THE LOSS OF PETREL

To bolster Union naval forces patrolling the Mississippi in the Civil War, our Navy purchased a total of 63 existing sternwheel and sidewheel riverboats.  Protection was added to their upper works in the form of thick wooden bulwarks overlain with a metal skin.  They mounted heavy guns on the first deck and lighter howitzers on the upper decks.  “Tinclads” as they came to be known exercised patrol, reconnaissance, and gunboat missions along the Mississippi.  One such “tinclad,” USS PETREL, the former riverboat Duchess, operated from February to April 1864 in the Yazoo River of Mississippi.  On April 21^st, 1864, PETREL and her sister tinclad PAIRIE BIRD started upriver escorting the Army transport Freestone.  They were to retake Yazoo City, which had been abandoned by Union troops in February.  PETREL ranged ahead and came abreast of Yazoo City well in advance of the others.  Here she engaged a group of rebels firing from the hills.  As the river was insufficiently wide to turn, Acting Master Thomas McElroy ran upriver past the battery.  The following morning found PETREL against the bank with her crew ashore, collecting rails to stack against the boilers.

Suddenly the gunboat came under fire from a force of enemy infantry with two 12-pounder Parrott rifles.  “Minnie” balls and shot screamed through the air, some piercing completely through PETREL.  McElroy beat his crew to quarters, but found that the position of his boat against the bank prevented his heavy guns from being brought to bear.  The Yankees defended with muskets while McElroy attempted to back down into the stream.  But an enemy shot cut the tinclad’s steam lines; followed by another that struck the magazine and cut off the legs of Gunner’s Mate Charles Seitz.  Enemy sharpshooters began picking off the Union crewmen through the gun ports.  Several of the officers “behaved badly,” falling back out of fear.  Disabled and unable to counter-fire, McElroy decided to burn his vessel.  But just as Asst. Engineer Arthur M. Phillips was setting the gunboat ablaze, another rebel shot raked the stern and burst the boilers, bathing the ship in steam.  The steam doused the fires, and many of McElroy’s officers and crew jumped ashore and ran.  Only the pilot, Kimball Ware, and an enlisted sailor, Quartermaster John H. Nibbe, stayed to assist McElroy in defending PETREL’s flag.  Nibbe helped get the wounded ashore, then all three re-fired the gunboat by spreading coals from the boiler across the deck.

The Confederates surrounded and captured the three brave sailors.  The fires were again extinguished long enough for the rebels to strip every gun and salvageable store.  PETREL was then burned to prevent her re-capture.

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CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Civil War Naval Chronology 1861-1865.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1961, p. IV-46.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 5 “N-Q”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1979, p. 276.

McElroy, Thomas.  Report of loss of Petrel.  IN: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion. Series I-Volume 26:  Naval Forces on Western Waters (March 1, 1864-December 21, 1864).  Washington, DC: GPO, 1914, pp. 248-49.

Porter, David D.  The Naval History of the Civil War.  Mineola, NY: Dover Pub., 1886, pp. 560-61.

Silverstone, Paul H.  Warships of the Civil War Navies.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989, pp. 165, 176.

United States Congress.  United States of America’s Congressional Medal of Honor Recipients and their Official Citations.  Columbia Heights, MN: Highland House II, 1994, p. 859.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  PETREL was taken with her flag still flying.  Quartermaster John H. Nibbe was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions this day (officers were not eligible at the time).  RADM David Dixon Porter berated PETREL’s remaining officers and crew for their apparent cowardice.

Union “tinclads” also had an enclosed pilothouse constructed on the upper-most deck.  This feature easily identifies such craft in period photographs that survive today.  Our modern system of hull numbering was not adopted until the 1920s, however each of the 63 tinclads had a number painted boldly on the outside of her pilot house.  PETREL was tinclad number 5, and PRAIRIE BIRD was number 11.

The rank of “Master” has an interesting history as well.  Early in the 1800s our Navy had four commissioned officer ranks–Sailing Master, Lieutenant, Master Commandant and Captain.  The Master Commandant rank was changed to “Commander” in 1837, the same year the lowest rank was shortened simply to “Master.”  During the Civil War, to accommodate an expanded force structure, on 16 July 1862 the new ranks of RADM and Commodore were created as Flag ranks above Captain; LCDR was inserted below Commander; and Ensign was inserted below Master.  In 1883 “Masters” became “Lieutenants Junior Grade,” which they remain today!

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                                     THE YAZOO CITY SHIPYARD

After the failure of the Yazoo Pass expedition before Confederate Fort Pemberton in March 1863, MGEN Ulysses Grant adopted a new strategy against Vicksburg, the last and most menacing Rebel city preventing Union control of the Mississippi River.  Grant would move his 30,000 troops south on the Louisiana shore, cross the river to the south at Grand Gulf, Mississippi, and move toward Jackson, cutting Vicksburg’s supply line via the Yazoo River.  Union gunboats, necessary to cover Grant’s river crossing, made a daring run past Vicksburg on the dark night of 16-17 April.  Doing so gave them access to the Yazoo, which reaches the Mississippi just south of Vicksburg.  By noon on 18 May 1863 RADM David Dixon Porter found himself on the Yazoo River with the ironclad USS BARON DE KALB and the tinclads CHOCTAW, LINDEN, PETREL, ROMEO, and FOREST ROSE.  Porter was supporting MGEN William T. Sherman’s move up the Yazoo.

At Snyder’s Mill the Rebels had constructed extensive earthworks that would have been a formidable obstruction to Sherman’s and Porter’s advance had not the Confederates abandoned it the day before.  Here Porter’s men found tents, field equipment, supplies, and 14 gun emplacements replete with artillery and ammunition.  A band of Confederates left to recover this material skidaddled at the sight of Porter’s boats.  Porter then sent LCDR John G. Walker ahead in BARON DE KALB to investigate rumors of a Confederate shipyard further upriver in Yazoo City.

DE KALB arrived this day in Yazoo City to find a column of smoke marking the Confederate shipyard.  Three warships lay on the ways nearly completed:  CSS MOBILE awaited only her iron plating; CSS REPUBLIC was being fitted with an iron ram at her bows; and a third 310-foot steamer Walker described as, “a monster,” was about to receive her 4.5″ iron plating.  Her 70-foot beam enclosed six steam engines, powering four paddlewheels and two screw propellers.  She would have given the Union a boatload of trouble indeed!  The steamers were seaworthy enough for Walker to have commandeered them for the Union, but for the lack of pilots to guide them downriver they were burned.  The shipyard was found to have five lumber and planing mills, blacksmith, machine, and carpentry shops, and all manner of equipment necessary to build or repair vessels of any size.  A hospital ashore nursed 150 wounded Confederates, who were paroled, never to fight again.  Walker destroyed the works, conservatively estimated to be worth $2 million in 1863 dollars.

Walker’s return was plagued on the 22^nd by three field pieces and 200 infantry from the shore near Liverpool Landing.  But as quickly as Union guns trained shoreward, the Rebels fled.

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CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

“Additional Report of Acting Rear-Admiral Porter, U.S. Navy, transmitting report of Lieutenant-Commander Walker, U.S. Navy, commanding U.S.S. Baron de Kalb, regarding operations at Yazoo City.”  IN:  Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 25, Naval Forces on Western Waters from May 18, 1863, to February 29, 1864.  Washington, DC: GPO, pp. 7-9.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Civil War Naval Chronology 1861-1865.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1961, pp. III-82-83.

Jones, Virgil Carrington.  The Civil War at Sea:  Vol 2  The River War.  New York, NY:  Holt Rinehart Winston, 1961, pp. 421-22.

“Report of Acting Rear-Admiral Porter, U.S. Navy.”  IN:  Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 25, Naval Forces on Western Waters from May 18, 1863, to February 29, 1864.  Washington, DC: GPO, pp. 5-7.

Sweetman, Jack.  American Naval History:  An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present, 3rd ed.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 2002, pp. 71-72.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  The Yazoo Pass expedition was an attempt to reach the Yazoo River from the north by breaching the Mississippi River levee opposite Helena, Arkansas.  Doing so flooded a former river channel that connected with Moon Lake, and the Coldwater and Tallahatchie Rivers to reach the Yazoo.  The expedition was halted by the impassable Confederate Fort Pemberton on the Tallahatchie just three miles from the Yazoo.

Tinclads were the most prolific class of gunboat in the Mississippi Squadron of our Civil War.  Each was a former civilian riverboat, purchased by our Navy and reinforced with heavy timber bulwarks overlain with sheet metal.

Most naval squadrons of these days had limited capacity for housing POWs.  Captured soldiers and sailors were therefore paroled.  They signed documents swearing never again to take up arms against the Union and were released in return.  Paroles had mixed effectiveness, especially since soldiers thereby returning to their homes did not wish to be perceived as deserters.

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