COLOMBIAN INTERVENTION

As Prestan’s fires left 8,000 homeless in Colon, the rebellious Azipuru was stirring again on the Pacific side.  Having initially been chased into the hills, Azipuru regained Panama City when Colombian troops crossed the isthmus to address the Prestan uprising.  Azipuru began a second killing spree and again declared himself supreme ruler of Panama.  Under an 1846 treaty with Colombia, the United States was pledged to maintain the neutrality of the Panama province and insure safe operation of the US-owned trans-isthmus railroad.  Both Azipuru and Prestan had ripped up track, tampered with switches, derailed engines, and robbed trains along the line.  Desperate railroad officials pleaded with the US for help.

On April 6^th two more screw frigates, USS SHENANDOAH and USS WACHUSETT, arrived off Panama’s Pacific coast.  In four more days our Navy arrived in force when RADM James E. Jouett in the screw frigate TENNESSEE reached Colon with an eight-ship squadron embarking 2648 bluejackets and Marines.  He immediately landed 600 Marines who seized Colon and the Atlantic terminus of the railroad.  The railway’s rolling stock was then armored with half-inch boiler plate and topped with Gatling guns.  The Marines moved down the length of the Panama Railroad thusly, securing key postings at the Barbacos bridge and Matachin.

Simultaneously, landing parties from WACHUSETT and SHENANDOAH secured Panama City.  Here too, the Marines carted their Gatling guns to and fro, on one occasion dispersing a large crowd with several bursts fired at the rooftops.  Azipuru persisted in his claims of sovereignty, even offering the promise of future cooperation in exchange for US recognition of Panamanian independence from Colombia.  But Jouett, who was under orders only to secure the railroad and avoid meddling in Colombian affairs, declined the offer.  [Ironically a nearly identical circumstance two decades later in 1903 would again transpire in Panama, and in this latter incident American recognition would be forthcoming.  In 1903 our interests in the railroad were augmented by then President Teddy Roosevelt’s driving desire to construct a Panamanian canal].

Azipuru surrendered to US Navy officers at the Central Hotel in Panama City on April 24^th, after which US forces began a month-long pull out.  Pedro Prestan fled to the jungle and was eventually captured and executed by Colombian officials.  Interestingly, this effective exercise of seapower in the protection of our national interests abroad vividly impressed the skipper of WACHUSETT, CAPT Alfred T. Mahan, who transferred shortly thereafter to begin an instructor’s tenure at the Naval War College.  Mahan’s writings on Naval employment would form the foundation of 20^th century naval reform.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  6 APR 26

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 6 “R-S”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1976, p. 482.

McCullough, David.  The Path Between the Seas:  The Creation of the Panama Canal – 1870-1914.  New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1977, pp. 175-79.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  This was RADM Jouett’s last mission in a Naval career that spanned 49 years.  He served initially in the African Squadron and during the Mexican War, then went on to command three Navy warships during the Civil War.  He retired in 1890 and lived for the next 12 years on an estate near Sandy Springs, Maryland.  He has been remembered with three destroyers, DD-41, DD-396, and DLG-29.

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                                           PRESTAN’S UPRISING

In the nineteenth century Panama was a province of Colombia.  And in 1885, the Colombian populace became divided over the election of a conservative, Rafael Nunez, to the Presidency in Bogota.  Localized political insurrections broke out, and government troops stationed in Panama City, on the Pacific side of the isthmus, were called to Cartegena and Buenaventura.  Only a small police force was left in the province, in the city of Colon on the Atlantic coast.  This provided an opportunity for a political despot in Panama City, Azipuru, to act on his ambitions.  He began a rampage of murder and destruction, in response to which the troops in Colon crossed to the Pacific side via the American-run Panama Railroad.

The rash of independent insurrections continued.  Now, back in Colon, a mulatto Haitian expatriate with an avowed hatred for whites, Pedro Prestan, seized the Colon prefecture and began extorting “loans” from merchants.  Local citizens did little to stop Prestan’s poorly equipped rabble until March 29^th, when the US Pacific Mail packet SS COLON arrived from New York carrying a shipment of arms apparently ordered by Prestan.  Concerned for public safety, Pacific Mail’s local superintendent, William Connor, refused to release the arms to Prestan’s gang.  An angry Prestan took Connor and five Americans hostage, including the American consul and two US Naval officers from the screw steamer USS GALENA (standing in Colon harbor since March 11^th to safeguard American interests).  One of these officers was released to carry a message to CDR Theodore F. Kane of GALENA–if Kane intervened, Prestan would kill every American in the city.

CDR Kane was under orders not to interfere in local Colombian matters, but when the hostage American consul, mortified at Prestan’s threats, ordered the release of COLON’s weapons, Kane acted.  On the evening of the 29^th GALENA approached the wharf.  A boarding party was sent across to take possession of COLON and tow her safely out into the harbor.  This morning, March 30^th, Kane landed a shore party of about a hundred bluejackets with instructions to “stand-by.”

The following day Colombian troops returned from Panama City to address Prestan’s uprising.  To avert a destructive battle in downtown Colon, these troops disembarked outside the city at Monkey Hill.  Prestan’s several hundred followers attacked, using the American hostages as human shields.  But his force withered under the onslaught of the government troops, and in retreating, Prestan set fire to the town of Colon.  In the confusion the Americans faded into the jungle and were soon rescued.  The fire spread quickly however, growing to engulf the entire town.  GALENA’s landing party battled the blaze but could not prevent the city from burning nearly to the ground.  They succeeded only in saving the buildings of the Pacific Mail Company.

Continued tomorrow…

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 3 “G-K”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, p. 7.

McCullough, David.  The Path Between the Seas:  The Creation of the Panama Canal – 1870-1914.  New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1977, pp. 175-77.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Theodore Frederick Kane’s Navy career covered 39 years.  A Civil War veteran, Kane served in the following years in command of several warships and the Brooklyn Navy Yard.  Medial issues acquired during his service forced his retirement in 1896, however during the subsequent Spanish-American War he served as Superintendent of the Coast Signal Service, a short-lived project during that war that monitored for potential enemy attacks on the US homeland.  He was promoted to RADM after his retirement.  (USS Kane (DD-235) and USNS Kane (T-AGS-27) remember another Naval hero of the same surname.)

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                                         ESCAPE OF ENTERPRISE

Part of our Navy’s upsizing for the War of 1812 was the strengthening of several schooners then in service.  Extra guns and extra crewmen were added, but at the cost of making the spritely schooners too heavy to run from larger British warships.  Indeed, by this date our celebrated schooners of the Barbary Wars, WASP, ARGUS, and VIXEN had already been overhauled and captured, and HORNET was too slow to escape the enemy blockade of New York.  Recognizing the vulnerability of these modified schooners, another of the class, ENTERPRISE, 16, was sent to the West Indies where she was to shun faster enemy warships and tackle only slow and lightly armed British merchant ships.  She sailed with RATTLESNAKE, 14, a former New England privateer recently brought into our Naval service.

Their cruise proved initially fruitful.  During the winter of 1813-14 ENTERPRISE and RATTLESNAKE encountered the British privateer Mars, 14, off Florida.  Privateers were armed civilian ships who cruised under permission of their government to capture enemy commercial shipping.  The sight of two American warships spurred half of Mars’ crewmen to take to the boats and escape to shore.  Mars’ master, however, boldly ranged up under the guns of LT James Renshaw in ENTERPRISE.  The American loosed a broadside that splintered the privateer’s hull and felled four of her remaining crew.  Without further convincing the privateer struck.  The American pair took two more prizes during their cruise while successfully avoiding stronger British warships.

But on this morning off South Carolina the luck of the pair ran out.  Sighted by a British frigate, they immediately split and headed separately toward shore.  The frigate took her chances with the slower and ungainly ENTERPRISE.  Through this day and the next, the frigate gained steadily on Renshaw.  Even under a full press of sail the overburdened schooner wallowed.  Renshaw ordered the loose gear and stores thrown over the side.  When that didn’t work, the schooner’s twelve 18-pounder carronades were jettisoned.  From time to time the frigate ranged close enough to lob a few shots at ENTERPRISE, but Renshaw managed to stay just out of reach until the two were becalmed on the morning of the 27^th.  Renshaw lowered his rowboats, hoping to kedge the schooner to safety.  But as he did a slight breeze freshened about the schooner.  For once the smaller ship had the advantage, she crept slowly out from under the frustrated and becalmed frigate.  She made Wilmington on 9 March, saved by luck of the breezes alone.

Recognizing that ENTERPRISE would continue to be outsailed and outgunned, she was anchored in Charleston as a guardship, where she remained for the rest of the war.  She was one of only two of her encumbered class to survive the war in American hands.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  28 FEB 26

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Cooper, James Fenimore.  History of the Navy of the United States of America, Vol. II.  Philadelphia, PA: Lea & Blanchard, 1840, pp. 175-76.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 2 “C-F”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, p. 355.

Roosevelt, Theodore.  The Naval War of 1812.  New York, NY: Da Capo, 1999, p. 208.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  ENTERPRISE’s other notable contribution during the War of 1812 had come a month before being sent south above.  She captured the British schooner HMS BOXER, 14, off Maine on 5 September 1813.

Following the stationing of ENTERPRISE in Charleston, Renshaw was transferred to command RATTLESNAKE.  Various historical sources report conflicting details as to the date and circumstances of the above encounter, and appear to confuse this event with a similarly harrowing chase of RATTLESNAKE under Renshaw later in 1814.

James Renshaw’s reputation in our Navy was less than sterling.  Regarded as a martinet who was unable to get on with superiors or his crewmen, CDORE Isaac Hull wrote of Renshaw upon learning of his appointment to command ENTERPRISE, “The ENTERPRISE, I presume, will not be very enterprising.”  In 1841, now commander of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, saw Renshaw brought before a Board of Inquiry for political favoritism.  He allegedly preferentially selected Democratic candidates for new hires and targeted Whig party employees for rebuke and dismissal.  The Board found Renshaw guilty of the charge, and he was relieved of command of the Brooklyn Yard.

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                                             25 SEPTEMBER 1899

                                     THE CAPTURE OF URDANETA

The autumn of 1898 saw the end of the Spanish-American war and the ceding of the Philippine Islands from Spain to the United States.  Militant Filipinos who had been struggling against Spanish colonial rule shifted their animosities toward their new stewards.  For the next four years the US countered this insurgent uprising–the Navy’s roles including patrolling inshore waters, providing gunfire support, and landing Marines at coastal and riverine jump-off’s.  It was during one such patrol that the 70-foot gunboat USS URDANETA ran aground in the Orani River on 17 September 1899.  Naval Cadet Welborn C. Wood and his eight-man crew worked for days at freeing their boat but had their efforts interrupted on the 25^th.  Insurgents discovered the stranded URDANETA and opened fire from the densely jungled riverbank.  Wood’s men sprang to action but found defense against an unseen enemy difficult.  Wood and half his crew were killed in the fire fight.  The survivors escaped overboard but were quickly captured.  URDANETA fell to the enemy, the only naval vessel to be captured during this “Philippine Insurrection,” as it was known in America.

Elsewhere, US Marines and Army soldiers found the land campaign an unwelcome departure from our past wartime experiences.  The outmatched enemy abandoned conventional tactics in favor of guerrilla warfare.  Enemy troops blended imperceptibly into the local populace.  Marine patrols might enter a rural village to the welcoming greetings of peasants working their rice paddies–only to be ambushed further down the road by these same peasant-insurgents.  Jungle patrols encountered booby traps with spring-loaded spears or poison-tipped arrows.  More than a few Marines fell victim to pungy pits lined with sharpened bamboo spears.  Random acts of terrorism became frequent.  On one Sunday morning, an American sentry playing solitaire was approached by an innocent looking street vendor selling eggs.  Before the sentry could look up however, he was decapitated by a machete the vendor had secreted under his produce.  Reports surfaced of American captives whose bodies were found hideously mutilated.  One corpse was discovered near an anthill, buried to the neck and covered in sugar.

Employing tactics we would face again in the 1960s Vietnam war–tactics that would later be formalized by Mao Tse Tung–Philippine nationalist leader Emilio Aguinaldo waged a campaign designed to dishearten the American public.  He hoped (in vain) for a Democratic victory in the 1900 American presidential election, judging candidate William Jennings Bryan to be more supportive of Philippine independence.  But unlike Vietnam, the Philippine Insurrection failed to outlast American public support.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  29 SEP 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. 421, 1981.

Karnow, Stanley.  In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines.  Ballantine Books, New York, NY, pp. 177-87, 1989.

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, pp. 101-02.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  URDANETA had been captured from the Spanish Navy during our 1898 war.  She was named by the Spanish in honor of Andres de Urdaneta (1498-1568), a friar and explorer credited with the second circumnavigation of the globe (after Magellan).  “Urdaneta’s route” across the Pacific from Luzon to Central America was used by Spain’s Manila galleons.  Urdaneta City in the Pangasinan Province of Luzon, near the Lingayen Gulf, also remembers the friar.  URDANETA was recaptured in 1900 and served off and on in survey work, patrols, and as a yard tug until 1916.  Her ultimate fate after 1916 is unknown.

          Cadet Wood is remembered with the WWII veteran Clemson-class destroyer USS WELBORN C. WOOD (DD-195). WOOD was later transferred to the US Coast Guard and ultimately to Britian, with whom she served as HMS CHESTERFIELD.

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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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                           “CHARLIE’s AROUND HERE SOMEWHERE”

The Rung Sat is a 400-square mile mangrove swamp between Saigon and the Vietnamese coastline.  Four major rivers course through the otherwise impassable area, including the Long Tau shipping channel leading to Saigon.  The swamp was home to no one before the Vietnam war.  However, refugees took up residence during the 1960s on house boats or stilted huts.  The Viet Cong also frequented the area earning it the reputation as the “forest of assassins.”  Here they set shore-detonated mines and ambushed shipping traffic with recoilless rifles and rocket launchers.  So much activity plagued the area that the US Army launched Operation “Lexington” between 21 May and 9 June 1966.  In conjunction, our Navy launched Operation “Jackstay” to stop enemy riverine activity.

On the sinuous Song Dinh Ba River, LT Alex Balian watched the shore closely this day from PCF-41 as dusk approached.  The “old man” of the crew, BM2 Raleigh Godley, with his forty-ish years of experience, steadied the helm.  Above the pilothouse EN3 Charles Barham scanned the shore with binoculars beside twin .50 caliber machine guns.  It was a hot and muggy evening.

Using a common nickname for the VC, the LT warned, “Charlie’s around here somewhere,” just as a 57mm recoilless rifle round struck the fast patrol craft and the world exploded for RM2 Robert L. Keim.  The Radioman staggered to the pilothouse from the edge of the gunboat to which he had been blown.  The instrument panel and BM2 Godley at the wheel were gone.  Out of control, PCF gathered speed as Godley may have shoved the throttle forward in a dying effort to save PCF-41.  Balian reached the aft steering station as SN Ralph Powers and GMG3 Glenn Greene readied the 81mm mortar.  Then the patrol boat suddenly lurched and ran fast aground beneath the overhanging jungle canopy.  As everyone regained their feet Balian called, “We can hold them off until one of the other boats comes up here.”  But there was no help coming.  The thick jungle and sharp turns of the river shielded the sound of the attack from others.

When the Viet Cong reached PCF-41 the crew was ready.  Bullets and shells whizzed, and after emptying the ammo locker, Balian ordered everyone into the water.  The remaining crew piled into a life raft; the tide and current were in their favor.  Crocodiles, snakes, and voices of enemy guerrillas now kept their attention as they drifted.  To avoid detection the men slid into the water, holding onto the raft and enduring the stinging of jellyfish.  When they heard an engine in the distance Balian lifted his rifle into the air.  The radar shadow was sighted by a nearby PCF and the crew was rescued.

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

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Calaunan, Jun.  “A Navy Jury Friday Convicted Capt. Alexander Balian.”  UPI Archives, 24 February 1989.  AT: https://www.upi.com/Archives/1989/02/24/A-Navy-jury-Friday-convicted-Capt-Alexander-Balian-of/9782604299600/, retrieved 3 May 2025.

Schreadley, Richard L.  From the Rivers to the Sea: The U.S. Navy in Vietnam.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1992, pp. 279.

“22 May 1966 Sinking of PCF-41.” Swiftboats website.  AT: http://swiftboats.net/stories/pcf41.htm.  Retrieved 15 April 2014.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  LT Balian was awarded the Silver Star for his actions in combating the VC and in saving his crew.  He remained in the Navy, eventually rising to the rank of CAPT.  However, his career was dealt a fatal blow when he was convicted of dereliction of duty at a court martial in February 1989.  In command of USS DUBUQUE (LPD-8) in June of the previous year, en route to the Persian Gulf, Balian had failed to rescue Vietnamese refugees adrift in the South China Sea in an unseaworthy boat.  Twenty-eight refugees had already died prior to DUBUQUE’s encounter, and though Balian passed a week’s worth of food and water to the refugees, 30 more succumbed before the boat drifted 300 additional miles to the Philippines.  The 52 refugees who survived did so by resorting to cannibalism.

Godley’s body was ultimately recovered.  He is remembered today on the wall of the Vietnam Memorial on the Mall in Washington, DC.

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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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                               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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                                           “THE SAND PEBBLES”

Factional turmoil in 1920s China surrounding the emergence of the Nationalist Chinese movement led multiple western nations to protect their citizens and commercial shipping on China’s rivers with naval forces.  Richard McKenna’s novel The Sand Pebbles, as well as the 1966 Academy Award nominated film, depicts the trials of an enlisted sailor aboard a US Navy Yangtze River gunboat during this civil unrest.  Though McKenna’s story is fictional, his gunboat, “San Pablo,” is modeled after our contemporary Guam-class Yangtze gunboats.  McKenna’s plot draws from the exploits of a real gunboat, USS VILLALOBOS (PG-42).

VILLALOBOS entered the US Navy in the Philippines.  The former Spanish Navy steam-powered screw sloop was captured in the Spanish-American War and commissioned into our Navy on this date.  Her retained Spanish Navy name remembers the explorer Ruy Lopez de Villalobos, who in the 1540s, charted and named the Philippine Islands for King Philip II.  She patrolled that territory for several years before being transferred to China Station.  There, in June of 1903, under orders from Asiatic Fleet commander RADM Robley D. Evans, VILLALOBOS cruised up the Kan River, a tributary to the Yangtze, to check on the status of American traders and missionaries in Nanchang.  Low river levels blocked her passage to Nanchang, and VILLALOBOS sent a whaleboat ahead.  Having learned that all was well, the gunboat returned to Hankow, unaware that her mission had stirred international turmoil.  Local Chinese authorities protested her visit as overstepping treaty provisions.  RADM Evans countered with the bold statement that, “Our gunboats will continue to navigate…inland waters of China, wherever Americans may be,” and further stated that “severe and lasting” punishment would be dealt to anyone not showing “proper respect” to American citizens.  The American minister in Peking chastised Evans’ statement, but Secretary of State John Hay overruled, endorsing the Asiatic Fleet commander as “proper and correct.”  (In fact, VILLALOBOS’ foray into shallow waters had unknowingly violated a treaty between England and China, though the US was not a signatory to that treaty).

By 1926, VILLALOBOS was a tired and rusting venerable.  Yet with the emergence of the Nationalist Chinese movement VILLALOBOS was sent upriver to Changsha, again to protect American interests.  Low river levels stranded her in Changsha over the Winter of 1926-27 while Nationalist attacks began focusing on foreign “intruders.”  When Spring brought rioting to Hankow VILLALOBOS’ guns oversaw the evacuation of Americans, under orders to “…return and silence fire with suitable battery.”  Elements of these incidents were woven by McKenna into the plot for his novel.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  26 FEB 25

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Cole, Bernard D.  “The Real Sand Pebbles.” Naval History, Vol 14 (1), February 2000, pp. 16-23.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 7 “T-V”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1981, pp. 521-24.

McKenna, Richard.  The Sand Pebbles.  New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1962.

Tolley, Kemp.  Yangtze Patrol: The U.S. Navy in China.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1984, pp. 58, 125-30, 220.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  McKenna himself was a 22-year Navy veteran with pre-WWII service on China Station.  He retired in 1953 as a Chief Machinist’s Mate

Even in Spanish Navy service VILLALOBOS was under-powered and under-gunned and drafted deeply enough to complicate the patrol of inland waterways.  In 1928, after 33 years of service in two navies, VILLALOBOS was decommissioned, towed out to sea, and expended for target practice.  By then the need for purpose-built gunboats for Yangtze operations had been addressed with the development of the six Guam-class river patrol boats.  Several of these including GUAM (PG-43), PANAY (PG-45), LUZON (PG-47) and MINDANAO (PG-48) would earn fame at the opening of World War II.  Unlike McKenna’s depiction of “San Pablo” these gunboats were diesel powered.

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                                          THE LOSS OF MONITOR

Our Navy first entertained the new technology of armor plating in 1842 when Congress authorized inventor Robert L. Stevens to construct an ironclad steamship for coastal defense.  However, delays in construction, funding, and the death of Mr. Stevens squelched the project.  It was left to the Europeans to develop the first workable ironclads.  During the Crimean War, in 1855, the French deployed three iron-plated floating batteries, LAVE, TONNANT, and DEVASTATION.  Standing only 800 yards off Russian Fort Kilburn, these batteries impressively withstood over 200 hits while reducing the fort to rubble.  The French launched GLOIRE in 1860, a wooden steamer plated over with iron.  Shortly the English followed with WARRIOR, an armored, iron-hulled steamer.

In response to rumors of Confederate plans in 1861, the Union Navy seriously revisited the ironclad concept.  Indeed, John Ericsson’s MONITOR’s successful operational debut against CSS VIRGINIA in Hampton Roads in March 1862 engendered a Navy-wide obsession with these craft.  Inflated perceptions of MONITOR’s invincibility led to calls for her use in recapturing Charleston, the symbolic birthplace of the Rebellion.  Accordingly, in December 1862, MONITOR was ordered from Hampton Roads to Beaufort, SC, the embarkation point for the planned assault on Charleston.  Had the skipper of the side-wheeler USS RHODE ISLAND had the benefit of weather forecasts, he might not have taken MONITOR under tow that December day.  Top heavy, with minimal freeboard, MONITOR was clearly built only for calmer inshore waters.

By the evening of December 29^th, mounting seas off Cape Hatteras began overwashing MONITOR’s deck.  Oakum packing around the turret loosened.  Conditions worsened through the next day.  By the evening of the 30^th, MONITOR was crashing through heavy seas that admitted water down her blower pipes.  And with each broach, more seams loosened.  Her bilge pumps strained.  Unable to find a good riding position, skipper J. L. Bankhead in MONITOR began to fear capsizing.  At 2230 he ordered her abandoned.

Careful to stay clear of MONITOR’s pitching, iron-plated hull, RHODE ISLAND lowered two boats.  But halfway through the rescue MONITOR lost all power and fell into the trough.  Bankhead loosed the anchor, which brought the craft to a more stable position into the seas.  In spite of this some of the remaining sailors, fearful of being washed off the deck, refused all pleadings to leave.  After midnight Bankhead, himself, departed only minutes before MONITOR disappeared, taking sixteen with her.

She remained lost until 1973 when scientists on the research ship Eastward located MONITOR’s 111 year grave off Cape Hatteras.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  4 JAM 25

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Davis, William C.  Duel Between the First Ironclads.  Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1975, pp. 156-64, 169-70.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 4 “L-M”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1969, p. 415.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 6 “R-S”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1976, p. 91.

Fowler, William M., Jr.  Under Two Flags: The American Navy in the Civil War.  New York, NY: Avon Books, 1990, pp. 92-93.

Keeler, William F. and Robert W. Daly.  Aboard the USS MONITOR: 1862.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1964, pp. 252-60.

Lyons, Justin.  “Raising the Turret.”  Naval History, Vol 16 (6), December 2002, pp. 20-26.

Stick, David.  Graveyard of the Atlantic:  Shipwrecks of the North Carolina Coast.  Chapel Hill, NC: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1952, pp. 52-57.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Years on the sea floor (and pilfering by sport divers) deteriorated the wreck of MONITOR substantially over the decades since its discovery, inspiring a joint effort by NOAA, the Newport News Mariner’s Museum and the US Navy’s Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit 2 to salvage the historic wreck.  In 5 August 2002 the MONITOR Expedition 2002 succeeded in raising significant portions of the wreck, notably MONITOR’s revolving turret.  It is currently preserved at the Mariner’s Museum above.

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