The Navy Strikes at Belmont

With Leonidas Polk's Confederate army straddling the Mississippi in the autumn of 1861, local Union commander Brig. General U.S. Grant prepared to neutralize half the threat.

Polk had placed a significant portion of his force on the western Missouri bank near Belmont, where several regiments of infantry made camp. On the eastern side of the river towered the bluffs of Columbus, Kentucky. Atop those bluffs stood several heavy artillery emplacements, and through their elevation and the protection of more Confederate infantry in on the Kentucky shore, these guns controlled navigation on the Mississippi River. The range of the rebel artillery was even great enough to reach across to Missouri and well upriver. Grant wouldn't attack the Confederate positions at Columbus, instead he planned to assault and capture the rebel force isolated on the western shore.

Grant's 3,000-strong army was ferried by five transports south from Cairo, and escorted by the timberclads Lexington and Tyler. Grant disembarked upriver (northwest) from Belmont on November 7th, and led his men eastward and overland for a surprise attack. After sharp fighting that morning, Union troops occupied the Confederate encampment while routed enemy troops fled to the river bottoms.

At the same time Grant fought on land, Commander Henry A. Walke took the Lexington and Tyler downriver to duel the Confederate shore batteries. The first two encounters were brief, and though both sides exchanged heavy fire, no damage was done. The third duel, however, resulted in one Union sailor killed and two wounded. The Tyler even sustained damage from at least two hits. Walke realized his pair of steamers could do little to silence the bluff batteries, and though the timberclads diverted Confederate attention, the Union naval commander withdrew upriver to defend the idle troop transports.


But Union victory on land was not complete. Grant's raw troops became disorderly after their victory, and General Polk took advantage of the confusion to transfer fresh brigades from Columbus to Missouri. The Confederates attacked Grant's confused force, and the U.S. contingent made a fighting retreat to their original landing area. As Grant's men converged on the waiting transports, Polk's infantry swarmed closely behind and threatened to capture the Union army before they could depart.

Commander Walke, seeing Grant's perilous situation, maneuvered the Tyler and Lexington into firing positions and raked the closely grouped Confederates with grape, canister, and shell. The effect of the naval bombardment was great enough to halt Confederate momentum. The timberclads bought just enough time to ensure Grant's escape. Both armies suffered 600-700 casualties. Who won the Battle of Belmont? It's hard to tell, but both sides claimed victory.


Though this wasn't the first naval action in the West (the timberclads had traded a few shots with the C.S.S. Jackson in September) it was the first major engagement for the riverine fleet. More important action would quickly follow.


Sources

• The Timberclads in the Civil War: The Lexington, Conestoga and Tyler on the Western Water, by Myron J. Smith, Jr.
  
• The Battle of Belmont: Grant Strikes South by Nathaniel Cheairs Hughes, Jr.
  

A Most Unlikely Naval Base: Mound City, Illinois

Before the Civil War, Mound City, IL was an unremarkable port town on the Ohio River. It certainly benefited from river traffic, but never became a major hub of commerce. Speculators had even built several warehouses in anticipation of the town's growth, only to remain empty at the war's outset. Mound City eventually grew, but never in the way investors imagined.

James Eads ushered Mound City into the spotlight when he began building new warships there in the summer of 1861. New building contracts kept rolling in from the Army, and quickly Mound City was transformed into one of the west's most important military centers.

The Marine Ways allowed steamboats to be hauled entirely out of the Ohio River so that carpenters could repair and improve them for wartime duty. In late 1861, a new military hospital (pictured behind the U.S.S. Daisy) was constructed and staffed by army surgeons, volunteers, and South Bend, Indiana's Nursing Sisters of the Holy Cross. With the large hospital came the creation of the Mound City National Cemetery.


1862 saw a new foundry built, and the town was connected to the Illinois Central Railroad. Mound City was now a center for troop transportation as soldiers disembarked by train only to re-embark on steamers headed for the Deep South.


By 1863, the Navy stored all ordnance for the Mississippi Squadron here and a detachment of Marines was entrusted with its protection. Through 1864, the Navy transformed Mound City into its headquarters for all western operations, a distinction the town kept until the close of the war. From 1863-65, if a western warship needed repairing or construction, Mound City was the place to do it.

"Drive On": The Genius of James Buchanan Eads

Building a naval fleet is not the work of a military organization alone. In the Civil War as now, the Navy depended upon businesses and individuals of action to help conceive and produce the nation's ships of war. John Ericsson traditionally receives effusive praise and a surfeit of attention for his role in designing the Monitor and a host of other ingenious creations. But Ericsson has a forgotten counterpart in the American west: James B. Eads. Without Eads's shipbuilding and design collaboration, the western ironclad flotilla may never have come into being, or its birth might have been a great deal more painful.
James Eads started, as many great figures of American history, under inauspicious circumstances. Raised in relative poverty, as a boy, Eads supported himself by working in a variety of menial capacities on commercial riverboats. His job selling apples to hungry passengers took him to the west's great ports and waterways and gave him an expert knowledge of western rivers and their unique navigational challenges.
Eads applied his experiences while still a young man, designing a primitive diving bell that allowed him to descend upon submerged wrecks and salvage their valuable cargoes. Eads achieved such great success that he went on to design and construct several purpose-built boats, which he called submarines. These unique river craft were capable of raising entire wrecks, and Eads's salvage operations had little competition. By the 1850's, Eads had earned a fortune, and he entered retirement at the age of 37.
The arrival of the Civil War brought the prominent St. Louisan out of his permanent retreat. Working with U.S. Attorney General (and Missourian) Edward Bates, Eads secured an audience with cabinet leaders in Washington. Nothing definitive resulted from this tentative spring meeting, but policy makers heard his proposals for the fortification of the upper Mississippi. Naval Constructor Pook also had the opportunity to evaluate Eads's design of an armed and front-armored riverboat. Pook saw promise in the energetic riverman's ideas. Secretary of War Simon Cameron thought the notion of a Mississippi ironclad absurd, and he axed any early construction efforts.
Undeterred, Eads followed his own motto of "Drive On" and presented new proposals to the government. Eads believed his Submarine no. 7 could be refitted and converted into a formidable warship. The Army's Navy advisors needed only approve the proposal, and the improved shallow-draft ship could be delivered within months. But Commander Rodgers saw no merit in converting no. 7. Military authorities would later reconsider the offer.
In August 1861, the Army and Navy finally came to their senses. A few timberclads and a swarm of lightly-armed riverboats would be insufficient force to pacify the Mississippi. The war in the west demanded an ironclad gunboat fleet. In early August Eads won the bid to construct seven ironclads, all to be delivered within three months. The contract secured, and his expertise finally acknowledged, Eads rapidly plunged into work and set his shipyards to the task. The ironclads would be built in Mound City, Illinois, on the Ohio River, and at the burgeoning Mississippi river port at Carondelet, Missouri, south of St. Louis. Once completed these "Pook Turtles" or "City Class" ironclads would form the core of the Union's western naval might. Eads would continue to design and build ironclads in the west, launching the Osage and Neosho in 1862, and several more vessels later in the conflict. Eads's shipbuilding centers became some of the chief hubs of naval activity in the west, and would remain commercial centers long after the war concluded.
Eads may have been the only man capable of properly undertaking such a huge building project in far-flung territory the Union military often regarded as a side show to the big show. Certainly, the Union benefited greatly from his unceasing energy and forward-thinking action. Had the South had its own James Eads, the war for the west might have gone a great deal differently.

In upcoming posts, we'll explore the west's naval bases, including Carondelet and Mound City, where thousands of laborers built the City Class ironclads that helped win the war.

Introducing the Timberclads

To confirm the veracity of the old idiom that "necessity is the mother of invention," one need look no further than the Union's summer 1861 naval buildup in the West.

There was certainly no shortage of owners willing to sell their steamboats to the Army for a handsome price. In a stroke of luck for the United States, most of the shipping on the Mississippi and its tributaries was under Northern ownership. And after the introduction of non-intercourse laws, many vessels were left idle in port, barred from trading with the new Confederate enemy.

So with a glut of available shipping and unemployed laborers, Navy Commander John Rodgers enjoyed a wide selection of some of the choicest vessels in the West. From May 1861 onward, Rodgers, as an agent of the Army, purchased a large number of formerly civilian steamboats. Most of these acquisitions would go on to serve as troop and supply transports operated by the Army Quartermaster Department. A smaller number would be converted to fight.

While Rodgers, Eads, and Pook hammered out the designs for a new class of purpose-built ironclads, on 7 June Rodgers bought three commercial steamboats at Cincinnati, Ohio. These vessels were the A.O. Tyler, Lexington, and Conestoga, approved in consultation with constructor Samuel Pook and General McClellan. With major structural improvements, initial price estimates placed each vessel at $34,000.



Refitting these civilian craft for combat service required a prodigious amount of labor and capital, and Rodgers wasn't confident the makeshift fleet could get the job done. In early June, the captain wrote to Secretary Welles of the difficulties he faced:

All the river boats are so different from war vessels in all their appliances that considerable alterations are necessary to fit them for use. They needed a good deal of strengthening, and because the crew would be liable to be picked off while passing along the banks of the river in places where no effectual return could be made to the fire of an individual, I decided upon putting bulwarks of oak plank 5 inches thick, which I found by experiment a sufficient guard against small arms. The boiler and engines cannot be defended against cannon shot. We must take our chances.

The trio of steamboats needed new, strengthened internal supports to manage the extra weight of cannon, equipment, and expanded crew. To clear space for the men at quarters, their engines and boilers were dropped into the unprotected hold. High wooden walls were added to provide security for the crew. Unlike future fighting vessels on the Mississippi, The Tyler, Lexington, and Conestoga would not be encased in iron. The thick, oaken bulwark Rodgers described to Welles would be their only real protection in an engagement. They would be clad in timber. In a final iconic touch, Pook gave each timberclad two extra-tall smokestacks (or "chimneys") which helped visually distinguish this unique class of fighting ship.


Although their armament was minor compared to the deep water ships of the US Navy, the Timberclads still packed a punch. In its 1861 state, the Tyler carried six 8-inch guns and an additional 32-pounder cannon. Her sister ships were roughly as powerful. While the Timberclads were not suitable to go tête-à-tête with a Confederate ironclad, they would provide valuable security for troop and supply movements. And, as at the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862, these hardy boats could bombard enemy troops and help turn the tide of a land engagement.


Low water in the Ohio River prevented the Timberclads from arriving at Cairo until August 12. Within weeks, however, these first Western Gunboat Flotilla vessels would begin interdicting illicit trade with the South, and soon encountered real challenges.

For more information on the Timberclads, see Craig Swain's Civil War Navy Sesquicentennial piece on the Tyler. The authoritative work on this class is Myron J. Smith's The Timberclads in the Civil War: The Lexington, Conestoga, and Tyler on the Western Waters.

Arming Western Waters

In the spring of 1861, Winfield Scott's plan to bisect the Confederacy was but a dream. The U.S. Navy was solely a saltwater institution, and understandably so. In America's previous wars, inland waterways were of little value to overall military strategy, and whatever action took place in coastal waterways was typically handled by the available vessels of shallow draft, content to sail a short distance inland. But the Civil War was an entirely new affair and the United States needed to master the Father of Waters and its tributaries. Success in the Western Theater depended upon seizing control of the Mississippi River and securing Army troop movements into the Confederate heartland.

Scott understood that the Mississippi needed a naval force as soon as possible. In an early memorandum to General George McClellan, commander of western operations, Scott commented that the Army would need at least 12-27 gunboats. It proved to be a gross underestimate. Neither the Army or the Navy maintained any naval force on the Mississippi. All future vessels of war needed to be purchased and converted for wartime duty, or built from scratch.

Organizing a western fleet began within weeks of the fall of Fort Sumter. At the advice of U.S. Attorney General and Missourian Edward Bates, the Navy summoned James B. Eads, a prominent and wealthy St. Louis salvager and naval architect. After a positive meeting with Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles and Gustavus Vasa Fox, on 29 April Eads submitted a proposal for a blockade of the upper Mississippi. Cairo, Illinois would be the base of forward operations. These proposals were forwarded to Secretary of War Simon Cameron, who directed McClellan to organize a naval force.

Welles was preoccupied with the oceanic blockade and treated the Mississippi predicament as a sideshow. On 16 May, he dispatched Commander John Rodgers to Cincinnati to advise McClellan. In his orders to Commander Rodgers, the Secretary made it clear that all waterborne matters in the west, including vessel procurement and building, were the responsibility of the Army. Above all, it was up to the Army to finance the project:

SIR: You will proceed to Cincinnati, Ohio, or the headquarters of General McClellan, where they may be, and report to that officer in regard to the expediency of establishing a naval armament on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, or either of them, with a view of blockading or interdicting communication and interchanges with the States that are in insurrection.
This interior nonintercourse is under the direction and regulation of the Army, and your movements will therefore be governed in a great degree by General McClellan, the officer in command, with whom you will put yourself in immediate communication. He will give such orders and requisitions as the case to him shall seem necessary, you acting in conjunction with and subordinate to him.
Whatever naval armament and crew may be necessary to carry into effect the objects here indicated, you will call for by proper requisition.

Not only would the Army draw upon the expertise of James Eads and John Rodgers, but the Navy additionally detailed U.S. Naval Constructor Samuel Pook to Cairo. Together, these three men formed a knowledgeable team. Eads was intimately familiar with the Mississippi and her tributaries, and understood the peculiar design requirements any gunboats would have to meet. Pook was able to combine, with Eads, his skill in ship design, and they developed the plans for many of the vessels launched in 1861 and 1862. Rodgers, whose liaison assignment in the West would be brief, added the necessary military background and worked closely with the Army, setting in motion the creation of the Western Gunboat Flotilla.