comprised the souls embarked.  And in this morning’s pre-dawn, the schooner slipped out of San Luis Pass and turned south.  She hoped to reach Vera Cruz, Mexico, where her cotton would fetch a profit sufficient to recoup Dr. Kuhn’s entire investment on this single run.

Cruising offshore was the Union Navy’s 5-gun Unadilla-class gunboat USS CAYUGA.  She was a hybrid of that day, built and rigged as a two-masted schooner, but with twin steam engines amidships yoked to a single screw.  She and her skipper, LCDR William H. Dana, were veteran blockaders by this date, having already captured or assisted in the capture of the schooners Jesse J. Cox, Tampico, and J.T. Davis and the sloops Blue Bell and Active.  Dana apparently had little trouble overhauling the southbound schooner bearing a Swiss flag, as Dana’s report mentions nothing of a chase.  The Yankee easily saw past the false Swiss colors and sent Wave to New Orleans under a prize crew.

Though Dr. Kuhn’s profit-minded enterprise failed, in nearby Mobile Bay another profit scheme was hatching–privateering.  Rumors broke this day that Alabama businessmen had purchased the stout tugboat Boston.  She was to be armed and outfitted for cruising against Union commerce.  Privateers were private citizens who operated in the interests of their sponsoring government.  Any vessel and cargo taken could be sold for the profit of the privateer owners, officers, and crew.  But fortune frowned on Boston as well.  The opportunity never arose for Boston’s run to sea, and early in 1864 her crew was conscripted instead into the Confederate Army.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  27 AUG 25

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Associated Press.  “Dispatches to the Associated Press, the Late Naval Repulse at Fort Sumter.”  New York Times, 14 September 1863.  AT: http://www.nytimes.com/1863/09/14/news/dispatches-to-the-associated-press-the-late-naval-repulse-at-fort-sumter.html, retrieved 11 August 2017.

Cooney, David M.  A Chronology of the U.S. Navy:  1775-1965.  New York, NY: Franklin Watts, Inc., 1965.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Civil War Naval Chronology 1861-1865.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1961, p. III-132.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 2 “C-F”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, p. 59.

“Report of Captain Marchand, U.S. Navy, forwarding information obtained from deserters sent from Mississippi Sound.”  IN: Stewart, Charles W.  Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 21; West Gulf Blockading Squadron from January 1 to December 31, 1864.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1906, p. 106.

“Report of Lieutenant-Commander Dana, U.S. Navy, commanding U.S.S. Cayuga, regarding the capture of the schooner Wave.”  IN: Stewart, Charles W.  Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 20, West Gulf Blockading Squadron from March 15 to December 31, 1863.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1905, pp. 475-76.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  In 1856, the Paris Declaration Respecting Maritime Law banned the practice of privateering (which too often devolved into frank piracy), though the Confederacy did not join the agreement.  Lincoln’s administration adhered to the principles of the treaty but never signed it.  As such, in February 2025, Congressmen Tim Burchett (R-TN) and Mark Messmer (R-IN) introduced a bill to the US House authorizing President Trump to commission privateers against drug cartels.  It did not pass.

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                                     CRUISE OF CSS TALLAHASSEE

One of the more successful efforts of the Confederacy during the Civil War was their campaign against Union commercial shipping.  CSS TALLAHASSEE was one such raider, a sleek and fast cruiser built in England as the cross-channel steamer Atalanta and transferred to Wilmington, North Carolina, in the summer of 1864.  Her five guns included an 84-pounder stern pivot that was mounted high enough to be identifiable in her silhouette.  Similarly, her two closely mounted stacks amidships made her readily recognizable.  Jefferson Davis’ nephew, CDR John Taylor Wood, CSN, was named her captain, and after several attempts to negotiate sand bars at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, Wood set to sea on 6 August 1864.

He coursed northward, where ship traffic near New York and New England would be heavy.  His success was remarkable from the start.  On August 11^th, 80 miles off Sandy Hook, New Jersey, he captured the brigs A. Richards and Carrie Estella, the schooners Sarah A. Boyce and Carrol, the bark Bay State, and the pilot boats James Funk and William Bell.  All except Carrol were rifled for medicines, food, instruments, charts, and other items of value, then burned.  Carrol was bonded as a cartel ship to carry the captured crews to New York.  On the 12^th, Wood captured five more, burning three.  On the 13^th he took the brig Lamont DuPont and the schooner Glenavon.

The same day, news of TALLAHASSEE’s raiding reached CAPT Hiram Paulding, commander of the New York Navy Yard.  He sent three ships in immediate pursuit.  These were quickly supplemented by Union Navy warships out of Hampton Roads and Boston.  Regardless, from 14-17 August Wood took 15 more defenseless freighters bound to or from New York.  Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles was furious as insurance rates for trans-Atlantic shippers began to rise.

Now with nearly a dozen Union warships on her tail, by 18 August, TALLAHASSEE was running short on coal.  CDR Wood shaped a course for Halifax where the American Consul, Mortimer M. Jackson, protested to Lieutenant Governor Richard G. MacDonnell the sale of any coal to the Confederate.  As a neutral port, Halifax was not thus constrained, although local authorities agreed to sell Wood only enough coal to make his homeport of Wilmington–60 tons.  Jackson also notified Welles, who dispatched LCDR George A. Stevens in USS PANTOOSUC from Eastport, Maine.  Stevens reached Halifax at 0600 on the 20^th to learn he had missed the raider by only seven hours.  He turned north anticipating Wood would next harass the fishing fleet in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

But Wood had turned south.  His coal still short, he ran the blockade into Wilmington on the 25^th.  In a fortnight’s cruising he had taken 31 freighters in a remarkably effective sortie.

Watch or more “Today in Naval History”  22 AUG 25

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Civil War Naval Chronology 1861-1865.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1961, pp. IV-103, IV-104, IV-105, IV-106, IV-108.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 5 “N-Q”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1979, p. 350.

Hearn, Chester G.  Gray Raiders of the Sea:  How Eight Confederate Warships Destroyed the Union’s High Seas Commerce.  Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1992, pp. 129-39.

Silverstone, Paul H.  Warships of the Civil War Navies.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989, p. 215.

Shingleton, Royce Gordon.  John Taylor Wood:  Sea Ghost of the Confederacy.  Athens, GA: Univ of Georgia Press, 1979, pp. 116-44.

Sweetman, Jack.  American Naval History:  An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present, 3^rd ed.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 2002, p. 78.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Despite Consul Jackson’s efforts, Wood actually purchased 120 tons of coal in Halifax–more than agreed, but still not enough to sustain further cruising.

Wood’s cruise indirectly led to the capture of seven subsequent blockade runners.  TALLAHASSEE had commandeered all the hard coal available in Wilmington before her cruise, leaving only softer bituminous coal for other runners, which produces half the speed and twice the smoke.

TALLAHASSEE was to escape the Wilmington blockade twice more for guerre de course raids, in October 1864 under the name CSS OLUSTEE and two months later in December 1864 as CSS CHAMELEON.

Both Hiram Paulding and John Taylor Wood survived the war.  In Paulding’s case he rose to the rank of RADM, which he held at his death in 1878.  Wood escaped the South at the end of the war believing he would be executed as a pirate and traitor.  He reached Halifax, where he became a prominent businessman for decades until this death after the turn of the century.

A “cartel ship” is used in time of war to exchange prisoners or carry messages between belligerents.  Under maritime law, the ship must not carry cargo, ammunition, or weapons, except a single gun for signaling.

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                       CDR TUNIS CRAVEN, HERO OF MOBILE BAY

To a boy from Portsmouth, NH, the life of the sea seemed natural, thus, when Tunis Augustus MacDonough Craven was appointed a Midshipman on 2 February 1829, no one was surprised.  He distinguished himself during the Mexican War as a Lieutenant under CDR Thomas O. Selfridge aboard DALE, 16, leading shore parties that routed Mexican troops and captured cannon at Muleje, Loreta, and Cochori in Baja and Sonora.  The Civil War found Craven skippering TECUMSEH, a single-turret ironclad monitor, a class of warship well respected by both Civil War navies.  She carried two 15″ Dahlgren smooth-bores, capable of hurling a 440-pound steel bolt that could rip enemy armor.  Her iron hull befitted her advanced construction; she was designed to engage the best the enemy could produce.  RADM David G. Farragut appreciated the value of monitors and placed four in the van of his attack on the Confederate port of Mobile, Alabama.  These could resist shot from Forts Morgan and Gaines guarding the bay’s entrance channel, while simultaneously engaging the ironclad ram CSS TENNESSEE, a clear threat to Farragut’s wooden-hulled steam frigates.

In the mist this morning, TECUMSEH led the 18-ship Union squadron into Mobile Bay.  At 0700, she opened with two rounds at Fort Morgan, after which she noticed TENNESSEE sliding toward the oncoming Union line.  CDR Craven ordered the helm to port, bringing his monitor onto a ramming course for TENNESSEE.  This carried the monitor inboard of the buoy marking a Confederate torpedo (mine) field.  Closer and closer Craven glided, until just 100 yards from the Confederate, a tremendous explosion suddenly bashed TECUMSEH’s keel.  Catastrophic flooding plunged her bows immediately, lifting her screw completely out of the water.  Inside, panicked men scrambled for daylight.

Craven dove for the only escape, a small hatch behind the pilothouse.  He and the pilot, John Collins, reached the ladder simultaneously, at which point Craven graciously stepped back, stating, “After you, pilot.”  His civility allowed Collins to escape, but sealed Craven’s fate with that of 92 other crewmen, for in only 25 seconds TECUMSEH rolled completely.

Only 21 escaped.  So terrifying was the spectacle of her demise that BROOKLYN, leading the main squadron, backed down in the channel fearing the same fate.  With his line now breaking and exposed to fire from the shore, a frustrated Farragut yelled to CAPT Percival Drayton of the flagship HARTFORD, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”  HARTFORD passed to port of BROOKLYN, leading the squadron through the rest of the mines that Farragut correctly gambled were waterlogged from lengthy immersion.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  11 AUG 25

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 7 “T-V”.  GPO, Washington, DC, p. 78, 1981.

Fowler, William M., Jr.  Under Two Flags: The American Navy in the Civil War.  Avon Books, New York, NY, p. 240-41, 1990.

Hoehling, A.A.  Damn the Torpedoes!  Naval Incidents of the Civil War.  John F. Blair Pub., Winston-Salem, NC, p. 113, 1989.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:

As is usually the case with famous quotes, there is today some argument about the actual content of the exchange between Craven and Collins.  According to A.A. Hoehling, Craven was already partway up the ladder when Collins grabbed his leg and said, “Let me get out first, captain, for God’s sake; I have five little children!”, to which Craven stepped back saying “Go on, sir.”  Indeed, the monitors of those days were floating coffins in an emergency.  The sole egress route was a one-at-a-time hatch near the pilothouse.  (Miraculously, two or three additional sailors were able to squeeze through TECUMSEH’s tiny gun ports).  As TECUMSEH rolled there was stone silence aboard the Confederate TENNESSEE.  These sailors recognized they might very well suffer an identical fate, in fact, they were at that moment over the same torpedo field.

Some have commented that the Civil War was our last major conflict in which the opposing sides openly shared a measure of compassion for each other.  Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston, commanding ashore, observed TECUMSEH’s demise with the comment, “The event was the most startling and tragic loss of the day.”

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                                            THE LOSS OF PETREL

To bolster Union naval forces patrolling the Mississippi in the Civil War, our Navy purchased a total of 63 existing sternwheel and sidewheel riverboats.  Protection was added to their upper works in the form of thick wooden bulwarks overlain with a metal skin.  They mounted heavy guns on the first deck and lighter howitzers on the upper decks.  “Tinclads” as they came to be known exercised patrol, reconnaissance, and gunboat missions along the Mississippi.  One such “tinclad,” USS PETREL, the former riverboat Duchess, operated from February to April 1864 in the Yazoo River of Mississippi.  On April 21^st, 1864, PETREL and her sister tinclad PAIRIE BIRD started upriver escorting the Army transport Freestone.  They were to retake Yazoo City, which had been abandoned by Union troops in February.  PETREL ranged ahead and came abreast of Yazoo City well in advance of the others.  Here she engaged a group of rebels firing from the hills.  As the river was insufficiently wide to turn, Acting Master Thomas McElroy ran upriver past the battery.  The following morning found PETREL against the bank with her crew ashore, collecting rails to stack against the boilers.

Suddenly the gunboat came under fire from a force of enemy infantry with two 12-pounder Parrott rifles.  “Minnie” balls and shot screamed through the air, some piercing completely through PETREL.  McElroy beat his crew to quarters, but found that the position of his boat against the bank prevented his heavy guns from being brought to bear.  The Yankees defended with muskets while McElroy attempted to back down into the stream.  But an enemy shot cut the tinclad’s steam lines; followed by another that struck the magazine and cut off the legs of Gunner’s Mate Charles Seitz.  Enemy sharpshooters began picking off the Union crewmen through the gun ports.  Several of the officers “behaved badly,” falling back out of fear.  Disabled and unable to counter-fire, McElroy decided to burn his vessel.  But just as Asst. Engineer Arthur M. Phillips was setting the gunboat ablaze, another rebel shot raked the stern and burst the boilers, bathing the ship in steam.  The steam doused the fires, and many of McElroy’s officers and crew jumped ashore and ran.  Only the pilot, Kimball Ware, and an enlisted sailor, Quartermaster John H. Nibbe, stayed to assist McElroy in defending PETREL’s flag.  Nibbe helped get the wounded ashore, then all three re-fired the gunboat by spreading coals from the boiler across the deck.

The Confederates surrounded and captured the three brave sailors.  The fires were again extinguished long enough for the rebels to strip every gun and salvageable store.  PETREL was then burned to prevent her re-capture.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  29 APR 25

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Civil War Naval Chronology 1861-1865.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1961, p. IV-46.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 5 “N-Q”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1979, p. 276.

McElroy, Thomas.  Report of loss of Petrel.  IN: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion. Series I-Volume 26:  Naval Forces on Western Waters (March 1, 1864-December 21, 1864).  Washington, DC: GPO, 1914, pp. 248-49.

Porter, David D.  The Naval History of the Civil War.  Mineola, NY: Dover Pub., 1886, pp. 560-61.

Silverstone, Paul H.  Warships of the Civil War Navies.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989, pp. 165, 176.

United States Congress.  United States of America’s Congressional Medal of Honor Recipients and their Official Citations.  Columbia Heights, MN: Highland House II, 1994, p. 859.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  PETREL was taken with her flag still flying.  Quartermaster John H. Nibbe was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions this day (officers were not eligible at the time).  RADM David Dixon Porter berated PETREL’s remaining officers and crew for their apparent cowardice.

Union “tinclads” also had an enclosed pilothouse constructed on the upper-most deck.  This feature easily identifies such craft in period photographs that survive today.  Our modern system of hull numbering was not adopted until the 1920s, however each of the 63 tinclads had a number painted boldly on the outside of her pilot house.  PETREL was tinclad number 5, and PRAIRIE BIRD was number 11.

The rank of “Master” has an interesting history as well.  Early in the 1800s our Navy had four commissioned officer ranks–Sailing Master, Lieutenant, Master Commandant and Captain.  The Master Commandant rank was changed to “Commander” in 1837, the same year the lowest rank was shortened simply to “Master.”  During the Civil War, to accommodate an expanded force structure, on 16 July 1862 the new ranks of RADM and Commodore were created as Flag ranks above Captain; LCDR was inserted below Commander; and Ensign was inserted below Master.  In 1883 “Masters” became “Lieutenants Junior Grade,” which they remain today!

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RADM CHARLES HENRY DAVIS

          Flag Officer Andrew H. Foote, commander of the Civil War Western Gunboat Flotilla supporting US Army operations in the upper Mississippi River, was in poor health.  He had been struck in this foot with shrapnel in February at the battle of Fort Donelson—a wound which festered and was now giving him considerable pain.  Of late, he was developing episodes of fever and prostration that were hampering his ability to command.  In a letter to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles dated this day, he recommended CAPT Charles H. Davis as his successor should his health warrant his relief.  Foote left the squadron on 9 May to recuperate back east, appointing Davis as temporary commodore of the flotilla.  The next day, the flotilla suffered an embarrassing defeat at Plum Point Bend off Fort Pillow, Tennessee, at the hands of Confederate gunboat/rams.

          Charles Henry Davis was a respected senior officer in his day.  Though not a combat veteran, his work in mathematics, navigation, marine science, and astronomy had earned him acclaim.  As flotilla commander he quickly rebounded from Plum Point Bend, staging a one-sided victory over the same Confederate gunboat/rams at Memphis on June 6^th.  He next moved his 12-ship ironclad/timberclad flotilla to Milliken’s Bend just north of Vicksburg.  While awaiting LTGEN Ulysses S. Grant’s actions, Davis conducted reconnaissance forays in the White River of Arkansas and Mississippi’s Yazoo River on 5-8 August and 16-27 August respectively.

          But as the summer of 1862 wore on, an outbreak of malaria gripped the Vicksburg area.  To protect his crews from the “bad air,” Davis moved the flotilla 150 miles north to Helena, Arkansas.  Back in Washington, Union leaders cared little about malaria and saw Davis’ action as timidity.  Welles already thought Davis more a scholar than an aggressive, fighting commander.  Davis was relieved on 12 October and appointed, instead, as Chief of the Bureau of Navigation.  He was promoted to RADM a few months later, on 7 February 1863.

          Back in Washington, Davis’ remarkable scientific work continued.  After the war he became the Superintendent of the Naval Observatory and served with the Lighthouse Board.  Off duty, Davis was an original founder of our present-day National Academy of Sciences.  Davis continues to be honorably remembered by our Navy with USS DAVIS (TB-12, DD-65, DD-295) and the oceanographic research vessel CHARLES H. DAVIS (AGOR-5).  As well, a sea anemone native to the Canadian Maritimes, Rhodactis davisii, is named to honor his contributions to Marine Science.

Watch the POD for more “Today in Naval History  22 APR 25

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Cogar, William B.  Dictionary of Admirals of the U.S. Navy, Vol 1 1862-1900.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989, pp. 41-43.

Davis, Charles Henry, Jr.  The Life of Charles Henry Davis, Rear Admiral, 1807-1877.  New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin, 1899.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 2 “C-F”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, pp. 244-45.

Stewart, Charles W.  Official Records of the Union and Confederate navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 23, Naval Forces on Western Waters April 12 to December 31, 1862.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1919, p. 63.

Stewart, Charles wW  Official Records of the Union and Confederate navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 23, Naval Forces on Western Waters April 12 to December 31, 1862.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1919, pp, 85-86.

Stewart, Charles W.  Official Records of the Union and Confederate navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 23, Naval Forces on Western Waters April 12 to December 31, 1862.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1919, p. 395.

ADDITIONAL NTOES:  Charles Davis was largely self-taught.  He had studied mathematics at Harvard College from 1821-23, but left before finishing after his appointment to the Naval Academy.  Harvard recognized Davis with an honorary Bachelor of Arts degree in 1841 and an honorary Legum Doctor degree (LL.D.) in 1868.  Davis died on Active Duty on 18 February 1877 and is buried in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  He was 70 years old.

          Davis was replaced in command of the Western Gunboat Flotilla by RADM David Dixon Porter.  The Western Gunbpat Flotilla shortly transferred to the US Navy as the Mississippi Squadron.

          Andrew Foote’s medical issue may well have been chronic osteomyelitis with periodic breakouts of sepsis.  He would live only into the next year, succumbing to one such episode in 1863.

          USS CHARLES H. DAVIS operated with the US Navy from 1962-70, when she was loaned to the New Zealand Navy.  She served there until 1998 while still being carried on our books as T-AGOR-5. She was stricken from our NVR in 1998 and sunk as an artificial reef off New Zealand the following year.

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                               EASTPORT BEFORE FORT DE RUSSY

The year 1863 had seen a turn in the Civil War in favor of the Union.  A Confederate foray into the north had been reversed at Gettysburg and the last Rebel stronghold on the Mississippi River at Vicksburg had fallen.  With the Mississippi now in Union hands attention turned to Confederate activities west of the river in Louisiana and Arkansas.  Here the Red River provided the main thoroughfare for cotton and other supplies shipping eastward.  As the spring rains swelled the Red River in 1864, combined Union Naval and ground forces planned an assault.

Their first obstacle was Fort de Russy, named for its builder, Confederate Army engineer COL Lewis G. de Russy.  This fort lay 45 miles up the river from the mouth at the Mississippi, a course over which the Red River forms a northward-projecting loop into northeastern Louisiana.  Fort de Russy lay on the western leg of that loop.  Union troops under BGENs Andrew Jackson Smith and Joseph Mower would land on the eastern leg of the loop at Simmesport and march the 28 miles across the bottom of the loop along what is modern Louisiana State Route 1.  They would envelope the rear of the fort while the ironclad warships of RADM David Dixon Porter would proceed up the Red River to support the assault.  On the morning of March 13^th Porter’s transports began disembarking 10,000 Union troops at Simmesport while the ironclad USS EASTPORT under LCDR Seth L. Phelps, along with NEOSHO, LAFAYETTE, CHOCTAW, OSAGE, OZARK, FORT HINDMAN and CRICKET were sent upriver.  Ahead of the main gunboat force, they were to remove obstructions eight miles below the fort.  Their progress was slowed by LAFAYETTE and CHOCTAW, whose long keels plagued negotiation of the channel.

The obstructions proved formidable.  Arriving on this day Phelps found a row of pilings driven into the river bottom across the channel, braced against a second tier of shorter pilings.  Ties and iron plates bridged each piling creating an impassable, anchored “wall.”  Sunken logs blocked access to the downstream side, and from above, trees had been cut and floated down the river to jam up the pilings.  Phelps’ sailors attached tow lines to the pilings, axes swung, and several of the gunboats repeatedly rammed the obstruction.  For several hours they labored, finally breaking a passage open around 1600.  OSAGE, FORT HINDMAN and CRICKET followed EASTPORT the final miles to Fort de Russy.  Here they found Union troops already engaged.

The battle proved one-sided.  The Confederate defender, MGEN John G. Walker, had marched 5000 rebels out to stall the advancing Federals, and most of these escaped to fight another day.  The 300 garrisoned in the fort surrendered after only a brief engagement.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  19 MAR 25

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Civil War Naval Chronology 1861-1865.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1961, pp. IV-31-32.

Porter, David D.  The Naval History of the Civil War.  Mineola, NY: Dover Pub., 1886, pp. 495-97.

“Report of Rear-Admiral Porter, U.S. Navy, regarding combined movement up the river and capture of Fort de Russy by forces under Brigadier-General Smith, U.S. Army, March 14, 1864.”  IN: Stewart, Charles W.  Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 26, Naval Forces on Western Waters from March 1 to December 31, 1864.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1914, pp. 24-27.

“Report of Rear-Admiral Porter, U.S. Navy, transmitting report of Lieutenant Commander Phelps, U.S. Navy, regarding removal of obstructions and capture of Fort De Russy.”  IN: Stewart, Charles W.  Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 26, Naval Forces on Western Waters from March 1 to December 31, 1864.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1914, pp. 29-31.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Among the guns captured at Fort de Russy were three Naval guns, two 9-inch Dahlgren smoothbores formerly in service on USS NDIANOLA and USS HARRIET LANE (both lost earlier in the war) and a 32-pounder cast in the 1820s.

EASTPORT was originally a rebel ironclad, started by the Confederates in the upper Tennessee River in 1862, but captured on the ways by Union forces.

John George Walker, above, was a seasoned and able combat commander.  He had served with the US Army before the Civil War in the Mexican and Apache Wars.  During the Rebellion he saw action in the Peninsular Campaign, at Antietam, and at Vicksburg before commanding in the Trans-Mississippi.  He fled to Mexico after the war but eventually returned to the United States, serving as consul to Bogota in the post-war years.  His narrative history of the Confederacy west of the Mississippi is still in print today.

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                                        RED ROVER AND SINCE…

When early American naval forces fought in distant locales our Navy often had to supply her own hospital facilities.  In our earliest days this was accomplished by designating certain of the expeditionary warships as temporary hospitals.  As late as the Civil War, the storeship USS BEN MORGAN and the blockader USS HOME served intermittent stints as floating hospitals.  But the first US Navy vessel designated wholly and exclusively as a hospital ship was the Civil War side-wheel river steamer RED ROVER, converted after her capture from the Confederates.  She admitted over 2400 patients during the Mississippi River campaign of 1862-64.

Post-Civil War, the US Army maintained its own fleet of hospital ships.  For example, the Army converted the steel-hulled passenger liner John Englis for medical use, renamed her RELIEF, and sent her off Cuba for the Spanish-American War.  Four years later she was transferred to the Navy, where she rusted at Mare Island for several years while the Navy line and the Medical Department argued over who should command hospital ships.  Anticipating the “Great White Fleet’s” world cruise, President Theodore Roosevelt declared that a physician, Surgeon Charles F. Stokes, would skipper the Navy’s first modern hospital ship.  Thus, from February to November 1908 RELIEF accompanied the Fleet across the Pacific, seeing to the medical needs of the 14,000 servicemen.  But on 17 November she was heavily damaged in a typhoon and limped to Subic Bay.  Here she was declared unseaworthy but was retained as a floating hospital at Olongapo.  In April 1918 her name was changed to REPOSE to allow the first Navy ship built from the keel up as a hospital ship to bear the name RELIEF (AH-1).

AH-1 was a 500-bed facility that went to sea under the command of Richard C. Holcomb, CDR/MC/USN.  She and her WWI sisters SOLACE (AH-2), COMFORT (AH-3) and MERCY (AH-4) had been replaced before Pearl Harbor, an attack to which SOLACE (AH-6) was a witness.  WWII saw thirteen more hospital ships, COMFORT, HOPE, MERCY, BOUNTIFUL, SAMARITAN, REFUGE, HAVEN BENEVOLENCE, TRANQUILITY, CONSOLATION, REPOSE, SANCTUARY and RESCUE in order of ascending hull number.            CONSOLATION (AH-15) accepted the first direct helicopter medevac from the battlefield during the Korean Conflict.  Our most decorated hospital ship is REPOSE (AH-16) who served off Korea and Vietnam, earning 18 Battle Stars over her career.  In 1980, the Navy considered a fourth tour for the three-war veteran SANCTUARY (AH-17) to fill a Cold War maritime pre-positioning mission.  Instead, the Navy acquired two newer ships, the supertankers Worth and Rose City.  These were converted to the MERCY (T-AH-19) and COMFORT (T-AH-20) respectively.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  11 FEB 25

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 1 “A”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1991, p. 310.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 1 “A-B”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1959, pp. 115-16.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 2 “C-F”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, pp. 89, 152, 169.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 3 “G-K”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, pp. 271-72, 296, 359.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 4 “L-M”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1969, pp. 331-32.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 6 “R-S”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1976, pp. 51-52, 60-61, 68-69, 77-78, 305-06, 543-44.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 7 “T-V”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1981, pp. 256-57.

Navy Historical Foundation. “The Resignation of Admiral Brownson.”  NHF Publication Series II (20), Spring 1976.

Polmar, Norman.  The Naval Institute Guide to the Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet, 16^th ed.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1997, pp. 235-36.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:           Roosevelt’s decision to have a Medical Officer command RELIEF turned into a disaster.  Currently Staff Officers are barred from tactical command.

Our current system of hull numbering took effect in 1920.  Ships already in service on 17 July 1920 were retroactively numbered, the hull number AH-1 being assigned to the oldest hospital ship then in service, our second hospital ship named RELIEF.  Ships that had left service prior to 1920 never received a hull number, hence RED ROVER and the first RELIEF have no such designators.

The refitting costs for SANCTUARY (AH-17) in 1980 proved prohibitive, and this graceful lady was stricken from the NVR in 1989 and sold to a civilian humanitarian organization for $10.  She was never reactivated as a hospital ship, rather she rusted at the dock in Baltimore while ownership was transferred a half dozen times.  She was finally scrapped in 2011.

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