The War is over: but not for the Navy

Confederate warship CSS Stonewall. Source: Naval History and Heritage Command.

It is May, 1865.

Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his army the month before at Appomattox, and the Confederate western generals not long afterward. Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet were being arrested as they tried to flee the country. The Union Navy presence off the southern coastline continued, mainly to enforce the peace, help slaves now completely released from their servitude, assist with rebuilding, and other mundane duties. Adm. C.K. Stribling commands the East Gulf Blockading Squadron from his home base at Key West, Florida.

Sometime in early May, the Admiral receives a dispatch from the U.S. Consul General in Havana, Cuba, which incites a panic. The Confederate ocean-going ironclad ram CSS Stonewall has docked at Havana harbor. This warship was built by France, for the Confederate Navy, which eventually took possession of her through a tortuous process. This ship was the "next generation" in blue-water warships. She was powered both by steam and sail rig, heavily armored, and armed with some of the most technologically advanced naval gunnery of the day; a 300-pdr and two 70-pdr Armstrong guns. When she left Portugal in March of 1865, the USN warships Niagara and Sacramento made weak attempts to confront her, but the USN had nothing that could go up against this formidable Confederate warship. It is rumored that she may be headed for Texas, or even perhaps Florida, to where the Confederate cabinet were fleeing, to pick them up and evacuate them to safety.

Stribling no doubt struggled with what to do. Eventually, he dispatched the USS Powhatan, with his Flag Captain aboard, and the USS Aries, followed by the USS Mahaska and Tallapoosa, to blockade the harbor of Havana. The captains of these vessels had orders to engage the Stonewall, should she try to make a run out of the harbor, and fight her to their destruction or the destruction of the Stonewall. It was a suicide mission. Without consulting his superiors, Stribling also sent two dispatches to the U.S. Consul General in Havana. One was delivered to the commanding officer of the Stonewall; an earnest and heartfelt plea to consider that the Confederacy was dead, and to surrender his warship, under terms of parole identical to those granted to Lee and his army. The second dispatch was delivered to the Captain General of the Island of Cuba (the official government representative of the Spanish Crown, who ruled the island). This missive was not as nice; it informed the Capt. General that, because of the collapse of the Confederate government and state, the Stonewall was no longer considered a legitimate ship-of-war, which enjoyed certain protections under international law. She was considered a pirate, and for Cuba to be offering protection would be aiding and abetting piracy, authorizing the U.S. Navy to take whatever actions necessary against the ship and the Island of Cuba to abet this threat.

Stibling's message got through to somebody, somehow. On 19 May, the Stonewall was surrendered to Spanish Naval authorities, and turned over to the U.S. Navy shortly thereafter. The members of the Stonewall's crew were paid off the salary owed them in Spanish gold. For reasons I have still not found out, the USN eventually sold her to the Japanese Navy.

In the last few months of the Civil War (maybe even after it "officially" ended), it is interesting that the last military vestiges of the Confederacy were her Navy. The Stonewall surrendered a month after the essential collapse of the Confederate Army. Six months later, the last Confederate warship, the raider CSS Shenandoah, hauled down her flag in England in November, 1865 and surrendered to those authorities. Maybe this is the legacy of Confederate Navy Secretary Stephen R. Mallory, who built a Navy from scratch, and whose Navy persisted until the end of the War, and even beyond.

Grave marker of C.S. Navy Secretary Mallory, in Pensacola, Florida. Photo by Tiffany Trent.

Battle of Natural Bridge, Florida. March 1865

Map of the St. Marks River mouth, showing disposition of Navy gunboats during the landing of troops. Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies

In the early days of 1865, with the war starting to wind down, Union Army General John Newton decided to organize an assault on the Florida state capitol, Tallahassee. He would land his troops at St. Marks and march northward to the city. Perhaps some of his motivation was to try to avenge the stinging defeat the Union Army had suffered a year earlier at Olustee.

A joint Army/Navy task force began to land Union troops near the lighthouse at the mouth of the St. Marks River on 3 March 1865. Heavy weather hampered the operations, but all forces were landed by 5 March 1865. Assisting in the operation were the Union Navy gunboats Stars and Stripes, Fort Henry, Mahaska, Honduras, Hibiscus, and Britannia. Landing parties of sailors and marines were also put ashore to capture critical bridges and occupy Confederate forces at St. Marks to prevent their interfering with the Union Army advance.

USS Hibiscus.  Naval History and Heritage Command

The Union forces were landed on the east side of the St. Marks River, which meant they had to cross the river to advance on Tallahassee. The Confederates burned a bridge over the river at Newport, which forced the Union troops to head northward to cross the St. Marks River at a “natural bridge” feature where it dips underground for a stretch. The Union column was met at this feature by a rag-tag Confederate defense consisting of soldiers on leave, local militia, and cadets from the West Florida Seminary (now Florida State University) on 6 March 1865. Supported by several pieces of artillery, the Confederate force repulsed multiple advances by the Union forces, who ultimately withdrew back to their landing at the mouth of the river and were evacuated by the Navy gunboats. The “Battle of Natural Bridge” was the second largest land engagement in Florida after Olustee, and the result was the same; yet another Union defeat. Tallahassee became the only Confederate state capitol east of the Mississippi River that was not taken by the Union during the war.

The weekend of 7-8 March 2015, the 38th reenactment of the Battle of Natural Bridge was held at the Natural Bridge Battlefield Historic State Park (the site of the original battle). This was a special event, as it commemorated the 150th Anniversary of the battle. Reenactors from the USS Pawnee Guard marines and USS Ft. Henry Living History Association portrayed a naval landing party and, as they did in the original engagement, provided flanking cover to the Union Army advance on the battlefield.

Members of the Pawnee Guard (US Marines) and a sailor with the USS Ft. Henry Living History Association in camp at the Natural Bridge battle reenactment in March 2015.  Courtesy Pawnee Guard.

 

Just like in real life; "hurry up and wait." Marines and sailor waiting to go into action during the reenactment of the Battle of Natural Bridge. Courtesy Pawnee Guard.

New Book by CWN150 Contributing Blogger Seaman Rob

Photo by Mat O'Malley

Thank-you to all of you for your attention to our CWN150 site. We hope you are enjoying a good holiday season.

At the risk of engaging in "shameless self-promotion," I would like to let you all know about a book that I have recently self-published. It is titled "The Civil War Navy in Florida" and is based largely on the posts I have been contributing to this Blog for the past 5 years or so.

It covers the actions and activities of the Union and Confederate Navies in Florida during the Civil War and I hope you will enjoy it should you decide to get a copy. It is available through your local independent bookseller and through Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.  Thanks so much again for your interest and attention over these last five years.

Lieutenant Gift's Raid at Apalachicola 1864

Cotton warehouses at Apalachicola in the 1800s. Florida State Archives, Florida Memory Project

As I noted in an earlier post, the Confederate Navy never really had a presence in Florida throughout the Civil War. There was some CSN gunboat activity on the Apalachicola River in Florida, mainly in association with protecting the important industrial center of Columbus, Georgia, upstream on the Chattahoochee River. The main confederate warship operating on the river was the steam sloop CSS Chattahoochee, which was sunk by a boiler explosion in May 1863. Eventually, the CSN raised the Chattahoochee and returned her to Columbus for repair and refitting.

George W. Gift joined the U.S. Navy in 1847 as a Midshipman. He resigned his commission a few years later (1851) to go into business for himself in the California territory on the west coast of the growing United States. When the war broke out, he traveled back to the south to join the Confederate Navy. He was an energetic and ambitious officer who served in multiple theatres, including on the Mississippi River, in North Carolina, and in Florida. He even caught the attention of Adm. Franklin Buchanan, who regarded him highly. He served as an officer on the Chattahoochee in 1863 under Lt. John J. Guthrie, left to serve in North Carolina (where he was a participant in the CSN raid on the USS Underwriter), then returned to Florida where he was given command of the refitted Chattahoochee.

During his first term of service on the Chattahoochee, he proposed to Lt. Guthrie a plan to take a CSN raiding party downriver into Apalachicola Bay to attempt to capture the Union gunboat USS Port Royal. He never got the chance to do this, but now back in Florida, and still flush with the success of the raid on the Underwriter, he determined to implement his earlier plan. On 3 May 1864 he set out from Georgia in the steamer Swan with a force of Confederate sailors and some soldiers. The force assembled at the Town of Apalachicola on 12 May. That night, they set out in boats to try to capture the USS Adela; a fast, sidewheel steamer that was itself a captured confederate blockade runner. Unfortunately, on this night Lt. Gift’s luck ran out. As the CSN raiding party set out from the docks, they were spotted by ship’s boats from the USS Somerset under the command of Acting Volunteer Lt. W. Budd. Most of the CSN raiding party returned to land and escaped through town. Gift and the men remaining with him were able to outrun the USN boats in their launch and escape back upriver. Thus ended one of the rare C.S. Navy military activities in Florida during the war.

CSS Florida. The CSS Chattahoochee looked similar to this. Naval History and Heritage Command.

Ambush of the USS Columbine on the St. Johns River, Florida

Confederate cavalry Capt. John J. Dickison. Florida State Archives, Florida Memory Project.

One of the Confederate heroes of the war in Florida was Capt. John Jackson Dickison. He was born in Virginia, but moved to Florida prior to the war and established a plantation north of current-day Ocala. At the start of the Civil War, he joined the Confederate military effort and established two army units before finally assembling Company H of the Second Florida Cavalry, C.S. He acquired a detailed knowledge of the back roads and terrain of the Florida peninsula, which made him a constant threat to Union military actions, and time and time again, he waged an audacious guerilla campaign which constantly embarrassed and defeated the Union Army.

In April 1864, Union General George H. Gordon received intelligence that his troops garrisoned in Volusia, Florida, might be besieged by Confederate forces. He marshaled his resources and on 21 May 1864, he departed Jacksonville with troops upriver on Army transports, accompanied by the gunboat USS Ottawa (a “90-day” gunboat) and the armed tugboat USS Columbine. They arrived at Volusia, and found that the garrison there was not at all threatened.

Gen. Gordon departed northward by land with his forces to return to Jacksonville, and had the navy flotilla accompanying him return by river to the city. The Ottawa headed downriver with the Army transports and left the Columbine at Volusia for another day or so to provide additional fire support “just in case.” Capt. Dickison actually attacked the Ottawa and its transports while they were at anchor off Picolata on 22 May 1864. He found out from intelligence picked up by some sly southern ladies that the Columbine would be coming back downriver in the next couple days.

Dickison deployed two field guns and his sharpshooters in the swamps on the banks of the St. Johns River near a location known as Horse Landing. The afternoon of 23 May 1864, a smudge of coal smoke on the upriver horizon indicated that the Columbine was coming down.  Surprisingly, her commander, Acting Ensign Frank Sanborn, expected a possible ambush at Horse Landing and had his guns fire a few shells into the adjacent swamps. Dickison and his men took cover and re-manned their positions after the USN gunboat ceased firing. As the tug passed by at a range of about 60 yards, Dickison’s men opened fire. The first salvos were deadly, disabling the ship’s rudder, killing most of the men in the pilothouse, and causing other damage. Although Sanborn and his crew put up a gallant defense, many of the men on board were African-american soldiers and feared for their lives, so they began to jump overboard and try to make their way to shore. Sanborn surrendered the ship and remaining crew to Dickison, who confiscated all of the weaponry and supplies he could off of the ship, including its two Dahlgren boat howitzers. He then burned and sank the ship due to fears that the Ottawa would be back upriver soon to provide defense/revenge.

This was the first known defeat/sinking of a U.S. Navy vessel by a land based force. “Urban legend” has it that Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest heard about this action and, determined to not let some “Florida cracker” get all this glory, attacked and sunk a number of Union vessels (both warships and transports) on the Mississippi. I’m not so sure about this, myself. I think both Dickison and Forrest were “cut from the same type of cloth” and conducted their actions independently. Any thoughts or clarification from our devoted readers out there would  be welcome.

Dickison and his forces attacking the Columbine on the St. Johns River. Florida State Archives, Florida Memory Project.