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. 

                 

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.

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. 

Stephen Mallory - Secretary, Confederate States Navy

On March 4, 1861, Stephen R. Mallory was appointed Secretary of the Navy of the Confederate States of America. To me, he is one of the more interesting persons of the Civil War navies, Union or Confederate. Born circa 1813 in Trinidad, he was raised mostly in Key West, Florida. He began his professional career in the early 1800’s practicing maritime law in the Florida Keys (at the time a hot bed of “wrecking” – the recovery of cargo from ships wrecked on the reefs of the Keys). Eventually he went into politics, representing Florida in the U.S. Senate. There, he was appointed to the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs, which he eventually chaired. During his tenure, he was an advocate for the reinstatement of flogging as a means of discipline of sailors. He failed to prevail on this issue, but he was successful in passing legislation overhauling the means of promotion and retention of officers in the Navy, establishing a Board of Review, which evaluated naval officers based on accomplishments and abandoned the ancient system of advancement based on seniority alone. The other major issue Mallory promoted in his senate position was for the U.S. Navy to adopt emerging technologies, such as construction of ironclad warships.

When Florida seceded, Mallory joined the fledgling Confederacy. President Jefferson Davis appointed him Secretary of the C.S. Navy in March 1861. Mallory was well aware that the south could not match the north in the ability to build and modify ships, and that he would never be able to go “ship-to-ship” against the U.S. Navy; so he adopted a naval strategy based on three things (not in order of priority):

(1) Deploy sea-going commerce raiders to disrupt Union merchant shipping and divert Union warships from the blockade to chase the raiders.
(2) Run the Union blockade using a combination of private shipping and specially-constructed blockade-running ships operated by the C.S. Navy.
(3) Adopt and deploy the broad range of emerging naval technologies (ironclads, submersibles, and torpedoes) to attempt to keep southern harbors open and maintain the flow of supplies through the blockade.

One could say that he both succeeded and failed in all three. Originally, the Confederate States of America tried to implement commerce raiding by the old device of issuing “Letters of Marque” to allow private parties to act as raiders on behalf of the Confederate government. Due to international treaty, the Confederate Navy eventually decided to assume the responsibility for purchasing and constructing sea-going ships to prey on Union commerce shipping. These would be regular, commissioned war ships. While some of these had great success (notably the CSS Alabama and Shenandoah), they failed to even partially disable Union maritime commerce, although they did contribute to the eventual demise of the U.S. merchant marine industry. They were unsuccessful at diverting Union Navy ships off the blockade to try to hunt them down and capture them.

Blockade running was also initially entrusted to private parties, but the private runners ultimately failed to deliver the war material needed by the Confederacy to prosecute the war. The demand for luxury goods (and the willingness of the Confederate aristocracy to pay whatever price was commanded) made it more lucrative for private runners to carry cargo to meet this demand, despite government requirements that they carry a certain percentage of military cargo. Eventually, the Confederate Navy chose to construct and crew its own blockade runners in order to supply arms and equipment to the armies of the Confederacy (e.g. see CWS Blog Post by Gordon Calhoun on 24 July 2010).

Mallory’s willingness to use new technology was perhaps his greatest contribution to the war effort, but again, he was unable to capitalize on this. He embraced the use of ironclad ships as a means of going up against the overwhelming firepower of the big frigates and sloops of the Union Navy, but he did not exercise the necessary degree of authority in prioritizing the construction of the C.S. Navy ironclads. The various private groups contracted to build the ironclads had to compete with one another in the procurement of critically needed iron plates, machinery, skilled personnel, and the other limited resources that the Confederacy had to constantly deal with. This resulted in the construction of mostly ineffective ironclad vessels that failed to live up to their potential. If Mallory had used his authority (and strategic vision) to prioritize which ships needed to be finished first, and divert all resources to those, the confederate ironclads may have been more effective. The use of submersible vessels (the “Davids” and the CSS Hunley) did not achieve widespread success, and the use of torpedoes, while extremely effective in the latter stages of the war (in terms of both real results and their psychological impact) were deployed too late to accomplish anything substantive.

Following the conclusion of the war, Mallory was arrested by the U.S. government and imprisoned for “treason.” No trial of any kind was conducted and in March 1866, President Andrew Johnson granted Mallory a parole, which released him from jail. Eventually, he was allowed to return to Florida, where he settled in Pensacola. Per the terms of his parole, he was barred from holding public office, but he made a decent living by resuming his law practice. His health gradually began to fail and he died in November 1873. He is buried in St. Michael’s Cemetery in Pensacola, Florida.

 Photo courtesy of the Florida Dept. of State on-line photo archive.