Siege of Charleston: Supporting the Charge of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers

The Assault on Fort Wagner as published in 1890.
This interpretation of the famous charge of the 54th Massachusetts is
 one  of the  few that show the U.S. Navy's ironclads in action.

Amidst siege operations in Charleston,Union leadership decided to try and seize Fort Wagner. The fort commanded the southern approaches to Charleston Harbor. It was relatively isolated from other Confederate fortifications.  Thus, it could not count on help if attacked. 

Map of Morris Island and Fort Wagner

Rear Admiral John Dahlgren, commanding the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, and Brigadier General Quincy Gilmore, commanding Union ground forces, agreed on a plan.  They planned to first seize the southern shores of Morris Island before beginning an assault on Fort Wagner on July 11.  The first part of the plan worked well.  A combination of four monitors (USS Weehawken, Nahant, Catskill, and Montauk), wooden gunboats, and small boats from the steam frigate USS Wabash equipped with boat howitzers, provided sufficient cover for a Union landing to overrun Confederate defenses. 

The monitors shelled Confederate positions from 4 a.m. until 12 p.m..  They then withdrew back out into open water "for lunch" promptly at noon.  Two hours later, the monitors resumed their firing positions. 

This assault on Fort Wagner itself did not succeed due to accurate heavy gun fire from Confederate gunners.  The Confederate gunners even damaged some of the monitors with a bolt type, armor-piercing shot. Union forces managed to establish a siege line during the melee. Gilmore planned a second assault on Wagner with five regiments.  The African American-manned 54th Massachusetts Volunteers lead the attack.

For the Navy's part, Dahlgren prepared six ironclads to support the operation.  The Federal force included the four monitors previously mentioned, plus USS New Ironsides, the monitor USS Patapsco, and three wooden gunboats. The steam sloop USS Housantonic stood back to observe where the ironclads' shots landed and to signal each ship the results. Additionally, Dahlgren put New Ironsides' Marines on alert, just in case they were needed in the ground assault.
  


Alfred Waud's drawing of USS Patapsco
 and other monitors off of Charleston.


The Navy bombardment began in the morning, with the squadron firing from 1,200 yards. Taking advantage of the flood tide, the ironclads moved west of the Main Ship Channel and closer to the fort.  At three hundred yards, the ironclads began a rapid fire bombardment.  Unlike the July 11 attack, the Navy's shelling kept the Confederate gunners from returning fire.

The ships kept up the fire until 7.30 p.m.  Gilmore signaled to Dahlgren that his troops were in position to assault.  Dahlgren ordered a cease fire due to a lack of light and a fear of hitting Union ground forces. The admiral reported that he witnessed flashes of gunfire from the ground assault until 9:30 p.m. Dahlgren wrote that the "ill-tiding of a repulse were not long in coming."  He received official word at 10:30 p.m. 

Supporting the second assault, the Navy unloaded about 1,945 shells (mostly XI-inch shells, but also some XV-inch shells, 150-pound and 100-pounder rifle shells) on Fort Wagner.  The number is a bit misleading, as New Ironsides accounted for 1,120 of them, the wooden gunboats 200, and the monitors about 625.  The broadside ironclad out-fired all the monitors combined.  In all, the squadron fired 432,676 lbs, or a little over 216 tons, of ordnance at Fort Wagner. During the bombardment, a disturbing trend arose.  Critical breaches occurred on three of the squadron's Parrot Rifles.

Dahlgren concluded that the plan was sound, but more troops were needed for the ground assault.  Additionally, he held high praise for the Army's assault.  He wrote, "the loss sustained by our troops bears witness to the preserving gallantry with which they endeavored to storm the work, and which deserve, I trust, a renewed effort."

Civil War Navy Special Edition Daybook-Sea Stories-Now Online

The next issue of The Daybook is now online.  This issue is our third "Special Edition" installment on the Navy's role in the American Civil War.  This issue took a different approach than most of Daybooks.  Inside the reader will find the Civil War at Sea unfiltered.  The participants of the war are going to speak to you directly without a historian interpreting the events.  All parts of the war at sea are covered.  From the shores of France where two cruisers battle it out, to the siege lines of Charleston, to the corner of the Confederacy where a lone blockade runner attempted to put to sea. 

Some of the articles one will find are March 9, 1862 log book entry of USS Monitor (which sums up the entire Battle of Hampton Roads in ten sentences); excerpts from the logs books U.S. Navy ironclads on the front lines; excerpts from an African American sailor serving in the U.S. Navy; the day the Navy took a dog and sheep into custody; letters to home from a grief stricken officer; and Admiral David Dixon Porter's surreal conversation with a plantation overseer.

If you would like a print copy of the Daybook, head on over to the Hampton Roads Naval Historical Foundation's page and become a member!

Union's Desperate Gambit to Stymie Rebel Ram Buying in Great Britain

John Murray Forbes, left, and William H. Aspinwall were given millions of dollars to outbid the Confederacy for the two rams being built at the Laird Shipyard in Birkenhead in Great Britain. (Forbes picture from Harvard Square Library. org and Aspinwall picture from Panama Rail. org)

John Murray Forbes was feeling “half ill” and trying to rest in his Milton, Massachusetts, home on Saturday March 14, 1863.  But resting was soon out of the question when the railroad magnate and a member of one of New England’s leading maritime families received a “brief telegram” from Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase. The secretary wanted to meet with him the next day at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in Manhattan. Forbes, a man who once served tea to John Brown,   “could not refuse” and hurried to New York. Without being explicitly told why the meeting was on such short notice, he likely knew it concerned frightening reports on Confederate buying of advanced, powerful warships in Europe.

With Chase, an ardent abolitionist, that day was Navy Secretary Gideon Welles, the founder of Hartford, Connecticut, Evening Press, and the New York-based William H. Aspinwall, the owner of the lucrative gold-hauling Pacific Mail Steamship Company and the builder of the trans-Panama railroad.  

While not friends, the four were acquainted with each other.  Forbes and Aspinwall came from tightly-knit Yankee families that pioneered America’s China trade of tea, silk, and opium. Welles and Forbes met each other during the ill-fated Peace Convention in Washington in early 1861. That winter,  Aspinwall had been in Washington discussing a plan with the Buchanan administration and the incoming Lincoln administration to relieve Fort Sumter. He met Forbes then. (1)

When war came in April, Forbes peppered Chase with ideas on how to finance the conflict. His suggestions on taxes and long-and short-term bonds, and short-term Treasury notes for unexpected expenses, were largely ignored. Aspinwall fired off his missives on graft in Navy acquisition to Welles and the energetic Gustavus V. Fox, assistant secretary, with little effect

But Welles, on the other hand, used both men to launch the Navy’s war against the Confederacy.  They were in the front ranks chartering and buying steamers to blockade Southern ports and to chase down Confederate commerce raiders.

On their own, Forbes, staunch Republican, and Aspinwall, long-time admirer of the cashiered George McClellan,  rallied men like themselves into Union Leagues to back the war effort – politically and economically. They also launched Loyal Publication Societies to boost the Union cause. Forbes also threw himself into raising volunteer regiments in Massachusetts, including black troops. Certainly, three of the men in the room – Welles, Forbes, and Aspinwall – saw the United States as a naval power, but one facing the gravest threat in its history from the sea. The fourth man, Chase, had the money to eliminate that threat, the Confederate European shopping spree for oceangoing ironclads.

As Fox wrote to Forbes, “We have not a port in the North that can resist an ironclad over very moderate power.” (2)  

The Union Navy had escaped disaster in Hampton Roads the year before when John Ericsson’s Monitor stalemated the iron-plated, slant-roofed CSS Virginia. They won reprieves later that spring when CSS Virginia was scuttled because its draft was too deep to make it safely to Richmond, and Captain David Farragut’s flotilla rushed past the still unfinished ironclads on the Mississippi River to capture the Confederacy’s busiest port and largest city New Orleans.

A desperate Congress authorized letters of marque to seize blockade runners bringing war materiel to the South. Even as the blockade tightened, Ulysses Grant marveled at the quality and quantity of the European-made rifles the Confederates carried at Vicksburg.  But letters of marque were worthless pieces of paper in keeping European-built ironclads taking to sea for the South. (3)

The Union Army fared even worse on the land. The summertime fears of Washington under siege for the second time in two years had been palpable. After Second Manassas,  “the rebels again look upon the dome of the Capitol,” and the fears barely ebbed after the Battle of Antietam. Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia were still in fighting form. The two politically-driven, grand Union advances launched in early winter had faltered. The Army of the Potomac was again in disarray following the fiasco at Fredericksburg in December.  The Army of the Cumberland had held its own a little later that month at Stones River in Tennessee, but with enormous casualties.

The war weariness in the North that cost the Republicans a number of governorships and reduced their ranks in Congress was contagious.   

Changing war aims from restoring the Union, an ideal that Aspinwall embraced, to freeing the slaves in states in rebellion, an ideal that Forbes blessed, proved more popular in Europe than in many parts of the North. More fodder for the opposition. Democrats rubbed their hands together in anticipation of the 1864 elections.

The historian Charles Francis Adams Jr. characterized that time as “that darkest hour before the slowly breaking dawn” of Union victories as Vicksburg and Gettysburg. (4)

Now with the military campaign season on land fast approaching and with each arriving steamer and mail packet from Great Britain delivering more disturbing news about Confederate successes in building commerce raiders – like Alabama and Florida and frightening reports from Liverpool of mysterious activities at the innovative Laird Brothers shipyard, the four agreed these were desperate times requiring bold actions.

Before the meeting Forbes had suggested to Fox that the United States should do everything in its power to buy these new Laird ironclads at Birkenhead. In Forbes’ scheme, the move would be made by a “merchant untrammeled by naval constructors and such nuisance” in the name of “Siam or China.” Subterfuge and false fronts were  how the Confederates’ did it, why not take a play out of their book?  (5)

In Washington, Fox liked the idea. Thinking along the same lines in London was the United States consul Freeman H. Morse.  His subterfuges and fronts would be “Russian, Italian or other foreign houses.” Morse proved invaluable as events were soon to show. (6)

Although Chase paid scant heed to Forbes’ ideas on financing the war, he and Welles let the two businessmen come up with their own statement of purpose of what they were to do with the $10 million set aside for this effort.  Their primary target was “the most dangerous vessels,” the Birkenhead rams, the men agreed.   The second point was to do this as surreptitiously as possible.  Don’t compromise the administration or Charles Francis Adams, the American minister in London and Forbes’ longtime friend, in the effort “to prevent the sailing of Confederate ships.” The “deniability” approach did not apply to Morse and his counterpart in Liverpool, Thomas Haines Dudley. The men on the scene  were integral to the plan as it was sketched out in the hotel room and as it evolved in Europe.  (7)

Mr. Aspinwall and Mr. Forbes were heading into the war.

End Notes

1.       Thomas H. O’Connor, Civil War Boston: Homefront and Battlefield, Northeastern University Press, Boston, 1999, p. 47.

2.       John Murray Forbes, Drawing on Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes edited by his daughter Sarah Forbes Hughes (hereafter Hughes, Recollections), Vol. 1, Cambridge, Google e-Book, pp. 293, 342 and Vol. 2, p. 3. John Launtz Larson, Bonds of Enterprise: John Murray Forbes and Western Development in America’s Railway Age (hereafter Larson, Bonds of Enterprise), Google e-Book, pp. 96-97.

3.       Ulysses Simpson Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, Dover Publications, New York, 1995, p. 229.

4.       Douglas H. Maynard, “The Forbes-Aspinwall Mission” (hereafter Maynard, Forbes),The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. 45, No. 1 June 1958, pp. 67-89.  Charles Adams, Studies Military and Diplomatic, 1775 – 1865 (hereafter Adams, Studies), MacMillan Company, New York, 1911, pp. 355-363.

5.       Hughes, Recollections, Vol. 2, p. 27.

6.       Maynard, Forbes, pp. 67-89.

7.       Ibid.

 

The U.S. Navy's Newest Weapon-USS New Ironsides

In late August 1862, the Philadelphia Inquirer ran the above headline and sketch of the U.S. Navy's newest ironclad that just left the Philadelphia shipyard of William Cramp & Sons for Hampton Roads: New Ironsides.  The ship was the last of three armored vessels recommended by the Ironclad Board (Monitor and Galena being the first two).  It was by far the largest and most heavily armored of the three.   Unlike many Northern newspapers that had a bad habit of disclosing operational and technical secrets, the Inquirer attempted to take the high road when it wrote, "No persons were allowed to visit the vessel previous to her departure, and it is not deemed desirable to make  public the various particulars of her construction, and the manner in which her guns and machinery operate."

However, when New Ironsides arrived in Hampton Roads in mid-September 1862, a reporter for the New York Times spotted her from his position at Fort Monroe.  This particular reporter and his newspaper had become somewhat notorious for reporting everything the U.S. Navy was doing in Hampton Roads (see the Port Royal Expedition).  New Ironsides' arrival was no different.  However, the Navy had only itself to blame as Captain Thomas Turner, New Ironsides' commanding officer, invited the reporter on board and gave him a personal tour.

The reporter wrote: "She is 240 feet in length, 56 feet width of beam, and some 17 feet out of the water.   When fully armed and equipped, she draws 15 feet of water, and easily made 7 knots. The armament of the Ironsides is terrific.  Besides sixteen XI-inch guns, she carries two enormous 200-pounders, that must crush to pieces anything made with human hands."

Several of the Confederacy's leading dailies such as the Charleston Mercury reprinted the New York Times' article.   The ship remained in Hampton Roads for a few more days to guard against a rumored "Merrimack 2." She then proceed south to join the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron.

Setting Up a Navy Yard in Charlotte, 1862



1877 map of Charlotte, "Carolina Central R.R.,"
"R.M. Oates," and Hutchison were the location 
of the Charlotte Navy Yard from 1862-1865

If you happen to be in Charlotte, North Carolina, be sure to stop by and read North Carolina's Historical Marker "L-56/Confederate Navy Yard."  The sign is near the Charlotte Transportation Center/Arena Station on Front Street.   Other than the sign, there is nothing left to indicate that one of the more important pieces of Confederate Navy infrastructure used to stand there.  At first glance, one would think that Charlotte would be an odd place to set up a navy yard.  After all, navy yards are supposed to be linked to water.  Ideally, yes.  But, as with many aspects of the Confederate States Navy, a combination of necessity and shortages birthed innovation. 


The idea to set up shop in southwest North Carolina  came from H. Ashton Ramsey, chief engineer of the late CSS Virginia.  With Union ground and naval forces moving in on Gosport Navy Yard, Ramsey had his men pack up as many industrial tools and machines they could carry and load them onto rail cars.  Working with ordnance expert John Brooke, the two men identified an abandoned machine shop located on the main line of the North Carolina Central railroad.  Most important to Ramsey, it was safe from interference of both Union ground and naval forces.

 After convincing the property owner to sell on a promise to pay when the war ended, workers from Gosport immediately started unloading several pieces of heavy industrial equipment.  The workers’ families arrived a short time later.  Many of the families settled down permanently in Charlotte after the war. 

For the rest of the war, Ramsey’s men manufactured and assembled several shafts, propellers, ordnance, and torpedoes for use by the Confederate Navy.   Most of the parts were used in building mid to late war ironclads such as CSS Virginia II, CSS Albemarle, CSS Georgia, and CSS Tennessee.  Read more about the operations of the yard here.

CSS Albemarle, one of several ironclads whose parts were assembled by the Charlotte Navy Yard

Rubber is Not Just for Toy Ships: Guest Blog Post by 12-Year Old Andrew Druart

It is my pleasure to post the first blog entry of Andrew Druart.  Andrew is a young man with a love and passion for Civil War history and preservation.  Although he is only 12 years old, it is certain he has a bright future ahead of him.  His post today focuses on the role of the “Rubber clads,” something you don’t hear much about nowadays.  Make sure to stop by his Civil War Kids website when you have a chance.

Brief Biography from the Civil War Kids website:

Andrew is a 12-year old entering the 7th grade. He started Civil War Kids to help teach other kids about the Civil War and how we can help save Civil War Battlefields from being erased by people destroying them with buildings or houses or stores. He also wanted to help parents teach their kids about the Civil War. I am a Civil War fanatic, but I also like science and math, but right now social studies is my favorite. I am also a big basketball and football fan and I play both sports. Andrew wears his Civil War Trust shirt that says "I help save Civil War battlefields" when he visits Civil War places or has a chance to promote preservation. Andrew lives in Austin, TX.

Rubber is Not Just for Toy Ships

More than two years ago, I visited Gettysburg. I became hooked on learning about the Civil War. Too many of my friends and kids didn't know about the Civil War, and the websites I found were either all about the military tactics or written so that kids couldn't understand them. I started my civilwarkids.com site to raise money to help save Civil War battlefields and help kids learn about the Civil War. I've also learned that many adults don't really know much about our Civil War either. I think it is the most important event in our history as it was brother-against-brother and I have learned that many of our challenges and issues today can still be followed back to the Civil War and reconstruction after that.

I love walking the battlefields and learning about the battles and the men who fought there. But, I have also learned about the Navy — especially the "brown water Navy." The brown water navy was the nickname for the navy that operated on the rivers, particularly in the West. Rivers like the Mississippi River, the Tennessee River, Ohio River and Red River were very important during the war, as they were the main way that people traveled in those areas. Railroads were also important for moving people and supplies. That's why most battles are around railroads or rivers — if you controlled the rivers (or railroads) you could control everything from moving troops to getting things to the markets where they could be sold, like farm products.

As a kid, there is something in the Civil War that everyone can get interested in. I was excited when Sarah Adler asked me to write something for the Civil War Navy Sesquicentennial blog. I wanted to share with you one of the funniest and strangest things I have learned about the Civil War navy.

During the war, they added wood to the outside of ships for protection. These boats with thick wood were known as wooden clad. They added iron for iron clad ships and at the Battle of Galveston the
Confederates put huge cotton bales on the side of the ship to protect from the artillery and guns — that is right, they had cotton clad ships. But, that is still not the funniest or strangest to me.

At one point during the war, when metal was in short supply, the Union or Federal Navy decided to use India rubber on the outside of the ships. That is right, rubber clad ships.

When you think about it, it is kind of a good idea. I mean, the cannon balls would bounce right off, and rubber would be easier to work with than hard wood or metal. There were a couple of things that they didn't think about. The first they learned when they tested the rubber clad. The ship was completed with the rubber on the outside and a Union ship fired a test shell at the rubber clad. As planned, the shell bounced off the rubber clad — but it bounced back and almost sunk the ship that fired it. The men who designed these ships did think about which way the deadly cannon balls would go when they bounced off the rubber clad. That led to great fear for any of the men on the ships around them. It could bounce off the rubber clad and land on the deck of a ship near it. Because they nailed the rubber to the ships they couldn't pull it off because that would leave holes in the ship. Because of the problems with shells bouncing off the rubber and the holes left if they tried to remove the rubber, they covered the rubber with iron. That led to the next problem. They did this to two ships the USS Choctaw and the USS Lafayette

The other thing they didn't know was that rubber would rot quickly in the heat and humidity of the South. The rubber under the iron rotted and started to fall off. That left space between the iron and the wood. After the rubber rotted away, when the ships turned a corner, the iron moved and banged against the wood of the ship. I bet that was a big clang and a big jolt for the men on the ship.

So, the next time you get in a Civil War trivia contest you can ask someone to, "name the fourth type of clad ships used during the Civil War - wooden clad, iron clad, cotton clad, and...? I bet very few people will know about the rubber clads.

I want to thank Gary D. Joiner, Ph.D., for helping me learn more about the rubber clads. He has written a great book called, "Mr. Lincoln's Brown Water Navy, The Mississippi Squadron" that has some information about the Choctaw and Lafayette, the two ships that were converted to rubber clads. You can find it on page 106 of his book and in another book by Jay Silverstone, called, "Warships of the Civil War Navies." Dr. Joiner spoke at our Austin Civil War Roundtable last year
and I learned a great deal about the brown water navy, the Battle of Galveston and how important controlling the rivers was during the war.

Gunboats or Ironclads: Virginians vs. the 'Cotton Kings'

Model from Freetimehobbies.com of a 'Maury Gunboat.' Confederates planned to build 100 of these for $2 million to defend their coast and inland waterways. 

The Confederate government in the months following the First Battle of Manassas through that fall and into the winter found itself warring with the Virginia state government and its powerful congressional delegation led by former President John Tyler over how best to defend its Atlantic Coast, the Chesapeake Bay and the tidal rivers so crucial to its economy.

  The “one battle” war had proved an illusion.

 As the months dragged on and credit became harder to secure, choices had to be made.  The armies in Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, along the Gulf Coast, and across the Mississippi had to be fed, clothed, armed, and cared for when disease struck or its soldiers were wounded in combat. They had the highest priority.

 For the Navy, the junior service in priority, the Virginians wanted gunboats to harass blockaders and hold off invaders in its coastal waters, and Confederate Navy Secretary Stephen Mallory wanted floating iron fortresses to defend ports along the 3,500-mile coast and Mississippi, vessels possibly capable of terrorizing Northern ports.

Either would be teamed with forts on land; heavy artillery, including confiscated naval  guns;   mines and other obstructions; snipers along the rivers; and civilian steamers now armed and sheathed. 

For a time, the Confederacy gambled that it could afford both.  When it became clear that it couldn’t.  Old scars from earlier political battles between Matthew Fontaine Maury and the Virginians, led by Tyler and Governor John Letcher,  on one side, and Mallory, President Jefferson Davis, and Confederate “blue water navalists” on the other would become fresh wounds that left the Confederacy’s naval efforts shattered and its treasury drained.

As we mark the150th anniversary of the Battle of Hampton Roads, the clash of the ironclads with its oft-told tales of how CSS Virginia came to be and how John Ericsson’s radically designed Monitor made its way into the Union fleet, it is time to shine light on the “gunboat war,” a bitter campaign fought solely inside the Confederate government at Richmond.

Davis -- West Point graduate, hero-volunteer from Mississippi in the Mexican War, and a former secretary of War – concentrated on fighting on land.  To him, a Confederate Navy was an afterthought. Privateers with letters of marque and reprisal were at the outer limits of his naval concepts. For the most part, he left naval matters in the hands of his former Senate colleague Mallory, a Floridian.

Now at war, Maury saw himself as a man singularly equipped to create an almost impenetrable defense of Southern ports, inlets and waterways.  As a member of the governor’s advisory council, a de facto war ministry, he layered Virginia’s defenses to his liking for months before the state’s army and navy were absorbed into the Confederate armed forces.

While Mallory thought  “small,” in Maury’s words, about coastal defense, the commander dreamed large – as he had  done in the turf wars to expand the National Observatory. After demonstrating the effectiveness of mines before First Manassas and being named head of Confederate coastal defenses, he plotted how to build a new class of gunboats.

To prepare the way, Maury, writing as "Ben Bow,” used the influential Richmond Enquirer for  guerrilla strikes against Davis and Mallory, dubbed the “Cotton Kings.” Starting in late September 1861, he blasted the  administration’s moves as “mere makeshifts” when it came to naval defense. He compared its two requests for naval appropriations to  creating “a navy without vessels  [to having] lamps without oil.”

As chairman of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee, Mallory survived a war through the press and in Congress with Maury; and he was not about to countenance another one with an officer directly under his control.  In less than a week, the secretary ordered Maury to Cuba to buy weapons. It clearly was an order to bring Maury, at the time one of the nation’s most prominent scientists, to heel.

The reaction among the Virginians and in the Confederate Congress was outrage.  With Tyler, whose political cachet remained powerful; the Virginia congressional delegation; and Charles M. Conrad, the chair of the House Naval Affairs Committee and a former United States secretary of War, setting the debate’s tone, the Confederate Congress declared the commander was too valuable where he was. The gunboat plan would live as long as Maury was in Richmond.  Mallory was working on that.

Not trusting Mallory at all, Maury turned to good listener Letcher and his allies in the Virginia Convention, sitting as the state legislature, with his "big gun and little ship” plan.  The ships became known as the "Maury Gunboats."

Maury did not want a ship "stout enough to keep the sea.”  Instead, he envisioned "steam launches each capable of carrying two rifled pivot guns and no more.  Their structure should be simple and plain and as economical as possible.  They should be literally nothing but floating gun carriages” with crews of forty men and no accommodations.

The commander wanted to build the gunboats quickly and turn them loose on the federal fleet in the Chesapeake Bay's shallow waters and North Carolina's tidal rivers and sounds. Shipwrights in the bay counties of Mathews and Gloucester would be the primary builders, and they could do the work, along with soldier-artisans about to go into winter quarters. Other yards in coastal North Carolina were also available. They already were engaged in building a “mosquito fleet” of converted tugboats for Maury’s longtime friend, Captain William P. Lynch.  

"Going out like a nest of hornets, they will especially, if the building and the fitting out be kept from the enemy, either sink, capture or drive away from the Chesapeake and its tributaries the whole fleet which the enemy now has or probably will in that time in these waters.” Then the "nest of hornets” could close off the maritime traffic through the Virginia capes, starve out Fortress Monroe, and  threaten Washington.

In late October, a Union fleet of more than twenty ships loaded with thousands of troops steamed to Port Royal, about halfway between Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia. With no gunboats to hinder them there and few coastal defenses of consequence, the Union Navy covered the landing and beachhead that “would serve all the future needs of the army and navy,” meaning no need to return to Hampton Roads to refit. The Union blockade was taking hold.  

Thomas Jefferson Page, a seasoned Confederate naval officer,  wrote: "Suppose a fleet of twenty of these boats in the harbor of Port Royal at the time of late attack from the enemy, can any one fail to perceive that the result would have been vastly different.”

In the wake of the latest debacle on the Carolina coast, Maury lobbied the Virginia Convention even more strenuously for his gunboats.  The Virginians' renewed insistence, especially that of Tyler, and the tightening blockade moved the Confederate Congress to approve $2 million to build one-hundred  vessels.  On Christmas Eve, Davis signed the bill putting Maury in charge of building the fleet that "shall present little more than a feather edge” to naval invaders.

Like the hundreds of thousands of dollars set aside to rebuild Merrimack and other ironclads in the South, this was a high stakes roll of the dice with no guarantee of success.

When members of the Virginia Convention approached Mallory about carrying out Maury’s plan, the secretary said even as they spoke he had agents scouring the countryside for engines.  For now, the Virginians were satisfied.  Tyler  happily reported that Maury had “woven a proud chaplet around her brow by having won a name all over the world which reflects new luster on the name of Virginia” by advocating the state’s strong defense.  

After the Christmas 1861 holiday, Maury, with his son John, set about getting the gunboats on the ways.  But supplies, especially boilers and the heavy oak for the hulls, proved difficult to come by.  Over fears of new attacks in Virginia, Maury’s idea to free soldiers with carpentry skills from Army duties in the winter was rejected. 

Despite these setbacks, construction started on the Mattaponi and Pamunkey rivers, near West Point, and also along the Rappahannock and at the Norfolk naval yard. Talbott & Brothers, a large Richmond foundry, turned over its entire business to the Confederate Navy in February 1862 and announced the delivery of five double engines for the gunboats.  The next month as the Battle of Hampton Roads loomed, Maury advertised for “negro laborers to cut timber for the vessels.” 

Ideas that flowed so easily from Maury's mind to his pen ¾ like constructing one-hundred  gunboats, or building charts for each ocean, or cataloging every star or determining the best crossing point on the Central American coast  ¾ again were proving difficult to execute, even when the ideas had Mallory's wholehearted support.  The “nest of hornets” project did not. It also was soon to lose its congressional support.

But that is a tale for another day – after the sesquicentennial observance of the Battle of Hampton Roads and the beginning of the Peninsula campaign. 

                 

Drawings of a Mad Man/Genius-John Ericsson's Monitor Concept

Ericsson first drew a traverse sketch of his idea and then drew over it with a long view. As one can see Ericsson "showed his work" by working out the math on top of the drawings.

While these look like sketches drawn by a mad man at 3 in the morning who had not been to bed in over 72 hours, these are actually inventor/designer/engineer John Ericsson's 1854 concept of a "monitor" type warship. After much political stalling, the Ironclad Board would formally endorse his design in 1861. The idea behind Monitor, however, had been shuffling around in Ericsson's head long before the outbreak of war.

A rough idea of his monitor's submerged propeller system.

According to a 1911 biography The Life Of John Ericsson, the Swedish-born engineer had the idea from early on  in his professional career.  Monitor, according to Ericsson, was not just a class warship, but rather a fundamental shift in the way architects should look at warship design.  He wrote "The monitor of 1854 was the visible part of my system, and its grand features were excluded from its published drawings and description...An impregnable and partially submerged instrument for destroying ships of war has been one of the hobbies of my life. I had the plan matured long before I left England. As for protecting war engines for naval purposes with iron, the idea is as old as my recollection."

Ericsson's "monitor system" not only was about designing ships with armored turrets, but also building them with a submerged screw propeller that was safe from hostile fire. In Ericsson's mind, the water surrounding a ship was just as important as any metallic armor protecting the exposed area.

The U.S. Navy's Ironclad Board-Prophecies

Ironclad board members-Commodore Joseph Smith (chair), Commodore Hiram Paulding,
 Captain Charles Davis

Along with making recommendations to Secretary Welles on which ironclad designs the Navy should purchase, the three men of the Navy's Ironclad Board provided some unsolicited opinions on the short term future of naval warfare.  Given the age of each of men, one would think each of them would be out of touch with modern warfare.  However, their younger counterparts (of both navies) would have been wise to take these men's advice in the coming years.

Smoothbore or Rifled Guns
-"As yet we knowing superior to the large and heavy spherical shot in its destructive effects on vessels, whether plated or not.  Rifled guns have greater range, but the conical shot do not produce the crushing effect of spherical shot."

Armor Schemes
-"It is possible a backing of some elastic substance (soft wood, perhaps in the best) might relieve the frame of the ship somewhat from the terrible shock of a heavy projective, though the plate should not be fractured."

Brown Water Navy
-"Our immediate demands seem to require, first, so far as practicable, vessels invulnerable to shot, of light draught of water to penetrate our shoals, rives, and bayous. We therefore favor the construction of this class vessels before going into a more perfect system of large iron-clad sea-going vessels of war."

Ironclads vs. Forts
-"No ship or floating battery, however heavily she may be plated, can cope successfully with a properly constructed fortification of masonry.  The one is fixed and immovable and though constructed of material which be shattered by shot, can be covered if need be, by the same or much heavier armor than floating vessels can bear.  The other is subject to disturbances by winds and waves, and to the powerful effects of tides and currents.  Armored ships or other batteries may be employed advantageously to pass fortifications on land for ulterior objects of attack."

Foreign Warship Purchases
-"We are of the opinion that every people or nation who can maintain a navy should be capable of constructing it themselves."

Don't Forget About Wooden Ships
-"Wooden ships may be said to be but coffins for their crews when brought in conflict with iron-clad vessels; but the speed of the former, we take for granted, being greater than that of the latter, they can readily choose their position and keep out of harm's way."

Confederate Ironclads on the Mississippi

Just as their Northern counterparts, Confederate naval authorities looked first to the sea. Fortifying essential ports, and converting merchantmen were the primary problems for Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen R. Mallory. But by June 1861, Tennessee had passed a resolution calling on Richmond to fund a large-scale building program in the west, and Kentuckians could look across the Ohio River and see the Union’s Timberclads steaming unmolested, with more warships being constructed. The states of the upper south already knew what the U.S. Army and Navy had in store for the Mississippi.

In August 1861, Memphis shipbuilder John T. Shirley offered Secretary Mallory an opportunity to construct the Confederacy’s first ironclads on western waters. Already aware of demand for a naval presence, Mallory consulted with officers and naval architects in order to understand his options and resolved to fully back an ironclad building program. On 23 August, Confederate Tennessee Congressman David M. Currin submitted legislation to allocate funds for the creation of an inland navy, including $160,000 for the construction of two ironclads. The bill appropriated more funds for the naval defense of New Orleans, and Mallory would use these additional allocations to finance the construction of the additional ironclads Mississippi and Louisiana. On 24 August, the bill was passed and Jefferson Davis signed the act into law. The Confederate naval buildup in the west would now unfold.