15 JANUARY 1865 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 Read More
26 AUGUST 1863 INTERCEPTING THE MEGA-GUNS When South Carolinians fired on Fort Sumter to start the Civil War, all but one of the foundries in the United States were in the North. Only the Tredeger Iron Works in Richmond could bore Read More
30-31 JANUARY 1863 BULLS ISLAND INCIDENT (cont.) The morning of 31 January roused CAPT Charles T. Haskell’s Confederates from their rest at the Gibbes house and greeted the arrival of 50 Confederate reinforcements from Fort Moultrie. Suspecting FLAMBEAU would send a Read More
30-31 JANUARY 1863 BULLS ISLAND INCIDENT Bull Island is a low coastal island 10 miles north of Charleston Harbor separated from the mainland by the Intercoastal Waterway. Today a national wildlife refuge, in antebellum times it was owned by a family Read More
25 DECEMBER 1863 CHRISTMAS DAY ATTACK! Our first warship named MARBLEHEAD was one of 23 Unadilla-class wooden gunboats built in the first year of the Civil War. Looking outwardly like a two-masted sailing brig, a single stack amidships revealed her steam Read More