CSS WEBB’S RUN FOR THE SEA

The 206-foot sidewheel steamboat William H. Webb started her career as a coastal steamer in New York in 1856.  She fell into Confederate hands in 1861 and was converted to a ram a year later.  Lacking plate iron to protect her boilers, her outfitters “armored” her nevertheless with layers of cotton bales stacked around her mechanical spaces.  Her bow-mounted 130-pounder Rodman gun and two 12-pounder howitzers, along with a spar torpedo on a long pole from her bows, suited her for operations against Union gunboats on the Mississippi.  But after the fall of Vicksburg in July 1863 the Union Navy completely controlled the Mississippi.  CSS WEBB found herself trapped in Louisiana’s Red River by Union gunboats waiting at its confluence with the Mississippi.

The Confederacy was in its waning months by the time LT Charles W. Read, CSN, volunteered himself to President Jefferson Davis.   Impressed with WEBB’s phenomenal 22 knots speed, Read arrived in early April in Alexandria, Louisiana, and labored for three weeks to muster a crew and provision the vessel for duty.  He became increasingly frustrated over news of the surrender of Lee at Appomattox and wrote to President Jefferson Davis of his plan tomake a last-ditch dash to the open sea.  On this afternoon of 23 April his preparations were complete.

Read’s departure from Alexandria was timed to arrive at the Mississippi after sunset, and at 2030 WEBB charged into the “Father of Waters” under a full head of steam.  The sudden arrival of the white-painted sidewheeler took the three blockading Union gunboats by surprise.  The confusion was deepened as Read displayed a Union ensign, correctly flown at half-mast out of respect for President Lincoln’s recent death.  By the time the Federals discerned the situation, WEBB had a considerable downstream lead.  Read charged down the Mississippi at frightful speed in a chase that followed, estimated by some at up to 25 knots.  He stopped only once to cut telegraph wires along the bank and outdistanced the Union ironclads USS TENNESSEE and MANHATTAN and the gunboats SELMA and QUAKER CITY that were overtaken by surprise.  He reached New Orleans in three hours, running this city at midnight against the fire of Union gunboats that had been forewarned.  The unshaken Read now broke the Confederate ensign and plunged onward.

But 25 miles further Read reached his bitter end.  Running upon the powerful guns of the Union screw frigate USS RICHMOND and leading a flock of pursuing gunboats, Read set WEBB ablaze and ran her aground.  He and his crew were quickly rounded up before sunrise, ending this last significant action of the Confederate Navy in home waters.

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

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Clark, Charles E.  My Fifty Years in the Navy.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1984, p. 65.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Civil War Naval Chronology 1861-1865.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1961, p. V-92.

Luraghi, Raimondo.  A History of the Confederate Navy.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1996, pp. 339-40.

Silverstone, Paul H.  Warships of the Civil War Navies.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989, p. 231.

Trudeau, Noah Andre.  Out of the Storm:  The End of the Civil War, April-June 1865.  Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1994, 336-38.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  WEBB was hit only three times in this five-hour chase.  Her only noteworthy damage was to the rigging of her spar torpedo, which had to be jettisoned.  This loss of the spar torpedo may have influenced Read’s decision to scuttle the steamer rather than tackle USS RICHMOND.

Contemporary Union accounts of this episode downplay the surprise they experienced and concentrate rather on the speed of WEBB.  Ironically, despite accounts to the contrary, WEBB’s appearance had probably surprised RICHMOND as well, the latter being unprepared to offer resistance.

Charles William “Savez” Read graduated last in his US Naval Academy class of 1860.  A Mississippi native, he joined the Confederacy after Fort Sumter.  His class rank at the Academy belies his conduct as a Naval officer.  His daring raids and surprising successes earned him the nickname “Seawolf of the Confederacy.”

Lee surrendered at Appomattox on 9 April, and by this date the Civil War was all but over.  Read’s men were captured and subjected to public display in New Orleans before being paroled to return to their homes.  Two days later, on 26 April, General Joseph E. Johnston surrendered the last Confederate force of consequence, the Army of Tennessee, in Greensboro, North Carolina.

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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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                                        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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