THE FIRING OF JUDAH

Had other theaters of the early Civil War not been in the limelight, the tension at Pensacola might have been keener.  The Confederates held the Pensacola Navy Yard and Forts Barrancas and McRee guarding the harbor, but a Union garrison had secured Fort Pickens on the Santa Rosa barrier island at the outbreak of fighting.  Pickens was the strongest position in the Pensacola area.  Her guns could reach all of the other installations, and from atop Pickens’ walls Union soldiers and sailors regularly monitored the goings-on across the bay.  In fact, when a large floating drydock was moved into the bay, Pickens’ guns bombarded and sank it, lest it be used as an artillery platform.

In September 1861. the Federals observed more activity at the Navy Yard.  The schooner William H. Judah had been moved to the yard and was apparently being fitted out and armed for privateering.  CAPT William Mervine, responsible for the Union blockade of that portion of the Florida coast, decided on a daring raid that would prevent Judah from ever getting underway.  He landed 100 sailors and Marines from USS COLORADO at Fort Pickens, who on this moonless night shoved off to cross the bay.  LT John H. Russell led the four longboats, detaching one to the dock to quiet the guard and spike a 10-inch Columbiad mounted there.  The other three boats slid up to Judah completely unnoticed.  The men swarmed across and quickly overpowered the only two rebels aboard the schooner.  Meanwhile, the men of the single boat ably dispatched the guard on the dock and disabled the gun with an iron spike driven down the firing hole.  In a short 15 minutes Judah was ablaze and the attackers were pulling away.  But the activity roused other Confederates who reached the dock in time to open fire on the departing Federals.  Three Union sailors slumped over in their boats, 13 were wounded.  Judah drifted into the bay where she burned and sank.

Local Confederate commander MGEN Braxton Bragg was furious over the affair and on 8 October launched a retaliatory strike on the Federals.  At 2200 that night 1000 Confederate volunteers boarded three steamers and several barges and crossed the bay to Santa Rosa Island.  They landed east of Fort Pickens and sneaked upon the 6^th Regiment of New York Zouaves, bivouacked outside the walls at Camp Brown.  In a classic example of “the boy who cried wolf,” 6^th Regiment pickets had been in the habit of shooting game while on duty, so the fire at the advancing Johnny Rebs did not raise an alarm with the Yankees.  The Zouaves were overrun, and only after troops inside Fort Pickens rallied to their aid did the Federals turn back the attack.

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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. 144.

Ogden, David P.  The Fort Barrancas Story.  Pensacola, FL: Eastern National, 1998, p. 19.

Parks, Virginia, Alan Rick and Norman Simons.  Pensacola in the Civil War.  Pensacola, FL: Pensacola Historical Society,  1978, pp. 16-18.

Pearce, George F.  Pensacola During the Civil War:  A Thorn in the Side of the Confederacy.  Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2000, pp. 111-13.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Western Florida remained a quiet theater throughout the Civil War, in fact the above action anywhere else would likely have been labeled only a skirmish.  In the battle of Santa Rosa Island, Bragg suffered 18 killed, 39 wounded and 30 captured.  Fourteen Zouaves lost their lives, 29 were wounded and 24 were taken prisoner.  The engagement was characterized by ineptitude on both sides.  Part of the reason the Confederates were so easily reversed was that discipline broke down when rebels began looting the tents they had overrun in Camp Brown.

CAPT Mervine is best remembered for his earlier actions in California during the Mexican War.  By 1861 he had been on active duty for 52 years, indeed ill health forced his retirement on 16 July the following year.  He was subsequently promoted to RADM on the retired list.  His name has graced two Navy destroyers, DD-322 and DD-489.  John Henry Russell also reached the rank of RADM before retiring from active duty 27 August 1886.  For this and other actions he is remembered with the pre-WWII Sims-class destroyer RUSSELL (DD-414).  Braxton Bragg is of course the namesake of the US Army’s Fort Bragg in North Carolina (“Bragg” restored in 2025 from “Fort Liberty”).

Spiking was a means of permanently disabling a muzzle-loading cannon.  An iron spike was driven into the tiny touch hole in the breech of the gun.  This blocked the hole from being used to ignite the powder charge.  The action often cracked or weakened the breech, and at the very least left a large hole that vented the firing pressure.  Once spiked, the only way to “repair” the gun was to melt it down for re-casting.

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