CSS NEUSE

Union forces gained control of North Carolina’s shoreline south of the Virginia border during the first year of the Civil War.  By late 1862, Union troops were garrisoned at New Bern on the Neuse River, Washington on the Tar River, and in Plymouth on the Roanoke River.  This Union presence on key commercial waterways constantly irritated, if not outright threatened, North Carolina’s governor.  Late in 1862 contracts were let for five ironclad gunboats intended to help North Carolinians retake their rivers.  The gunboats were to be constructed at inland towns many miles upstream, with the intent to attack downriver, hopefully in conjunction with Confederate land forces.  Two of these were to be nearly identical 150-foot, 600-ton ironclad sister ships, each mounting two rifled cannon and an iron ram under the bows.  CSS ALBEMARLE was laid down at Edward’s Ferry on the Roanoke River, and CSS NEUSE was started at Whitehall (modern Seven Springs) on the Neuse River south of Goldsboro.

ALBEMARLE slid off the ways first and proved a decisive factor in Confederate MGEN Robert F. Hoke’s successful attack on the Union garrison at Plymouth, NC, on 20 April 1864.  Hoke’s victory encouraged a similar operation a week later against New Bern on the Neuse.  MGEN George E. Pickett’s (of Gettysburg fame) force was based at Kinston, 30 miles upriver from New Bern.  CSS NEUSE had barely been completed when she was ordered from Kinston in support of Pickett’s attack.  To complicate matters the Spring rains had ended, and the level of the river was dropping daily.  NEUSE drafted eight feet, and sensing he must get underway with haste or be trapped in Kinston, LT Benjamin Loyall, CSN, decided he could await his pilot no longer.  The ironclad got underway this day.  NEUSE had two 6-foot diameter screws, but by shortsighted design, both were driven by a single shaft.  The screws could not be used to assist in steering, and predictably, at a bend in the river only 1/2 a mile downstream, NEUSE ran hard aground.

Without his ironclad support Pickett postponed his attack.  For weeks Loyall and his crew labored to refloat the ironclad but succeeded only in returning her to her berth at Kinston.  ALBEMARLE was ordered from the Roanoke as NEUSE’s replacement but was interdicted in transit.  Pickett’s opportunity at New Bern passed, and as Union troops moved into Kinston shortly thereafter, NEUSE was fired and scuttled to prevent her capture.

CSS NEUSE lay undisturbed for a century.  Then in 1961 local Kinstonians began an effort to salvage her wreck.  She was damaged considerably in the process, but her preserved hull can be seen today at a historical site off State Route 70 in Kinston.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  2 MAY 26

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. 552.

Site visit.  CSS Neuse historical site.  Kinston, NC, 15 January 2002.

Still, William N., Jr.  Iron Afloat:  The Story of the Confederate Armorclads.  Columbia, SC: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1985, pp. 91, 158-63.

Trotter, William R.  Ironclads and Columbiads:  The Civil War in North Carolina, The Coast.  Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, Pub., 1989, p. 234.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Today it is possible to wade across the Neuse River in many locations, and as such, it’s hard to imagine an ironclad gunboat operating in her upland reaches.  But in the early 19^th century our coastal rivers represented major routes of commerce, and the Army Corps of Engineers continuously dredged the Neuse, Tar, and Roanoke rivers.  At one point in the late 1800s the Neuse was navigable as far inland as Smithfield, NC, 75 miles upstream.  In the 1920s however, the development of efficient railroads obviated the need for river transport, and dredging in the Neuse above New Bern was abandoned.

          The other three ironclads contracted in 1862 were all laid on the Cape Fear River at Wilmington; CSS RALEIGH, CSS WILMINGTON, and CSS NORTH CAROLINA.  WILMINGTON was not completed before the war’s end.  NORTH CAROLINA and RALEIGH both reached the mouth of the Cape Fear River, where RALEIGH made an impotent, 6 May 1864 sortie against Union blockaders offshore.  It was the only combat any Wilmington ironclad saw other than service as a floating artillery battery. 

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                                  CAPTURE OF ROANOKE ISLAND

Fortress Monroe, situated at the entrance to Hampton Roads, was one of three forts south of the Mason-Dixon Line that remained in Union hands throughout the Civil War.  Confederate lines of communication were thus compromised in the Virginia region.  For the duration of Rebel occupancy of Norfolk, the city was necessarily supplied from the south, via North Carolina’s Albemarle Sound and its tributary rivers and canals through the Great Dismal Swamp.  One such viaduct, the Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal, connected Norfolk to Elizabeth City, on the Pasquotank River, a transit point for goods smuggled across the Outer Banks.  One of the first Union efforts of the war was the capture of Hatteras Island on the Outer Banks that fell after a day’s siege on 29 August 1861.  Should Roanoke Island at the mouth of the Albemarle Sound now be captured, the supply lines to Norfolk’s Rebels might be completely severed.

Roanoke Island’s defending Confederates had constructed earthen breastworks, Fort Bartow, on Pork Point about midway up the landward shore.  A small fleet of seven converted ferries, armed tugboats, and shallow draft coastal steamers, mounting nine guns in total, had been assembled as well, under the command of Confederate Navy Flag Officer William F. Lynch.  Chief among these was CSS FANNY, a former Union Army screw steamer whom the Rebels had captured four months earlier.  These gunboats held a position behind a line of obstructions blocking the north end of the channel at Roanoke Island.

On the morning of 7 February, a combined Union Navy and Army force led by Flag Officer Louis M. Goldsborough and BGEN Ambrose Burnside opened a naval bombardment of Fort Bartow.  Nineteen warships mounting over 50 guns, not the least of which were 100-pounders and 9″ rifles, pounded Fort Bartow for seven hours with 2600 projectiles.  The bombardment covered the landing of Burnside’s 4000 troops and six artillery pieces at Ashby’s Harbor to the south that afternoon.  After slogging through a swamp, Burnside’s troops enveloped the fort that fell to a charge of the 9^th New York Regiment this morning.

The Confederate “mosquito fleet,” as it was derisively called, was overwhelmed from the start and could only muster a long-range pestering fire.  CSS CURLEW was hit below the waterline by a shot from USS SOUTHFIELD and was run aground and set afire near a Rebel battery.  CSS FORREST was disabled with a shell through her engine, but she was towed safely behind the Confederate line.  Though Goldsborough’s ships were hit 27 times, none were lost.  With the fall of Fort Bartow, and the clearing of the obstructions by Union engineers, Lynch ordered his remaining gunboats to scurry up the Pasquotank River to Elizabeth City, where he would stage his next defense of the canals to Norfolk.

Continued 10 February…

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Civil War Naval Chronology 1861-1865.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1961, pp. II-19-20.

Silverstone, Paul H.  Warships of the Civil War Navies.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989, pp. 237, 239.

Site visit, Fort Bartow site, Roanoke Island, North Carolina, 6 May 2006.

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. 62.

Trotter, William R.  Ironclads and Columbiads:  The Civil War in North Carolina, The Coast.  Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair Pub., 1989, pp. 75-88.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  The other southern forts that remained in Union hands throughout the war were Fort Jefferson, off the southern tip of Florida, and Fort Pickens near Pensacola.

Considering the vital importance of Hatteras to the security of Norfolk, historians have noted how lightly defended were the Confederate forts on that island in August 1861.

CSS CURLEW was hit by a plunging shot that penetrated her upper deck and crashed out the bottom of her hull.  Her skipper, LT “Tornado” Hunter, beached her successfully, but in doing so blocked the guns of a Rebel battery known as Fort Forrest.  She was fired both to prevent her capture and to unmask the battery’s guns.

Only six Union sailors were killed in this battle and 17 wounded.  Burnside lost 37 killed and 214 wounded ashore, however the Confederates lost 23 killed, 58 wounded, and an insufferable 2500 captured.

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