Navy 'Changed Trajectory of the War'

 

1862 illustration shows captured British blockade runners. (U.S. Navy)

 

The Navy "changed the trajectory of the war" was the way one of the nation's leading historians described the service's contribution to the ultimate Union victory in 1865.

Speaking April 16 at the United States Naval Institute's annual meeting in Washington, Dr. Craig Symonds, co-winner of the 2009 Lincoln Prize for his Lincoln and His Admirals, said the blockade of Confederate ports from the Carolinas on the Atlantic to the Texas Gulf Coast "was the largest enterprise the Navy undertook," ultimately involving more than 500 ships, more than 400 of them converted merchantmen -- "the last time that was still possible," and 100,000 men.

The Union Navy transformed itself from a fleet of 42 ships scattered around the globe or in ordinary at shipyards with a few thousand officers and experienced tars in 1861 to a technologically adept force with rifled guns, iron-plated, screw propellers, etc. operating with a "changed lower deck" of "volunteers. contrabands from the South, free blacks from the North" in 1865.

When President Abraham Lincoln announced the blockade, Symonds, a professor emeritus of history at the Naval Academy, contends that he and Secretary of State William Seward understood that it "was an act of war" and implied "a kind of recognition" of the Confederacy.

But it proved hugely advantageous for the Union.  Great Britain. while acknowledging the Confederacy as a belligerent, declared itself neutral in the North American war and by doing that effectively closed off its ports, particularly important in the Caribbean, to Confederate privateers or later its commerce raiders trying to sell off their captured "prizes."

But the reality of blockade is actually far more difficult than simply declaring it.  "You actually have to do it" over 3,500 miles of coast with 189 harbors and navigable inlets. "Maintaining it was hard work.  Blockade service [meant] days that were long and tedious ... in all weather.  Usually at night and often in rain or drizzle, the blockade runners were creeping in and out of Southern ports.

It did work on a number of levels, Symonds said, including persuading a large number of foreign ship-owners never to risk their vessels in a race for safety and riches in a Confederate harbor. The blockade caused "the slow asphyxiation" of the rebellion and "very likely made the war shorter."

With the profit motive of privateering proving to be a myth, the Confederacy turned to buying ships overseas for commerce raiding.  Led by James D. Bulloch, a onetime officer in the United States Navy and experienced merchant marine officer, the Jefferson Davis government put to sea a "dozen or so" of these ships, most notably Alabama that destroyed 284 American merchantmen over the course of the war. 

Indeed, the Confederate Navy's Civil War didn't end until November 1865 when Shenandoah returned to Liverpool, having destroyed a number of American whalers operating in the Pacific -- after Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox.

The commerce raiders were an interesting story all their own.  They were officered by Confederates, but the overwhelming majority of the crew were British, Scot, Irish and French "who didn't think much" of promises of future fortunes for all when the Union threw in the towel.  "They were in it for the money" immediately. When the prize money remained empty promises and the risks great, many deserted.

Commerce raiding "was a great idea for the Confederacy" because it caused maritime insurance rates to skyrocket and caused American-flagged vessels to change registry  to avoid destruction.

But in the end, the commerce raiders "did not bring Lincoln to the negotiating table" nor did they weaken the blockade.

For the greater part of the war, the Army and Navy operated separately even when fighting in the same area. Think New Orleans; think Charleston.  Yet from the war's start on the  rivers lying west of the Appalachians to the Mississippi, combined operations proved very successful at Forts Henry and Donelson and Island Number 10 -- keeping Kentucky in the Union and splintering Tennessee. Joint operations also set the stage for Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant to take his army from positions west of Vicksburg, Miss., where it had been stymied for months  to crossing the river and laying a siege that closed off any escape to the east by large numbers of Confederate soldiers now trapped in the river city.

Effective but time-consuming.

More dramatically, at New Orleans, then Capt. David Glasgow Farragut didn't wait for the Army and blasted his way past the forts below the Confederacy's largest city and most important trading port to capture the city with ocean-going frigates in the spring of 1862.

Official Washington loved that dash and rewarded Farragut with promotion.  The Navy Department wanted more of it. Its leadership thought it had just the man, Capt. Samuel F. DuPont, who had captured Port Royal, S.C., and turned it into the base for the Atlantic blockade. And, more to the point, he would have ironclads. 

At Charleston, DuPont certainly felt the heat from Assistant Navy Secretary Gustavus Fox and to a lesser extent from Navy Secretary Gideon Welles to keep his attack on the birthplace of secession an "all Navy affair." The "attack." in spring 1863" was a disaster.  The invincible ironclads of Fox's and Welles' dreams were ineffective, at best.

Mine and obstacles channeled the vessels into deadly fields of fire from artillery ashore and in the island forts.  The ironclads minus disabled Keokuk   had no choice but to retreat to safety.  Keokuk eventually sank off Morris Island. In fact, Charleston remained in Confederate hands until the last few weeks of the war when i

Mission Accomplished: Sort of. British Block Sale of Birkenhead Rams

(Library of Congress photo) Gideon Welles wanted the rams being built at the Laird shipyard in Birkenhead in Union hands -- at almost any cost.

(Third of Three Parts)

As the correspondence flowed from London to Washington and back, Navy Secretary Gideon Welles and his assistant Gustavus Fox became increasingly interested in what progress was being made in buying the  “swift privateers” for the Union.  This was an astounding turn of events for a clandestine mission ordered by the secretaries of the Navy and the Treasury to disrupt Confederate shipbuilding  plans to deliver ocean-crossing rams that could sail as commerce raiders like CSS Alabama [built in the Laird shipyard] and be strong enough to wreak havoc on Northern ports and break the blockade of Southern ports.

For the public, including the United States Senate, the mission was still secret.  When Charles Sumner, the Massachusetts abolitionist  who had been viciously attacked on the Senate floor by a cane-wielding South Carolina congressman, wanted to know if the United States was trading in the British arms markets, as John Laird alleged in Parliament. When he took office, Laird resigned his position as head of one of the most innovative shipyards in Europe.

Welles called the statements “destitute of the truth,”  coming from “a mercenary hypocrite without principle or honesty.” For their part, the Confederates “were protesting before high Heaven that they had no concern or interest in the Birkenhead iron-clads.” They waved the legal papers saying the vessels belong to “Mr. Bravay and Co., of Paris, agents for the Pasha of Egypt.”

True, Adrien Bravay’s brother manned an Alexandria office and had bought war materiel and ships for the Egyptian in the past; but the Bravays and James Bulloch, the most innovative Confederate ship-buyer overseas; the Laird yard in Birkenhead; and the Confederate banking house Fraser, Trenholm in Liverpool understood who had the real claim on the rams, despite their new names – El Tousson and El Monassir.

They even had a plan in place if the British seized the rams, a concern of Bulloch’s for months with all the Union spies snooping in the Mersey River’s yards and Paradise Street bars in Liverpool.  Francois Bravay, as a French parliamentarian, would appeal to the emperor whose diplomats would sing a sad chorus in London and Liverpool at how wronged this French company had been.  Didn’t the British understand that a contract was a contract, a sacred trust?

Welles’ letter to Sumner and the Confederate-Laird documents had little bearing on the truth. (1)

Businessman John Murray Forbes during a breakfast meeting with Charles Francis Adams, the American minister of the Court of St. James on April 23 laid out a “general review of the ship-yards of the island, and a description of every suspicious vessel. …I do not know that any anxiety I have is heavier than this.” The British and Scots’ shipyards appeared to be the winners in all these machinations.  As demand went up and supplies were limited, prices rose like Congreve rockets, as Adams predicted and Forbes and William Aspinwall, the businessmen entrusted with $10 million by the Lincoln administration to disrupt Confederate shipbuilding plan acknowledged to Welles in putting the ship-buying program on hold. (2)

Forbes now headed to Germany, ostensibly to recruit volunteers for the Union Army, and Aspinwall crossed the channel to work with Union officials there on Confederate activities with French yards and arms manufacturers and the intentions of Napoleon III’s government in Mexico. They were gone from May into June.

Work at the Laird yard was nearly complete on the first ram by the time they returned to Great Britain. The only hope in keeping the rams out of rebel hands lay in Adams’ protestations having an effect on Lord Palmerston’s government or the government itself acknowledging that Bravay’s claimed ownership was too murky to be allowed to proceed. (3)

In the end, the British government acknowledged that the ownership was too clouded to let the rams leave Liverpool.  Foreign Minister Lord John Russell confessed to the prime minister that it was time for a public investigation  into the ownership of the “Birkenhead rams.” Before that got under way,  the ships were detained at gunpoint. By February 1864, the House of Commons approved their seizures.  Adams diplomatic protestations fueled by Consuls Thomas Haines Dudley’s and Freeman H. Morse’s reports, paid for in large measure, by drawing on the Union deposit at Barclays made by Aspinwall, had paid off.

The two businessmen began closing out their affairs in July 1863. They left $4 million in bonds with Barings to cover the bank’s loan at the start of the mission and also to finance Haines and Dudley’s growing network of spies that continued gathering evidence that was the backbone of the Union’s “Alabama Claims” case against Great Britain.  It also went to other agents working the arms market until the war ended.

The other $6 million was packed into three trunks and steamed back across the Atlantic with them aboard the Great Eastern, the world’s largest passenger vessel.  They arrived in New York in the early evening July 12, as news of Union victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg was arriving. 

After leaving the ship, clearing customs, and gathering his baggage, Aspinwall barely had time to catch a train to his home on the North River.  After sundown, Forbes, his son, and a servant landed on a wharf crowded with a “as bad-looking a lot of roughs as I ever saw.” With the Forbes party were the trunks of bonds.  “We did not know that the great [draft] riot was about breaking out, nor luckily did the gentry around know what a prize lay within their grasp.” An Irish cab driver recognized Forbes from a visit he had paid his regiment and offered the party his services.  “Over the rough, dark streets,” the party made their escape to the safety of the  fashionable Brevoort House.

As for the $6 million in bonds, they eventually were “returned to the Treasury in the original packages, with the seals of the Treasury unbroken.” (4) 

Although Forbes and Aspinwall returned without ships to show for their time, other agents using the money in Barings continued shopping in the European arms and ship markets, still using guises of private investors buying neutral goods or private investors buying war goods for neutral foreign governments.  They talked, bought, and acted like their Confederate counterparts. In the late summer of 1864, an exasperated Judah P. Benjamin, Confederate secretary of State, ordered Henry Hotze in London to print every new case of Northern arms buying that he could find in his pro-Confederate paper’s next edition.

Enlightening as this news was to Southern supporters in Great Britain,  the facts were the United States’ credit was better than the Confederacy’s after Gettysburg and Vicksburg,  its ports were open, and its manufacturing sector having turned to the war effort was running in high gear. Three weeks after the Battle of Hampton Roads, Seward wrote, “We can build our iron clad steamers (like the Merrimack or CSS Virginia) and build them quicker” than the Confederacy could in its few yards or in buying them abroad. As the year was ending, Fox was even more confident than the secretary.  He was ready to take on the Great Powers of Europe.  “In two years we can take the offensive with vessels that will be superior to any England is now building.” They were right but with an asterisk. (5) 

End Notes

(1) Charles Adams, Studies Military and Diplomatic, 1775 – 1865, MacMillan Company, New York, 1911,  Official Records of the War of the Rebellion – Navy, Bulloch to Mallory, March 30, 1863, Ser. 2 , Vol. 2, p. 397.

(2) Charles Francis Adams, Laird Rams (hereafter Adams, Laird), Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Vol. 33, Google e-Book,  pp. 191-192.

(3) James D. Bulloch,The Confederate Secret Service in Europe, Vol. 1, Google e-Book, pp. 404-405.

(4) Adams, Laird, p. 195.  John Murray Forbes, Drawing on Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes edited by his daughter Sarah Forbes Hughes , Google e-Book,, Vol. 2, pp. 44-49. Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson with an introduction by John L. Morse Jr., Vol. 1. 1861-March 1864, Boston entries for May 2 and May 19, 1863.

(5) John Bigelow, Retrospections of an Active Life, Vol. 1, Google e-Book, pp. 410-411. Bigelow, Retrospections, Vol. 2, p. 207. “Mr. Laird and Secretary Welles,” New York Times, Aug. 10, 1863.

Union's Desperate Gambit to Stymie Rebel Ram Buying in Great Britain

John Murray Forbes, left, and William H. Aspinwall were given millions of dollars to outbid the Confederacy for the two rams being built at the Laird Shipyard in Birkenhead in Great Britain. (Forbes picture from Harvard Square Library. org and Aspinwall picture from Panama Rail. org)

John Murray Forbes was feeling “half ill” and trying to rest in his Milton, Massachusetts, home on Saturday March 14, 1863.  But resting was soon out of the question when the railroad magnate and a member of one of New England’s leading maritime families received a “brief telegram” from Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase. The secretary wanted to meet with him the next day at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in Manhattan. Forbes, a man who once served tea to John Brown,   “could not refuse” and hurried to New York. Without being explicitly told why the meeting was on such short notice, he likely knew it concerned frightening reports on Confederate buying of advanced, powerful warships in Europe.

With Chase, an ardent abolitionist, that day was Navy Secretary Gideon Welles, the founder of Hartford, Connecticut, Evening Press, and the New York-based William H. Aspinwall, the owner of the lucrative gold-hauling Pacific Mail Steamship Company and the builder of the trans-Panama railroad.  

While not friends, the four were acquainted with each other.  Forbes and Aspinwall came from tightly-knit Yankee families that pioneered America’s China trade of tea, silk, and opium. Welles and Forbes met each other during the ill-fated Peace Convention in Washington in early 1861. That winter,  Aspinwall had been in Washington discussing a plan with the Buchanan administration and the incoming Lincoln administration to relieve Fort Sumter. He met Forbes then. (1)

When war came in April, Forbes peppered Chase with ideas on how to finance the conflict. His suggestions on taxes and long-and short-term bonds, and short-term Treasury notes for unexpected expenses, were largely ignored. Aspinwall fired off his missives on graft in Navy acquisition to Welles and the energetic Gustavus V. Fox, assistant secretary, with little effect

But Welles, on the other hand, used both men to launch the Navy’s war against the Confederacy.  They were in the front ranks chartering and buying steamers to blockade Southern ports and to chase down Confederate commerce raiders.

On their own, Forbes, staunch Republican, and Aspinwall, long-time admirer of the cashiered George McClellan,  rallied men like themselves into Union Leagues to back the war effort – politically and economically. They also launched Loyal Publication Societies to boost the Union cause. Forbes also threw himself into raising volunteer regiments in Massachusetts, including black troops. Certainly, three of the men in the room – Welles, Forbes, and Aspinwall – saw the United States as a naval power, but one facing the gravest threat in its history from the sea. The fourth man, Chase, had the money to eliminate that threat, the Confederate European shopping spree for oceangoing ironclads.

As Fox wrote to Forbes, “We have not a port in the North that can resist an ironclad over very moderate power.” (2)  

The Union Navy had escaped disaster in Hampton Roads the year before when John Ericsson’s Monitor stalemated the iron-plated, slant-roofed CSS Virginia. They won reprieves later that spring when CSS Virginia was scuttled because its draft was too deep to make it safely to Richmond, and Captain David Farragut’s flotilla rushed past the still unfinished ironclads on the Mississippi River to capture the Confederacy’s busiest port and largest city New Orleans.

A desperate Congress authorized letters of marque to seize blockade runners bringing war materiel to the South. Even as the blockade tightened, Ulysses Grant marveled at the quality and quantity of the European-made rifles the Confederates carried at Vicksburg.  But letters of marque were worthless pieces of paper in keeping European-built ironclads taking to sea for the South. (3)

The Union Army fared even worse on the land. The summertime fears of Washington under siege for the second time in two years had been palpable. After Second Manassas,  “the rebels again look upon the dome of the Capitol,” and the fears barely ebbed after the Battle of Antietam. Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia were still in fighting form. The two politically-driven, grand Union advances launched in early winter had faltered. The Army of the Potomac was again in disarray following the fiasco at Fredericksburg in December.  The Army of the Cumberland had held its own a little later that month at Stones River in Tennessee, but with enormous casualties.

The war weariness in the North that cost the Republicans a number of governorships and reduced their ranks in Congress was contagious.   

Changing war aims from restoring the Union, an ideal that Aspinwall embraced, to freeing the slaves in states in rebellion, an ideal that Forbes blessed, proved more popular in Europe than in many parts of the North. More fodder for the opposition. Democrats rubbed their hands together in anticipation of the 1864 elections.

The historian Charles Francis Adams Jr. characterized that time as “that darkest hour before the slowly breaking dawn” of Union victories as Vicksburg and Gettysburg. (4)

Now with the military campaign season on land fast approaching and with each arriving steamer and mail packet from Great Britain delivering more disturbing news about Confederate successes in building commerce raiders – like Alabama and Florida and frightening reports from Liverpool of mysterious activities at the innovative Laird Brothers shipyard, the four agreed these were desperate times requiring bold actions.

Before the meeting Forbes had suggested to Fox that the United States should do everything in its power to buy these new Laird ironclads at Birkenhead. In Forbes’ scheme, the move would be made by a “merchant untrammeled by naval constructors and such nuisance” in the name of “Siam or China.” Subterfuge and false fronts were  how the Confederates’ did it, why not take a play out of their book?  (5)

In Washington, Fox liked the idea. Thinking along the same lines in London was the United States consul Freeman H. Morse.  His subterfuges and fronts would be “Russian, Italian or other foreign houses.” Morse proved invaluable as events were soon to show. (6)

Although Chase paid scant heed to Forbes’ ideas on financing the war, he and Welles let the two businessmen come up with their own statement of purpose of what they were to do with the $10 million set aside for this effort.  Their primary target was “the most dangerous vessels,” the Birkenhead rams, the men agreed.   The second point was to do this as surreptitiously as possible.  Don’t compromise the administration or Charles Francis Adams, the American minister in London and Forbes’ longtime friend, in the effort “to prevent the sailing of Confederate ships.” The “deniability” approach did not apply to Morse and his counterpart in Liverpool, Thomas Haines Dudley. The men on the scene  were integral to the plan as it was sketched out in the hotel room and as it evolved in Europe.  (7)

Mr. Aspinwall and Mr. Forbes were heading into the war.

End Notes

1.       Thomas H. O’Connor, Civil War Boston: Homefront and Battlefield, Northeastern University Press, Boston, 1999, p. 47.

2.       John Murray Forbes, Drawing on Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes edited by his daughter Sarah Forbes Hughes (hereafter Hughes, Recollections), Vol. 1, Cambridge, Google e-Book, pp. 293, 342 and Vol. 2, p. 3. John Launtz Larson, Bonds of Enterprise: John Murray Forbes and Western Development in America’s Railway Age (hereafter Larson, Bonds of Enterprise), Google e-Book, pp. 96-97.

3.       Ulysses Simpson Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, Dover Publications, New York, 1995, p. 229.

4.       Douglas H. Maynard, “The Forbes-Aspinwall Mission” (hereafter Maynard, Forbes),The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. 45, No. 1 June 1958, pp. 67-89.  Charles Adams, Studies Military and Diplomatic, 1775 – 1865 (hereafter Adams, Studies), MacMillan Company, New York, 1911, pp. 355-363.

5.       Hughes, Recollections, Vol. 2, p. 27.

6.       Maynard, Forbes, pp. 67-89.

7.       Ibid.

 

Gideon Welles' Thoughts on Emancipation

First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation of Lincoln, by Francis Bicknell Carpenter (Welles is seated in the middle next to Abraham Lincoln)

As many people know, Steven Spielberg’s recently released Civil War biopic Lincoln tells the story of the pivotal moments faced by the 16^th president during the drafting and passing of the 13^th Amendment.  One of the necessary steps to its passing was the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.  Taken in tandem with the 13^th Amendment, the Emancipation Proclamation was arguably the most political/socially-fueled document in the United States since the Declaration of Independence.  The General Order announced the Emancipation Proclamation written by Lincoln, which was signed on 1 January 1863. 

Part of the film’s appeal was its close ties to the wildly popular book by Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.  In large part, the film is an adaptation of her work.  In the film, actor Grainger Hines portrays Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles.  Although Welles played a small role in the film, in reality Welles had many interesting observations about the abolition of slavery from the Emancipation Proclamation through the passing of the 13^th Amendment.  The Emancipation Proclamation made the abolishment of slavery a joint political/military goal, one that Welles could no longer ignore. 

The following are excerpts from the Diary of Gideon Welles in the months and days before and after the issuance of General Order No. 4.  You can see through his diary entries a reactionary timeline of thought that matches perfectly with the social and political climate of wartime America.  “Father Neptune” was a concise and calculated thinker, able to weigh the implications of combat equally with that of political choice or necessity.  In many cases, especially in the last quote included here, Welles was absolutely right in his thoughts on Emancipation and the slavery question. 

You can see the documents association with General Order No. 4 at the Naval History and Heritage Command Facebook Page. 

(It is important to note that the Proclamation did not apply to the five states not in rebellion, as well as regions controlled by the United States Army.  Individual rights for emancipation would occur on a state-by-state basis with the passing of the 13^th Amendment.)

The President Broaches the Subject of Emancipation to his cabinet (Fall 1862):

“It was a new departure for the President, for until this time, in all our previous interviews, whenever the question of emancipation or the mitigation of slavery had been in any way alluded to, he had been prompt and emphatic in denouncing any interference by the General Government with the subject.  This was, I think the sentiment of every member of the Cabinet, all of whom, including the President, considered it a local, domestic question appertaining to the States respectively, who had never parted with the authority over it.”

Post-Antietam Public Sentiment (September 24, 1862):

“As I write, 9 P.M., a band of music strikes up on the opposite side of the square, a complimentary serenade to the President for the Emancipation Proclamation.  The document has been in the main well received, but there is some violent opposition…”

Emancipation Proclamation (1 January 1863):

“The Emancipation Proclamation is published in this evening’s Star.  This is a broad step, and will be a landmark in history.  The immediate effect will not be all its friends anticipate or its opponents apprehend.  Passing events are steadily accomplishing what is here proclaimed. 

Final Thoughts Prior to General Order No. 4 (10 January 1863):

“Some things have taken place which will undoubtedly for a time exasperate the Southern mind, for they will affect Southern society, habits, labor, and pursuits.  For a period emancipation will aggravate existing differences, and a full generation will be necessary to effect and complete the change which has been commenced.”

CSS Florida's Mad Dash into Mobile

To say Confederate Lieutenant John Newland Maffitt had a tough decision to make would be an understatement.  After the Florida's release from a British admiralty court in Nassau, Maffit's executive officer reported their vessel lacked the proper equipment to fire the main guns.   After being denied the equipment in Havana, Cuba, Maffitt decided the only thing to do was to run the blockade and make port in Mobile, Alabama.  Adding to Maffitt's difficulties was yellow fever.  The dreaded tropical disease had incapacitated or killed half of his company, including Maffitt.  This decision caused Florida's executive officer, Lieutenant John Stribling, to question his captain's wisdom.  He commented to Maffitt, "Sir, in this attempt we cannot avoid passing close to the blockade-squadron, the result of which will be our certain destruction."

George Prebble after the war

Maffitt acknowledged the risks, but felt he had no choice.  Watching the approaches to Mobile were the steam sloop-of-war USS Oneida (commanded by Commander George H. Prebble), the "90-day gunboat" USS Winona, and the fast sailing schooner USS Rachel Seaman. 

With a British flag raised, Florida approached the blockading squadron at high speed.  Florida and Oneida passed within 90 yards of each other before Prebble realized the ruse.  Oneida opened fire at Florida, but missed.  Winona joined in and put an XI-inch shot into Florida's boiler room, decapitating one of the fireman and injuring several others.   Florida continued steaming.  The two U.S. Navy ships switched over to shrapnel shot in an attempt to take out Florida's sails.  The shrapnel injured several more of Florida's sailors, but failed to stop the cruiser from making it to the safety of Fort Morgan. 

Maffitt was safe.  Prebble, however was not. Upon hearing about the incident via Farragut and Welles, President Lincoln personally ordered Prebble to be removed from command and dismissed from the Navy.  Welles wrote a letter informing Prebble of his dismissal.  Being what communications were in 1862, Prebble learned about his firing in a newspaper article. 

Prebble was furious and fought the charges.  Coming from one of the U.S. Navy's most famous families (he was the nephew of Commodore Edward Prebble), he had major political clout to work with.  For the next six months, he sought to be reinstated.

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.

The 1861 "Expedition Hurricane" and Port Royal

1861 Hurricane Season

As of today the east coast is free of Hurricane Irene's grasp. The CAT 1 storm cut a swath up the East Coast, causing widespread damage from North Carolina to Vermont.  We sincerely hope everyone was safe during this past weekend's storm. 

Looking through the records, it seems that a similar hurricane to Irene occurred 150 years ago. On the heels of the Port Royal Expedition, Hurricane Eight, better known as the "Expedition Hurricane," severely impacted the timeline for the Union thrust into the vital Confederate stronghold. 

According to the National Hurricane Center, the three day storm was the last of the season.  "Hurricane Eight" began on the southwestern tip of Florida and climbed up the east coast.  Not unlike Irene, the storm made landfall along the Outer Banks of North Carolina as a CAT 1, slowly diminishing speed up the coast before downgrading to a tropical storm by nightfall on 2 November.  At its height, the hurricane reached winds approaching 80 mph.

The storm caused many problems for the United States Navy preparing for the expedition to capture the Confederate center along the Port Royal Sound.  Although the earliest storm warning occurred in late October while the fleet assembled, the most devastating impact came on the 2nd.

Most of the ships involved in the storm were spared, many having to unload precious cargo to stay afloat.  One ship which did not fair well, the transport Governor, lost seven Marines during a fateful rescue by the USS Sabine's crew.  Writing to Blockade commander Samuel F. Du Pont, Southern Division Marine Corps Commander JNO. George Reynolds communicated the harrowing wind, waves, and rescue:

"The sea was running so high, and we being tossed so violently, it was deemed prudent to slack up the hawser and let the Governor fall astern of the frigate with the faint hope of weathering the gale till morning. All our provisions and other stores, indeed every movable article, were thrown overboard, and the water casks started to lighten the vessel. From half past 3 until daybreak the Governor floated in comparative safety, notwithstanding the water was rapidly gaining on her. At daybreak preparations were made for sending boats to our relief although the sea was running high, and it being exceedingly dangerous for a boat to approach the guards of the steamer. In consequence the boats laid off and the men were obliged to jump into the sea, amid were then hauled into the boats. All hands were thus providentially rescued from the wreck with the exception, I am pained to say, of 1 corporal and 6 privates, who were drowned or killed by the crush or contact of the vessels. Those drowned were lost through their disobedience of orders in leaving the ranks, or abandoning their posts."

Despite the loss of ship and life, the fleet of 77 ships went on to capture the sound at the Battle of Port Royal.  Stay tuned in November for more information on that specific sesquicentennial battle.

Gosport Navy Yard-Welles Defends His Actions

The lost of the Gosport Navy Yard was considered in the North to be disaster of the War. There were many questions on how someone could let over 1,100 guns, one of the nation's only two dry docks, and the hull of the USS Merrimack fall into opposition's hands. After the war Republican Party activist/insider and newspaper editor Thurlow Weed wanted to make sure that world knew who he thought was to blame: Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles.

In an 1870 account published in the magazine The Galaxy, Weed recalled that "Meeting the Secretary at dinner the same day, I renewed the conversation, and was informed that the matter would be attended to. This did not quiet my solicitude, and leaving the Secretary to the placid enjoyment of his dinner, I repaired to the White House. Mr. Lincoln, however, had driven out to visit some fortifications. I made another attempt in the evening to see him, but he was again out- Early the next morning, however, I found him, and informed him what 1 had heard of the danger that threatened Gosport, and how, as I feared, I had failed to impress the Secretary of the Navy with the accuracy of my information or the necessity of immediate action."

Welles and Weed never liked each other from the time they first met. Welles thought Weed was nothing more than a political hack (Weed was instrumental in getting Abraham Lincoln elected and thus had ready acess to the President). Nevertheless, when Welles saw Weed's version of events on Gosport, he exploded. Weed's slander was not the first attack on Welles' reputation. But after reading an attack by one of his political enemies, he had enough. Welles responded with his own essay that was also published in The Galaxy.

He wrote "I do not affect to misunderstand the scope and purpose of the allusions to myself, nor the impressions which the autobiographer seeks to convey. They are in character and keeping with years of misrepresentation in relation to the abandonment of the navy-yard at Norfolk, and other events by which the administration of the Navy Department was for years maligned and wronged."

Welles defended his actions (or lack thereof) on saving Gosport by stating that there was a belief that Virginia might still stay in the Union.

"In regard to the navy-yard at Norfolk, [President Lincoln] was particulraly solicitous that there should be no action taken which would indicate a want of confidence in the authorities and people, or which would be likely to beget distrust. No ships were to be withdrawn, no fortifications erected. We had reports from that station and from others that there were ardent secessionists among the civil and naval officers, and assurances, on the other hand, that most of them were patriotic and supporters of the Union. "

The full essay titled "Mr. Welles Responds to Mr. Weed" can be found here.