The Siege of Suffolk

On April 1, 1863, Acting Rear Admiral Samuel P. Lee sent his standard monthly status report on the North Atlantic Blockade Squadron to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles.  He provided a list of ships that included two ironclads, one steam sloop, and a few dozen wooden gunboats and armed ferryboats.  He reported on a few blockade runners, some captured and others that slipped through Union lines.  He also lamented the fact that oyster season would soon be over. With the Navy's main focus on Charleston, things were generally quiet in Hampton Roads and the North Carolina sounds.  That all changed on April 11.

Lee received an urgent note from Major General Erasums Keyes requesting the Navy conduct reconnaissance missions on the James and York Rivers to confirm rumors of a large body of Confederate troops heading south towards Suffolk.  Lee balked at the suggestion, as he believed his forces were stretched too thin.  Additionally, the ironclad CSS Richmond positioned herself seven miles below Richmond at Drewry's Bluff.

Fortunately for the U.S. Army, a lieutenant-colonel took the initiative and bypassed the chain of command to personally implore the admiral to help.  He informed him that he already had three ships at the mouth of the Nansemond River (a river that leads directly to Suffolk).  Lee agreed to cooperate.  He ordered USS  Mount Washington, Stepping Stones, and Cohasset out to prevent Confederate ground forces from crossing the Nanesmond.  Reinforcements were ordered with the armed ferryboat USS Commodore Barney.  Famed Lieutenant William Cushing even made it to the scene.

Rosewell Lamson

Seeing Navy gunboats obstruct its attempt to encircle Suffolk, Confederate artillery batteries used an old fort at Hill's Point and set up positions overlooking the river.  Mount Washington (under the command of the very capable Lieutenant Roswell Lamson) and the rest of the squadron came in range while steaming south towards Suffolk.  During the ensuing fight, Mount Washington ran aground and was hit several times, as was Commodore Barney. 

Hearing about the exchange of gunfire, Lee ordered his ships to retreat back to Hampton Roads.  He believed it was too dangerous to stay.  At the moment Lee wrote the order, Lamson and Cushing decided on their own to attack, avoiding any notion of withdrawal.  They organized an assault group with sailors under their command with Union soldiers from the 38th Indiana and 89th New York.  The joint force charged Hill's Point under the cover of fire from the gunboats.

Lee and his Army counterparts continued to argue about the merits of leaving wooden gunboats in such a vulnerable position.  During this exchange of views, Lee's aide, Captain Peirce Crosby,  informed his admiral that Lamson's assault resulted in capturing "five pieces of artillery and 161 rebel prisoners from the 44th Alabama."  The upper Nansemond was now open.

Porter's Mortar Fleet in Hampton Roads

Many historians and enthusiasts agree that the U.S. Navy's James River Flotilla was ill-equipped to attack the Confederate garrison at Fort Darling along Drewry's Bluff in May 1862.  Besides the lack of Union Army units nearby, the Flotilla's ships were designed for ship to ship action.  They were not designed to tackle a fort sitting far above the river.  Why didn't the Navy use mortar boats on the James River as in the Mississippi?  Even if they were less than effective at engagements like Island No. 10, their involvement might have inflicted some damage on the approach to Richmond.  Although this was intended to occur, the ships did not arrive in time. 

On July 9, 1862, Secretary Welles, ordered Porter and most of the mortar fleet to transfer from the Mississippi River to the James.  The mortar ships were used against Vicksburg for much of June in preparation for an assault on the fortress city.  However, Welles received reports that Union ground forces under General Halleck were not ready to attack and the water level in the Mississippi was beginning to drop.  Seeing that the mortar ships could be better used in the East and with the endorsement of Assisstant Secretary Fox, Welles ordered the transfer.

The move took four weeks.  The first ships began to filter into Hampton Roads in the beginning of August.  En route to Hampton Roads, Porter's flagship USS Octorara captured the blockade runner Tubal Cain off the east coast of Key West.  That was the only postive development of the transfer.

Leaving aside the fact that the fleet arrived a full month after the Army of the Potomac ended the Peninsula Campaign, the mortar fleet and its sailors were in no shape for action.   Flag officer Goldsborough reported that many of the sailors were suffering from what we now call relapsing fever (older term: "bilious remittent"/ slang term: "camp fever"), which had spread throughout ships serving on the Mississippi.  Welles responded to this issue suggesting the Navy enlist African American men camped around Fort Monore to fill in the ranks, as there were not enough sailors in Northern ports to provide replacements. 

Upon looking at the ships themselves, Goldsborough questioned their seaworthiness to Welles. "Are these vessel to be sent up the James River in their present condition?" he asked.  Commodore Charles Wilkes further questioned Welles, implying that the Secretary was seriously misinformed about the readiness of the ships.  He stated that it would be several months before the ships could see offensive action again, as many of the mounts holding the mortars were in serious disrepair.   Furthermore, Army commanders in Hampton Roads refused to release any African Americans to the Navy. 

Thus, the idea of using mortar ships to capture Richmond was killed.  Furthermore, with Farragut and Porter's pull back from Vicksburg, the siege of the city was effectively lifted.

Losing Teaser, But Little Union Gain

Rebels used Teaser to lay mines in defense of Richmond. (Library of Congress image)

On July 4, 1862, during the lull in the fighting around Richmond, Confederate Navy Lieutenant Hunter Davidson undertook another dangerous mission in his two-gun vessel Teaser.  He carried additional telegraph wire for the mines, presumably to extend the mine fields further down the James River, and a balloon  for aerial reconnaissance of City Point and Harrison’s Landing. He failed.

Steamer Marantanza spotted  Teaser, a screw tug built in Philadelphia, and fired a round that struck the boiler, crippling it. The crew abandoned the vessel for the safety of  the Charles City County shore.  While the wire and balloon proved interesting novelties, Union Army officers were more interested Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury's diagrams for the mines' placement and also his memoranda on building them.  In the end, the information did Major General George B. McClellan and the Union Navy little good because by then the river was too tightly sealed.

Keeping the James River in Rebel Hands

Union Navy fails to fight past  Drewry's Bluff below Richmond in May 1862. 

Nowhere did Matthew Fontaine Maury best deliver his service in coastal defense to the Confederacy than at Richmond during the Peninsula campaign.  His torpedoes [mines] and coastal batteries ultimately forced the Union to keep to the land as its soldiers drew closer and closer to the capital.  He had made the river a death trap for the Union Navy. The few poor roads, thick woods, and swamps to the east proved natural chokepoints and lines of defense. The fortuitous finding of miles of insulated telegraph cable along Willoughby Spit in Hampton Roads in February 1862 allowed Maury, not President Jefferson Davis or Navy Secretary Stephen  Mallory, to make the James River near the capital impenetrable by the summer of 1862, indeed for the remainder of the war.  While the press clamored for stout defenses, Maury quietly provided them.

            About six miles downstream of Rocketts Wharf, the Confederate Navy’s shipyard, Maury and his assistants, notably Hunter Davidson, like Robert Minor and John Mercer Brooke, a member of the Naval Academy’s first graduating class with service at the observatory, set their mines in the narrowest and shallowest part of the river.  They placed the mines in mid-channel at between three and a half and seven and a half fathoms of water.

            The place for the "ranges” selected was under the cover of the guns on Drewry's Bluff on the south bank and Chaffin's farm on the north.  "They were ignited by a bit of fine, platinum wire, heated by means of a galvanic current from a galvanic battery on shore.  The conducting wire having been cut the two terminals were then connected with the platinum wire making a span between the terminals of say one-half inch.  They were then secured firmly in a small bag of rifle powder to serve as a bursting charge,” Maury later reported.

            By June 1862, Maury and Davidson, who had served aboard CSS Virginia, had fifteen casks in the river, arranged in rows and spaced about thirty feet apart.  They transformed Samuel Colt’s minefield concept from an art to a science. The Confederates in Richmond were making “submarine warfare an extremely important and feared tool of war.”  Again, Maury relied on stealth to hold off  nosy Union gunboat commanders. If the Navy or Virginia Governor John Letcher had more powder, Maury and Davidson would have deployed more mines.

            The Union Navy on the James River and in Hampton Roads wanted Maury’s plans for river defense.  With them, they would know the “ranges” of torpedoes, sunken vessels, and other obstructions, and the large gun emplacements.  They reasoned snipers from the shore would be a manageable risk. This summer, they were living in the shadow of Captain David Glasgow Farragut’s daring rush up the Mississippi River with his ocean-going frigates and sloops that led to the fall of the South’s largest city and busiest port, New Orleans.

            Even after the Battle of the Ironclads in Hampton Roads, Union Navy officers in the East, unlike their Army counterparts, were used to having their way. Cape Hatteras, Port Royal, Roanoke Island, and New Bern kept hopes for a short, victorious war.  But now, they were constantly being stymied.  The ironclads were not enough to force the Union Navy’s way to attack the city and the Army of Potomac for now was operating too far  north of the river for their guns to offer support.

Stephen Mallory's Dream Operation

The Confederacy's first and only secretary of the navy Stephen Mallory had many positive leadership qualities. Among them was confidence. Throughout the war, he constantly pushed and encouraged his officers and his tiny fleet to make war on the Union, despite the overwhelming odds facing them.  Sometimes, however, Mallory's confidence was simple daydreaming and reality checked his plans.

Just a few weeks into the job as head of the Confederacy's naval forces, Mallory ordered Commander John Tucker to take the steamer CSS Patrick Henry from Richmond and make war on the Union. The Virginia State government seized the 1,300-ton steamer and armed with ten captured at the Gosport Navy Yard. With the veteran Tucker in command, Mallory believed that the ship was ready for war.

In a July 13, 1861 letter, he instructed Tucker to "make an active cruise at sea against the enemy."  Specifically, Mallory stated that Tucker should steam down the James River, run past the squadron in Hampton Roads, out into the Atlantic, engage and capture a ship of similar size to Patrick Henry (specifically mentioned the USRS Harriet Lane), and bring it back to a friendly port with all of its stores in tact.  Invoking the spirit of the old U.S. Navy sailing frigates, he believed Patrick Henry could outgun any ship of similar size and outrun any ship of large size.

While Mallory did give Tucker an escape clause in the order ("Should you find it impracticable to leave the river..."), he strongly hinted that he wanted the operation carried out. Cooler and wiser heads must have prevailed as the operation never went forward.  At the time of the letter, the U.S. Navy's Atlantic Blockading Squadron had anywhere between four to seven warships in Hampton Roads.