Richmond Press Blasts Mallory on Capital Defenses.

Navy photo: The Richmond press and soon the Confederate Congress questioned Stephen Mallory’s competence as Navy secretary.

For all Navy Secretary Stephen Mallory's spending on ironclads, the Richmond press complained, “The enemy commands the water.” 

The newspapers were reflecting the growing sense of dread that gripped the capital of the Confederacy as the Army of the Potomac massed at Fortress Monroe. Norfolk had fallen. The Gosport Naval Shipyard was back in Union hands. CSS Virginia was lying in the mud off Craney island.  Richmond seemed ripe for attack from the river.          

For months, the Dispatch, the Examiner, and the Whig demanded the James River be obstructed. They wondered what lessons – if any ¾ had been learned from the defeats at Forts Donelson and Henry, Island No. 10, which fell in a combined naval and land attack and put much of Tennessee under Union control. Worse yet was what happened below  New Orleans. The ironclads being built to defend it were not ready for battle, and the Union Navy captured the South’s largest city in a daring strike up river. Along the Atlantic coast, matters were no better.  Fort Macon in North Carolina was taken in a combined sea and land assault as was Fort Pulaski, defending the water approaches to Savannah, Georgia.

           The Whig was scathing:"The amiable somnambulist who presides over naval affairs has contented himself ... without once putting his foot outside the city to see that work.”     

The cries for Mallory’s head were soon echoing inside the Confederate Capitol.

CSS Virginia's Firestorm

After many unsuccessful attempts to bring Monitor to battle in April 1862, Commodore Josiah Tattnall and CSS Virginia faced a major crisis during the first week of May.   As Union ground forces landed at Ocean View and began to march towards downtown Norfolk and Portsmouth, Confederate ground forces evacuated.  The only problem was that no one in the Confederate Army told Tattnall of the evacuation plan.  His junior officers reported that both the Gosport Navy Yard and the batteries at Sewells Point had been abandoned, and the fort at Craney Island was in the process of being abandoned. 

No stranger to a hard fight (see the "Blood is Thicker Than Water" incident), Tattnall was prepared to make a last stand, but instead elected to move the ironclad up the James River.  He solicited the advice of two local harbor pilots.  Both stated that if Virginia's draft was lightened to draw only 18 feet of water (as opposite to her normal 22 feet), the ironclad could make it to safety near City Point.  The commodore went with the plan and had all the guns and stores removed.  On May 10, 1862, Tattnall was ready to make the attempt.  The pilots, however, changed their mind and informed Tattnall that the attempt could not be made.   John Taylor Wood would later remark "Moral: All officers should learn to do their own piloting."

Knowing the Union forces were closing in, and with great reluctance, Tattnall ordered Virginia to be put to the torch.  Virginia's executive officer, ap Roger Jones, did the honors and set the ship on fire.  The ship's company marched to Suffolk and boarded a train for Richmond where they would live to fight another day.

The veteran flag officer knew the move would be controversial and fully expected to be grilled by his superiors, but not second-guessed.  Three of the Confederate Navy's senior officers and Tattnall's personal colleagues, French Forrest, Duncan Ingraham, and William Lynch, blasted the commodore for incompetence and accused him of being "panic-stricken."  Many officers came to Tattnall's defense and counter-accused the Board for speaking about things they knew nothing about.  Tattnall demanded and received a formal court marital to clear up his name. 

Two months later, a board of twelve officers including Franklin Buchanan, Syndey Lee, and Mathew Murray heard three charges against Tattnall.  After listening to Tattnall's account of the scuttling and the dire situation in Hampton Roads, the court unanimously cleared the commodore of incompetence.  Tattnall was allowed to continue his new command in Georgia. 

A more complete record of both hearings can be found here in a biography of Tattnall (chapter 15). 

St. Johns River Steamboats in the Civil War

Confederate steamboat Darlington, captured by Union forces near Fernandina and converted into a Union gunboat of the same name:

Here's a post to keep you tuned to Florida events as we transition from observing the Battle for New Orleans to the Battle of Drewry's Bluff.

The St. Johns River, running along the east coast of Florida, served as a main route of transportation for centuries. It was used by Native Americans, by French, Spanish and English colonists, and by the US after Florida became a state. As the northeast coast of Florida developed, the St. Johns was “the Interstate Highway” of the time. A thriving steamboat traffic developed on the river, transporting mail, freight and passengers from Jacksonville to Enterprise (near Lake Monroe), reaching a high point just prior to the start of the Civil War. After secession, many river steamboats (and their owners/captains) were converted into blockade runners, either running contraband goods between Florida and the Bahamas or “coastal blockade running” between ports in Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas.

As Union forces occupied Fernandina, Florida, in March 1862, Commander C.R.P. Rogers pushed up a small creek near the town in a ship’s launch and captured the Confederate steamer Darlington, captained by Jacob Brock. Brock was a well-known steamboat captain on the St. Johns River prior to the war, who cast his lot with the Confederacy after Florida seceded. He initially refused commands to heave to, forcing the Union bluejackets to fire on the steamer, which eventually did stop and surrender. After boarding, the Union Navy officers were enraged, as there were a number of women and children aboard, who had been begging the captain to surrender as they were fired upon. Fortunately, no one was injured.

Capt. Jacob Brock, probably after the Civil War:

Perhaps in retaliation, Brock was arrested and sent to prison (even though he was not a member of the Confederate military), and his ship confiscated. In addition to the refugees, the steamer contained “military stores, and wagons, mules, forage, etc.” and a surgeon in the Confederate Army. The captured steamer was converted into the gunboat USS Darlington, and was a participant in an expedition up the St. Johns River in October 1862 (more on that to come this fall).

Another role played by the St. Johns River steamboats during the war was part of the “inside blockade running” (as described by George Buker in an article in “North and South” magazine, Vol. 4, No. 2). When the Union blockade closed down Fernandina, Jacksonville, and St. Augustine, blockade runners from the Bahamas ran their cargoes into Mosquito Inlet (present day Ponce De Leon Inlet, north of Cape Canaveral). The cargo was then transported overland by wagon or rail to points along the St. Johns River, where steamboats carried the goods to other rail points for shipment north to areas of the Confederacy where they were needed. Some of these steamboats were built by Mr. Hubbard Hart for his pre-war tours on the Ocklawaha River (a major tributary of the St. Johns River), which included the James Burt and the Silver Springs, along with Jacob Brock’s other boat, the Hattie.

After the war, Capt. Brock was paroled and was able to reacquire the Darlington and resume his occupation running steamboats on the St. Johns River. Mr. Hart resumed his Steamboat Line on the St. Johns and Ocklawaha Rivers, and many other entrepreneurs and industrialists rebuilt the steamboat trade on the St. Johns to its pre-war height. Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant both took trips on St. Johns River steamboats after the war. The rise and development of the railroads eventually doomed the river steamboats, and they faded into history by the mid-1900’s.

Steamboat Hattie at a wharf (possibly after the war). Illustration sources – Florida Dept. of State archives:

Battle of New Orleans-USN Takes Over the City

With the forts bypassed and the Confederate/state ships either destroyed or put to flight, Farragut's squadron steamed north.  Smaller forts upstream were destroyed and his ships anchored off of New Orleans' docks.   As there were no fortifications or garrison guarding the city proper, Farragut demanded the city surrender.  However, the U.S. Army's ground force was not ready to provide immediate help.  So, the Navy did it alone.  What happened over the next four days was a mixture of anxiety and awkwardness. 

Captain Theodorus Bailey, commander of Farragut's second division, adamantly volunteered for the job.  Accompanied only by his aide, Lieutenant George Perkins, Bailey marched past hostile crowds to City Hall looking for someone in charge to make his demands.  He could not find anyone and returned to Hartford. This was the first of several attempts by the U.S. Navy to get the city officials to accept the fact that there was a large squadron of U.S. Navy ships in the Mississippi River and they were not going away.

Attempt number two was tried by Hartford's Lieutenant Albert Kautz (who wrote a very detailed account for Battles and Leaders), a midshipmen, and twenty Marines.  Assisted through the crowds by the City Guards (the city's police force), the Mayor of New Orleans granted Kautz an audience under truce.  After reading Farragut's written demand to surrender, the Mayor claimed he had no military right to give up the city.  Confederate General Mansfield Lovell (a native of New York), commanding officer of Confederate ground forces, also refuse to surrender on the grounds he worked for the Mayor.  New Orleans city councilmen admitted they were clueless on how to properly surrender the city. Even though local officials knew that Farragut could level the city at any time, they stalled. This went on for three days.

Finally, Farragut had lost his patience. Under the command of his chief of staff/flag captain Henry H. Bell (a native of North Carolina), all of the squadron's Marines were assembled with two boat howitzers and marched into the city towards the Custom's House on April 29.  With the Mayor standing coldly in front of one of the howitzers and the city mob looking on in silence, Kautz struck the Louisiana state flag and raised the American flag. The Marines, with the assistance of local authorities, maintained order until General Ben Butler's troops arrived in early May to assume formal occupation. As humiliating the situation might have been for New Orleans residences, the Confederacy's largest city was spared the fate that would befall other Confederate urban areas such as Atlanta, Charleston, Columbia, Jackson, Richmond, and parts of Hampton Roads.