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.

Preparing for Battle in Northeast North Carolina



The combined fleet of the "Burnside Expedition," as it left Hampton Roads for Cape Hatteras

With Cape Hatteras secured Union ground forces in mid 1861, both sides recognized that one of the next targets would be the Albemarle Sound.  Confederate forces were under the command Norfolk-native Commodore William F. Lynch (most famous for leading a U.S. Navy expedition to the Holy Land in 1840s to prove the existence of the Biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah) and the 33rd Governor of Virginia, Brigadier General Henry A. Wise. The two men did not get along very well, with Confederate Army officers not taking the threat of a Union attack seriously and not shipping more heavy guns to Roanoke Island. Most of the 179 guns guarding Norfolk and Portsmouth were geared towards an attack from Hampton Roads, not from the south.

On the Union side, Brigadier General Ambrose Burnside had begun assembling a combined task force in Annapolis and Hampton Roads.  With the blessing of General George McClellan, Burnside assembled a 12,000-man division made up of men mostly from coastal towns.  He then integrated with the division, a squadron of lightly armed steam gunboats.  The U.S. Navy under the control Flag-officer Louis Goldsborough and Dublin, Ireland-native Commander Stephen Rowan assembled their own force of more heavily armed, light draft gunboats.  By the beginning of 1862, sixty gunboats and transports had assembled in Hampton Roads.

Like the Port Royal expedition, Confederate intelligence saw the task force forming in Hampton Roads.   Unlike the Port Royal expedition, they had know idea where it was going.  Speculation ran from targets in North Carolina, South Carolina, or even an assault down the Elizabeth River and Norfolk.  This was due to better secrecy on the Union side as individual ship commanders did not receive their orders until the day they left Hampton Roads.   In early January 1862, the fleet deployed.  Their target: Roanoke Island.

Union Navy Fends Off Mine Attacks in Hampton Roads.

Early in the Civil War, it wasn’t the electrically-triggered torpedoes set up in long and deadly water ranges that later so troubled Union Navy officers in the upper James River, on the Cape Fear River in North Carolina, or just outside the port cities of Charleston and Mobile. Their concerns in Hampton Roads centered on floating torpedoes or mines in wooden casks and the use of the tides and currents to carry them into their anchorages. For almost a year, mines in Hampton Roads were never far from Union Navy leaders minds – first in how to defend against them and later how to employ them to destroy the greatest menace they would face in the war.

Matthew F. Maury

The Union Navy had escaped disaster in July before the Battle of Bull Run when Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury and his raiding party had floated a number of mines toward the anchored fleet off Fortress Monroe in Hampton Roads. Maury's idea was to let the tide and current carry the powder-laden oak casks toward the ships. The pairs of casks were connected by a span of rope about 600 feet in length, and corks kept the span afloat. The explosives, contained in the barrels, were submerged, and the triggers were in the barrelheads.

The idea behind the plan was this: As the span became entangled in the ship's hawse and the barrels were pulled alongside by the tidal wash, the tightening line would activate the triggers, setting off a fuse igniting the powder that would explode below the vessels' waterlines.

When he thought he was in correct position, Maury quietly ordered the first mines released. Then the next set. Finally, all were safely off. The twenty-five Confederates tensed, waiting to hear the explosions as they hurriedly rowed back toward Sewell's Point stillunchallenged by any Union patrol vessels.

As they drew closer and closer to safety, the Confederates heard only their muffled oars. There were no shattering blasts, secondary explosions, and alarm bells and trumpet calls, only the sounds of a summer Tidewater night.

All knew the raid had failed. Ashore, Maury scrutinized each detail to pinpoint what had gone wrong. "I attributed it to the fact that such a fuse would not burn under a pressure of 20 feet of water” and vowed to try again. When Union forces found the washed ashore mines later, they had another explanation: wet powder.

In late October, another Maury-designed raid again used floating mines to attack frigate Congress off Newport News in Hampton Roads, but it too had gone awry. Nonetheless, Captain Louis Goldsborough, the senior Union officer in the area, warned the skipper of Congress, Commander William Smith, a week after the latest attack to “be on the alert for submarine infernal machines” that could be rowed close to the ship and set adrift to become ensnared in its propeller and set off the explosives in their casks.

Smith wrote back in early November that he was protecting Congress as best he could with a frame in the shape of the letter A floating nearby, placing booms alongside it at night, and keeping grapnels at the ready in case a floating mine came near. Yet with all this attention paid to mines, Smith admitted that the most dangerous challenge to his ship, the raised Merrimack being outfitted with railroad iron and new powerful guns a few miles away in Portsmouth, was receiving scant attention.

“I have not yet devised any plan to defend against Merrimack unless it be with hard knocks.” - Commander William Smith