CAPTURE OF CSS TENNESSEE

By August 1864, the last remaining Confederate seaport not in Union hands was Mobile, Alabama.  At 0530 this morning, VADM David G. Farragut’s Union squadron “damned the torpedoes” and forced their way past Fort Morgan into Mobile Bay.  Each ship had to sidestep the vaunted Confederate ironclad CSS TENNESSEE waiting inside the Bay.  She was formidable, the centerpiece of Mobile’s defenses, a 208-foot monster.  The sloping sides of her casemate bore five inches of plate iron covering two feet of oak and were holed for six rifled cannon in broadside.  But her most feared weapon was the iron-plated ram just under the waterline at her bows.  Her captain was Confederate VADM Franklin Buchanan, a respected and experienced veteran of the pre-Civil War US Navy who had “gone South” in 1861 and had skippered CSS VIRGINIA in her famous battle against USS MONITOR in Hampton Roads.  TENNESSEE’s armor rendered Union guns impotent, but her Achilles heel was her comparatively weak machinery that condemned her to a best speed of under six knots.  At Farragut’s entry she sheltered under the guns of Fort Morgan, where all expected she would lie until the cover of night brought her forth again.  But Buchanan was a realist.  He eschewed the invincibility myth the citizens of Mobile ascribed to his vessel.  About 0900 this morning, while daylight would provide better vision, he moved toward the Union squadron.

Farragut’s plan was to fight ram with ram–use his own ships to repeatedly crash the rebel into submission.  The Union screw sloop MONOGAHELA was the first to reach TENNESSEE.  She struck squarely but succeeded only in smashing her own bow.  As she recoiled from the collision, two shells penetrated her berth deck doing terrible damage.  The sloop LACKAWANNA struck head-on just aft of amidships with the same result as MONOGAHELA.  As she spun abreast, each crew hurled musket shots, insults, holystones, and even a spittoon at each other through gun ports only 10 feet apart.  HARTFORD struck a glancing blow then collided with LACKAWANNA.  The monitor MANHATTAN scored the first Union success when one of her 440# bolts fired from 10 yards crashed through TENNESSEE’s casemate.  USS CHICKASAW stood off the enemy’s stern, skillfully shooting away the rebel’s steering chains and jamming closed the shutters of her gunports.  Buchanan’s smokestack was riddled, reducing the draft in his inadequate boilers, and with his steering and power cut, he recognized the inevitable.  The specter of OSSIPPEE now bearing down at full speed brought out a white flag.  OSSIPPEE veered off at the last second, her Acting ENS Charles E. Clark accepted a wounded Buchanan’s surrender.  TENNESSEE was pressed into Union service for the duration of the Mobile campaign.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  11 AUG 24UCHANONU

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Civil War Naval Chronology 1861-1865.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1961, pp. IV-96-97.

Lewis, Charles Lee.  David Glasgow Farragut:  Our First Admiral.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1943, pp. 273-82.

Silverstone, Paul H.  Warships of the Civil War Navies.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989, pp. 208-09.

Still, William N., Jr.  Iron Afloat:  The Story of the Confederate Armorclads.  Columbia, SC: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1985, pp. 209-10.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  TENNESSEE survived the war.  She supported the successful Union attack on Fort Morgan on 23 August, then joined the Mississippi Squadron at New Orleans for the remainder of the war.  She was sold for scrap in 1867.  Franklin Buchanan was taken captive this day.  Twice severely wounded during the Civil War, he survived to die peacefully at his home in Maryland in 1874.  USS BUCHANAN (DD-131, DD-484) remembers the sailor honored for his service both in the US and Confederate navies. 

LACKAWANNA, MONOGAHELA, and OSSIPPEE were wooden-hulled, full-rigged, steam-powered screw sloops constructed for the Union Navy in 1862.  CHICKASAW and MANHATTAN were turreted monitors.  The names of all reflect Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles’ opinion that it most befitted and honored our warships to bear the names of Native American tribes.

ENS Charles Clark of OSSIPPEE would later earn undying fame as skipper of the battleship OREGON (BB-3) on her epic voyage around the Horn at the outset of the Spanish-American war.

The post Capture of CSS TENNESSEE appeared first on Today in Naval History.

                                         NAZI POWs IN AMERICA

On this day, German POWs Wolfgang Kurzer and Karl Tomola quietly slipped away from the camp at Scotts Bluff, Nebraska, and headed north.  They crossed the Canadian border where they found employment washing dishes or working on farms.  Within several months they were ready to try for Germany and in November re-crossed the border at Rouses Point, New York.  They wended their way to New York City, either by luck or design having chosen one of only two US ports open to neutral shipping (New York and Philadelphia).  Here they attempted to ship aboard a neutral freighter as deck seamen, but their accents and their lack of proper credentials not only waylaid their plans but probably tipped the local authorities.  They were found a short time later stowed away in 55-gallon drums aboard the Spanish freighter Castilla Ampudia with a two-week supply of food and ten pounds of chocolate.

Throughout the course of WWII, Axis prisoners of war were confined in 686 POW area camps and branches across the United States.  Upwards of 420,000 POWs were being held on American soil by 1945.  Good treatment and ample recreational pursuits reduced the desire to escape.  Indeed, the massive size of our country and the oceans to the east and west gave little hope of reaching Germany.  Yet all POWs are bound by a code of conduct obligating them to attempt escape.  Many tried, though news of such was usually suppressed for fear of public panic.  Most found themselves unprepared for the language and culture they encountered, and most were caught within a day or two.  POWs on the lam often sought the perceived safety of Mexico or Canada, traveling at night or in rail cars and avoiding the local populace.  A few occasionally managed to remain at large for some time in this manner. 

As an example of how escaped Germans often suffered from unfamiliarity with American ways, witness the case of a trio of Germans, one of whom had been a submariner aboard U-162.  They walked away from a work detail at Camp Crossville in eastern Tennessee.  After several days of hiding in the backwoods, the trio stopped beside a mountain cabin for a drink from the pump.  Their libations were interrupted by a cantankerous old crone who told them in no uncertain terms to “git!”  Unfamiliar with mountain ways, the three were unmoved–at which the old granny drew a bead and shot one of them dead.  The deputy sheriff soon arrived and informed the old lady to her horror that she had shot an escaped German prisoner.  The penitent granny confessed she never would have pulled the trigger had she known they were Germans.  “What in thunder did you think you were aiming at?” the sheriff asked.

“Why, I reckon’d they wuz Yankees!”

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  16 JUL 24

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Krammer, Arnold.  Nazi Prisoners of War in America.  Chelsea, MI: Scarborough House, 1991, pp. 114-46.

Moore, John Hammond.  The Faustball Tunnel:  German POWs in America and Their Great Escape.  New York, NY: Random House, 1978, p. 64-65.

The post Nazi POWs in America appeared first on Today in Naval History.