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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