Siege of Charleston: Supporting the Charge of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers

The Assault on Fort Wagner as published in 1890.
This interpretation of the famous charge of the 54th Massachusetts is
 one  of the  few that show the U.S. Navy's ironclads in action.

Amidst siege operations in Charleston,Union leadership decided to try and seize Fort Wagner. The fort commanded the southern approaches to Charleston Harbor. It was relatively isolated from other Confederate fortifications.  Thus, it could not count on help if attacked. 

Map of Morris Island and Fort Wagner

Rear Admiral John Dahlgren, commanding the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, and Brigadier General Quincy Gilmore, commanding Union ground forces, agreed on a plan.  They planned to first seize the southern shores of Morris Island before beginning an assault on Fort Wagner on July 11.  The first part of the plan worked well.  A combination of four monitors (USS Weehawken, Nahant, Catskill, and Montauk), wooden gunboats, and small boats from the steam frigate USS Wabash equipped with boat howitzers, provided sufficient cover for a Union landing to overrun Confederate defenses. 

The monitors shelled Confederate positions from 4 a.m. until 12 p.m..  They then withdrew back out into open water "for lunch" promptly at noon.  Two hours later, the monitors resumed their firing positions. 

This assault on Fort Wagner itself did not succeed due to accurate heavy gun fire from Confederate gunners.  The Confederate gunners even damaged some of the monitors with a bolt type, armor-piercing shot. Union forces managed to establish a siege line during the melee. Gilmore planned a second assault on Wagner with five regiments.  The African American-manned 54th Massachusetts Volunteers lead the attack.

For the Navy's part, Dahlgren prepared six ironclads to support the operation.  The Federal force included the four monitors previously mentioned, plus USS New Ironsides, the monitor USS Patapsco, and three wooden gunboats. The steam sloop USS Housantonic stood back to observe where the ironclads' shots landed and to signal each ship the results. Additionally, Dahlgren put New Ironsides' Marines on alert, just in case they were needed in the ground assault.
  


Alfred Waud's drawing of USS Patapsco
 and other monitors off of Charleston.


The Navy bombardment began in the morning, with the squadron firing from 1,200 yards. Taking advantage of the flood tide, the ironclads moved west of the Main Ship Channel and closer to the fort.  At three hundred yards, the ironclads began a rapid fire bombardment.  Unlike the July 11 attack, the Navy's shelling kept the Confederate gunners from returning fire.

The ships kept up the fire until 7.30 p.m.  Gilmore signaled to Dahlgren that his troops were in position to assault.  Dahlgren ordered a cease fire due to a lack of light and a fear of hitting Union ground forces. The admiral reported that he witnessed flashes of gunfire from the ground assault until 9:30 p.m. Dahlgren wrote that the "ill-tiding of a repulse were not long in coming."  He received official word at 10:30 p.m. 

Supporting the second assault, the Navy unloaded about 1,945 shells (mostly XI-inch shells, but also some XV-inch shells, 150-pound and 100-pounder rifle shells) on Fort Wagner.  The number is a bit misleading, as New Ironsides accounted for 1,120 of them, the wooden gunboats 200, and the monitors about 625.  The broadside ironclad out-fired all the monitors combined.  In all, the squadron fired 432,676 lbs, or a little over 216 tons, of ordnance at Fort Wagner. During the bombardment, a disturbing trend arose.  Critical breaches occurred on three of the squadron's Parrot Rifles.

Dahlgren concluded that the plan was sound, but more troops were needed for the ground assault.  Additionally, he held high praise for the Army's assault.  He wrote, "the loss sustained by our troops bears witness to the preserving gallantry with which they endeavored to storm the work, and which deserve, I trust, a renewed effort."

The Hatteras Expedition - One More Time

CWN 150 Blogger Gordon has provided coverage of the US Navy’s first big operation of the Civil War, the Hatteras Expedition, in two prior posts (18 Aug 2011 and 21 Sept 2011), so I certainly don’t mean to duplicate prior content. That said, I had to share with you this illustration I found in the online collection “Civil War Drawings” on the Library of Congress web site.


The picture struck me because it is so dynamic; it resonates with activity. In the right foreground are infantry companies forming up on the beach. In the left foreground additional troops are coming ashore in the surf, and behind them ships boats are bringing in more. Towards the background on the left, the Revenue Cutter Harriet Lane appears to be providing close inshore gun support, foreshadowing the role played by destroyers in the D-Day landings at Normandy. In the background in line-ahead formation are the “big boys”: the steam frigate Minnesota, the sailing sloop Cumberland, the steam frigate Wabash, and the side-wheel steam gunboat Susquehanna. The target of their gunfire is in the right background, Fort Clarke, and you can see the shells bursting over the fort.

Cape Hatteras Expedition

The bombardment of Fort Clark by Cumberland, Minnesota, and Wabash.

On August 26, 1861, the U.S Navy and Army's expedition to Cape Hatteras cleared Hampton Roads and navaigated south. Commodore Slias Stringham commanded the Navy's portion of the expedition that consisted of the steam frigates USS Wabash and Minnesota, the sail sloop-of-war USS Cumberland, the paddle steamer USS Susquehana, and steam gunboat USS Monticello. 

Before leaving Hampton Roads, Stringham had received intelligence about the two forts that guarded the Inlet from recently released merchant ship masters.  The Confederate garrison allowed the officers of the ships to roam the forts freely.

The attack began on the morning of August 28. With Wabash towing Cumberland, the two ships approached Fort Clark. From about 1,300 yards from the Confederate fortification, Wabash began the battle with her two pivot guns, both X-inch Dahlgrens, followed by Cumberland and Minnesota’s X-inch Dahlgrens. The rest of the squadron’s smaller guns then engaged. The squadron steamed in a clockwise circle south and then back to the north.

Flag Officer Samuel Barron  had earlier travelled down from Portsmouth, Virginia to take charge of forts, called Forts Clark and Hatteras. Using guns captured from Gosport, Barron ordered his garrison to return fire. Finding Clark outgunned, he ordered that the garrison to retreat to Fort Hatteras. After several more hours, Barron believed the situation hopeless and surrendered. Stringham shipped the Confederate commodore and the garrison to prisons in the north.

Strategically, the capture of the two forts shut down privateering for good.  It also opened up the North Carolina sounds to further advances.  It also came one month after the Union debacle at Bull Run.  As a result, the Northern press treated the victory as if the North had just won the war. 

Fort Clark after being captured

The Hatteras Expedition Assembles

Cape Hatteras and the North Carolina Sounds had become a perfect safe haven for Confederate commerce raiders.  As Northern merchant ships used the Gulf Stream as expressway home from West Indies ports, the local waters were target rich.  Several dozen small merchants fell victim to privateers and small commissioned gunboats.

To put a stop to this, the Union's Blockade Board recommended using filling schooners with stones and sinking them Hatteras' channel.  After consultations with local pilots about the currents in the area, the idea was soon rejected.  Commodore Silas Stringham recommended seizing the Hatteras Inlet as the only real solution.

In mid-August, the expedition began to assemble in Hampton Roads.  The large steam frigates USS Minnesota and Wabash and the all sail sloop-of-war USS Cumberland formed the core of a task force of several warships and transports.  The expedition's assembly caused a buzz in Northern newspapers who were looking for something positive to write about in light of the humiliating sting of Bull Run.

The Steam Screw Frigates

When it comes to the Civil War Navies (really, any Navy), no doubt one of the main “stars of the show” are the ships. Over the past year, we of the CWN150 have enjoyed introducing you to some of the ships of the US Navy in the Civil War, including the “Timberclads” (posts by Craig on 22 Sept 2010 and Caleb on 16 June 2011), the “90-day gunboats” (post by Gordon on 12 July 2011), and the “fighting ferryboats” (post by yours truly on 14 Oct 2010). In time, we will also present overviews of the ships of the Confederate Navy.


The largest class of warships in the US Navy in the war were the “Merrimack” class steam screw frigates. These warships were propelled by a combination of sail (square-rigged) and steam power and were the first US Navy ships to be driven by a “screw” (a propeller on a shaft projecting through the stern). They displaced 3,000+ to 4,000+ tons and ranged in length from 256’10.5” to 264’8.5”. The US Congress authorized construction of these in 1954. All were completed and commissioned before the war began. In keeping with the ship building philosophy of the US Navy (as with the Constitution-class of sailing frigates), these ships were to be larger and heavier-armed than similar ships in their class and be fast enough to outrun anything larger. The USS Merrimack, Wabash, Roanoke, and Colorado were
all named for US rivers; the Minnesota was named for the territory at the time (not yet a state). All were armed with 24 to 28 IX inch Dahlgren smoothbore shell guns on the main gun deck. These were supplemented with 8-inch shell guns in broadside and a 10-inch gun (typically mounted forward) on the spar deck.

At the time they were built, these were among the most formidable warships in the world, although they were somewhat slow (generally not able to exceed 8 knots under steam), and their deep draft proved to be a considerable handicap in the shallow inshore waters and bays of the southeastern US and Gulf coasts during the war. The Wabash saw service in the South Atlantic blockading squadron, serving as DuPont’s and Dahlgren’s flagship. The Merrimack was burned at the start of the war in the Washington Navy Yard and as we know, was resurrected as the ironclad CSS Virginia. The Minnesota was the flagship of Flag Officer Stringham in the Atlantic blockading squadron, and remained Goldsborough’s flagship when he took command of the North Atlantic blockading squadron. Both Minnesota and Roanoke were present at Hampton Roads during that first clash of the ironclads; the Minnesota was driven aground by the Virginia, which would have returned the next day to destroy her if not for the defense by USS Monitor.
The Roanoke was present offshore of Hampton Roads that day and could not enter the harbor because of her draft, although even if she did, she couldn’t have done anything to help her sister ship against the Virginia. The USS Colorado began her war service in the Gulf blockading squadron, serving off the Mississippi River and Mobile Bay; she ended the war in the North Atlantic squadron and was a participant in the assault on Fort Fisher.

A sixth ship in this class was the USS Niagra (named after Fort Niagra, captured from the British by American forces in the War of 1812). Designed by George Steers, he envisioned a warship with the lines and speed of a clipper ship and an armament comparable to the other frigates in her class. To accomplish this, he had to make her immense, displacing in excess of 5,000 tons and over 300’ in length. Despite her size, she did turn out to be a very fast ship, making 10-11 knots under steam and up to16 knots when under sail power. Initially she was armed only with weapons on her spar deck; XI inch Dahlgren guns on pivots. In the middle of the war she was refitted with twenty XI inch Dahlgrens in broadside on her main gun deck, along with the spar deck armament, but the weight of this gunnery made her main deck gunports dangerously low along the waterline and the main deck broadside guns were removed. She was a participant in two historic events prior to the war: helping to lay the first transatlantic cable and transporting the first Japanese delegation to the US back home to Japan. In the Civil War, she saw service in both Atlantic and Gulf squadrons and in the latter half of the war was deployed overseas keeping tabs on Confederate warships being constructed in European shipyards.

RESOURCES

Canney, Donald L. Lincoln’s Navy. The Ships, Men and Organization, 1861-65. London: Conway Maritime Press, 1998.

Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships: http://www.history.navy.mil/danfs/index.html