An untested weapon often produces surprising results.
Sixteen-year old Ensign Mercutio Albert Palmer, having never dropped the
torpedo while underway and distracted to the edge of paralysis by shot whizzing
over and into his vessel, closed his eyes and misjudged the release. Rather
than striking Monitor at its waterline, as intended, the late release of the
torpedo caused it to strike the turret at the point where one of its Dahlgrens
exited the gunport. The resulting explosion funneled directly into the turret through
that gap, instantly killing every man inside with concussion as well as
igniting a powder charge being inserted into the cannon. Popping rivets
actually killed two men on Hart. Its way partially checked by the force of the
torpedo, Semmes’s ship still stuck Monitor hard enough to knock the Union
warship’s engine shaft out of alignment, though the vessel’s overhanging armor
prevented a rupture of its hull. Semmes, thrown from his feet by the collision,
ordered his engine put astern as flames poured from the shattered turret of the
now drifting Monitor. Within ten minutes, he had ascertained that four men had
been killed and two were missing (all from the bow of the ship), while six men
had suffered various injuries below deck. More importantly, his Hart’s heavily
reinforced bow had withstood the explosion and the ramming without major
damage. Ordering a replacement crew to ready a new spar torpedo, he steamed for
the Galena, now engaging the slower Alabama within range of the Rip Raps
battery. Closer to Fortress Monroe, Naugatuck’s iron hull was proving no match
for Virginia’s rifled cannon. With its single gun dismounted and the hull
shattered and leaking in several places, Naugatuck turned towards the open
waters of the Chesapeake at best speed.
Lieutenant Carter and the inexperienced crew of the
Confederate flagship were having a tough time of things. In a running battle
with the nimbler Galena, Carter had inadvertently allowed his vessel to close
with the heavy Union battery on the Rip Raps. At close range, the solid shot
could, if not penetrate, then severely buckle or loosen casemate armor. Worse,
such hits caused great splinters to fly from the oak backing of the plates,
killing or injuring a number of men in Alabama’s casemate. But disaster, when it
struck, came from a light pivot gun on Galena. Commodore Lynch had just ordered
Carter to close Virginia when a shell struck the observation slit in Alabama’s
pilothouse. Jagged metal splinters decapitated the Commodore, disemboweled the
helmsman, and ripped away Carter’s left arm. At full speed and rudder locked
amidships by the now unconscious hand of its captain, the flagship headed
directly into the Chesapeake—a beeline for the remainder of Goldsborough’s
squadron.
Galena turned to follow, but its first officer noticed Hart,
coming ahead at full steam. He ordered his guns turned on it a mere minute
before a parting shot from Alabama smashed into the quarterdeck, sending that
brave man to his eternal reward. Columns of water rose around Hart, a difficult
target due to its approaching aspect and its great speed. One round hit its
angled bow, and glanced away. Another whistled low over the deck before
penetrating the funnel. Then just as its spar torpedo dropped into contact low
on Galena’s stern quarter, a shot ripped completely through Hart’s unfinished
wheelhouse. Blasted by the force of the exploding torpedo, its wheel splintered
and its rudder swinging freely, Hart clipped the stern of the Union ironclad,
then began an uncontrolled, full speed turn back into the waters of Hampton
Roads. Galena, shipping water through its ruptured stern, quickly lost power
and grounded on a sandbar near the Rip Raps, out of the battle.
Though he had observed Semmes incapacitate Monitor, Jones
remained unaware of the tragedies playing out on Hart and Alabama, both of
which appeared to be moving under their own power and direction. His vessel had
suffered minimal damage thus far in the engagement, and since the commodore was
obviously taking his flagship directly for the remaining Union ships, how could
Jones not do likewise? Ordering full speed ahead, Jones was pleased to see that
both Virginia and Alabama would hit the Union line at about the same time.
Meanwhile, the wooden gunboats lagging behind the Confederate ironclads
increased their speed, except for Teaser, which slowed to pluck a battered
Ensign Palmer from the water, then closed to accept the surrender of the
smashed Monitor. The premier Union ironclad would eventually reach Gosport
under tow—a visible sign of Confederate naval might.
Goldsborough, having watched his strongest vessels shattered
by the Confederate ironclads, formed his 11 available ships into a line of
battle and waited for the oncoming enemy. Anchored by the 50-gun screw frigates
Minnesota and Roanoke, as well as the 44-gun sailing frigate St Lawrence (towed
by the steam tug Dragon), eight additional lightly armed screw and sidewheel
steamers prepared to greet the upstart Rebel navy with a storm of shot. As the
range closed, Virginia’s grizzled quartermaster whispered, “Looks like Hell’s a
comin’,” as the heavy Yankee ships disappeared behind a wall of flame-riven
smoke. A moment later, shot from the Union line rang like hail from the
casemate as it stripped away virtually every outside fitting and reduced
Virginia’s stack to an ill-drawing nub. Then thunder cracked as Confederate
gunners returned fire.
As Virginia approached the strong center of the Union line,
Alabama closed the more vulnerable side-wheelers forming its vanguard at the
oblique. Only as the flagship’s guns had fallen silent after engaging Galena
had executive officer Donald Clarence Collins, stationed on the gundeck,
discovered the carnage in the pilothouse. By the time the fallen men had been
carried below and control of the vessel regained, shot was again striking the
ironclad’s hull. Collins ordered fire returned, then a hard turn to port that
he hoped would bring the ungainly Alabama parallel to the Union line at close
range.
By the time Jones’s ship reached the enemy line, funnel
damage had reduced its best speed to less than four knots, allowing Roanoke to
dodge its dangerous ram with ease. Though three of Virginia’s guns were out of
action (one with its muzzle blown away, two more with shutters jammed closed),
those that remained raked Roanoke’s stern and Minnesota’s bow with devastating
accuracy. Two shot bounced the length of Roanoke’s gundeck, temporarily
disabling fully a third of its guns and puncturing its funnel between decks. As
thick black smoke filled the gundeck and poured from the vessel’s gunports,
panic seized some of the warship’s crew. They leaped into the chill waters of
the Chesapeake to escape a ship they thought aflame.
Though only one round stuck Minnesota, the gun captain
firing it had the presence of mind to load two bags of grape atop the solid
shot. The 1-inch balls scythed through the Union crews laboring at their heavy
bow chasers, and snapped lines and stays that whipped in their own dance of
death. The heavy shot smashed into the foremast of the steam-frigate. Its stays
cut away by grape, the mast toppled, crashing into Minnesota’s funnel as it
fell. Furled sails caught on the ragged edge of the stack, then ignited as
embers from the ship’s boilers spewed from below. Some guns fell silent as the
Union flagship’s captain ordered his men to deal with the more immediate danger
posed by fire and tangled wreckage. Those gunners remaining at their posts
redoubled their efforts as Virginia cleared the Union line and again crossed
their sights. To their amazement, the Confederate ironclad appeared to have
lost all headway, and was now drifting stern first less than 20 yards from the
Minnesota’s heavy artillery.
Alabama’s turn to port had placed it less than 50 yards from
the Union van, four wooden sidewheelers equipped with one or two medium caliber
guns each. To Lieutenant Collins, gazing from the battered vision slit of the
abattoir that was Alabama’s pilothouse, this seemed an unequal contest as his
heavier guns shattered the sidewheel of the leading vessel. A roar accompanied
the explosion of its boiler, taking the now sinking vessel out of the contest.
He changed his mind when the fourth ship in line turned towards his ironclad,
the reinforced ram at its bow looming larger by the second. With one of
Alabama’s bow pivot guns engaged to starboard and unaware of the menace fast
approaching, the other had time for only one round before the ram would
strike—and it missed. The bow-to-bow collision tossed the men of both ships
like rag dolls. Had the Yankee ram struck Alabama at a right angle, it may well
have penetrated its thinner hull armor. As it was, the Union steamer’s
reinforced bow glanced off the even heavier prow of the ironclad, then scraped
the length of its port side. The scraping did little damage to the ironwork of
Alabama, but the starboard paddlewheel of the Union steamer smashed itself
against the Confederate ship’s hardened bow. Then, pressed firmly against the
enemy hull by its rapidly spinning port paddlewheel, the steamer’s frail wooden
sides encountered the projecting eaves of Alabama’s casemate. The iron eaves
gouged several planks from the Union vessel’s side. Ten minutes later, the
damage so severe that its crew could not stem the inrushing sea, the plucky
steamer sank. By that time, the two remaining steamers had turned out of line,
hoping that rapid maneuver would serve where armor was lacking. Collins left
them for his wooden consorts now joining the battle, and shaped a course for a
cloud of smoke less than a half mile away. The stab of flames within it marked
the location of an uneven battle between Virginia and the remainder of the
Union fleet.
The Virginia drifted, boxed by the three Union frigates and
the four smaller vessels that had trailed them. In some sense a victim of its
own success, its single screw had fouled a length of hawser lost by Roanoke
early in the engagement. Over a dozen shells a minute, some fired ranges of
less than 30 yards, struck Virginia as it lay helpless. Even an ironclad had
its limits, and sheared bolts and oaken splinters screamed inside its hellishly
hot, smoke-filled casemate. One enemy shell exploded as it struck an aft
gunport, shutters already jammed open by an earlier blow. Upending a Brookes
Rifle and killing every man of its crew, the carnage from that single shot
added a little more depth to the inch of blood already seeking drainage from
the casemate’s deck.
Deafened by the cannonade, Jones felt rather than heard the
cessation of Union shot ringing on battered armor as he staggered from the
pilothouse across the shambles of his gundeck to check his remaining two guns.
Had the squadron finally arrived? He glanced through a shattered gunport in
time to see the reinforced bow of a Union gunboat block his view. Deaf or not,
he heard the crushing blow delivered to the mid-section of his command. Flung
to the deck, Jones’s world turned red as the blood of his dead filled his mouth
and eyes while pain coursed through his newly broken left arm. Consciousness
briefly fled, its restoration matched the return of a hail of enemy shot. Below
deck, his crew fought to staunch seams sprung by the enemy ram. Virginia’s
three inches of good Tredegar iron backed by 24 inches of solid oak had
held—barely. Wiping blood from his eyes, Jones looked again through the
shattered port. The Union gunboat, disabled by a fortunate shot from one of his
remaining guns, limped slowly away, but a brief rift in the smoke showed a
second ram, scarcely 300 yards distant, bearing down on the helpless Virginia.
The smoke dropped again, and Jones braced himself for the blow to come, and for
the death to follow. Finally the steamer, a vee of water streaming from its
bow, surged from the manmade mist—on a course that would miss Virginia
completely! Jones did not trust his eyes as a ragged fellow, blood dripping
from numerous wounds and one hand on the remaining spokes of a splintered
wheel, saluted his command. Thirty seconds later, Raphael Semmes slammed Hart
of the Confederacy into the side of Roanoke.
Of the five men crowded around Hart’s poorly shielded wheel
when Galena’s shot had struck home, only Semmes survived. Dazed and bleeding
from numerous lacerations (upon his eventual death at age 79, an autopsy would
recover seven metal splinters lodged in his body from this day’s action), it
had taken long minutes for his crew to extract him from the wreckage and to
regain control of their ship. Having broken immediate contact with the enemy,
Semmes paused to take stock of his vessel. Though the attack on Galena had
destroyed the spar torpedo fittings and wrecked the quarterdeck of his command,
neither speed nor maneuverability had been impaired. His guns had fired only
one or two rounds each so far (at high speed—Semmes’s preferred speed—fire was
inaccurate and water tended to enter through their gunports). Most importantly,
the ram-bow showed no sign of weakness or leakage.
Then Semmes ordered full steam for the distant cloud of
smoke surrounding the engagement between Goldsborough and the Confederate
squadron. Circling the rear of the Union line, Hart rammed a surprised gunboat,
shearing completely through its foredeck, then slowed to let his guns engage a
second steamer before aligning his warship on the center of the smoke covered
fracas. Gathering speed, he saluted Virginia (which from visible damage, he
expected to sink anytime), then rammed one of its three large tormentors.
Roanoke, already battered by shots from Virginia and now engaged on its
starboard side by Alabama, immediately began to sink. Locked into his prey by
the inrush of seawater, Semmes backed engines to no avail. The weight of the
sinking vessel pulled Hart’s bow so far down that the tips of its rapidly
spinning screw actually emerged from the sea. Then Hart popped free, though not
without cost as its abused engine coughed and died. Cursing, Semmes ordered his
guns to open fire on Minnesota and his engineers to get the engine working.
Caught in a crossfire between the remaining guns of the Confederate ironclads,
the bulk of his squadron sunk or dispersed beyond his control and his own ship
heavily damaged, Goldsborough ordered his flag hauled down. At 2.58 p.m. on
April 12, St Lawrence, unable to escape in the light onshore breezes, followed
suit. Only the tug Dragon and the damaged Naugatuck escaped the debacle to take
word of the defeat to Washington.
To Victory
Rumor spread, and with it panic: the strong Rebel squadron
was steaming up the Chesapeake; it would bombard Washington and bring Maryland
forcibly into the Confederacy; it had been sighted in Delaware Bay, heading for
the shipyards of Philadelphia or the teeming docks of New York. While governors
and mayors sent telegram after telegram to the White House begging for soldiers
and guns, Union Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, ordered ships scuttled to
block the Potomac, and Lincoln sent the few regiments that he could spare to
Baltimore, intent on holding Maryland in the Union. More than aware of the
vulnerable position of the slow-moving McClellan’s Army of the Potomac on the
James Peninsula, Lincoln ordered him to capture Richmond now or to begin
shifting his army back to northern Virginia. Convinced by Confederate deception
and the incompetence of his personal intelligence operatives that any advance
on Richmond would meet defeat at the hands of superior numbers, Little Mac called
for transports and hunkered in his entrenchments opposite Yorktown. The
besieger had become the besieged.
In truth, the victorious Confederate ironclads were in less
than pristine condition. Jones, his broken arm in a sling, took command of the
Alabama, and the heartbreakingly battered Virginia limped for Gosport with some
200 of the squadron’s wounded aboard. The severely handled prize Minnesota went
with it. Semmes, his engines repaired, reported to Jones that his vessel was
ready for combat, hiding the fact that long stints at the pumps were required
each hour to keep Hart afloat, and that, despite the efforts of his engineer,
Hart’s steam plant could offer only 12 knots at best. Anchoring the St
Lawrence, its cannon manned by gunners rapidly shipped from Gosport, to block
entry to the harbor at Fortress Monroe, Jones left two gunboats to support it
and steamed with the remainder of his squadron around the Peninsula and into
the York River. For four weeks, his squadron reinforced by a trickle of Confederate
gunboats converted from captured Union transports, Jones blockaded the James
Peninsula. Daily skirmishes with Union gunboats took a toll on both sides, but
few supplies arrived for the trapped Union army, and even fewer men were
successfully withdrawn from the peninsula. Virginia, its worst injuries barely
repaired and its guns replaced, rejoined the squadron in ten days. Jones
returned to its deck in time to face a Union fleet hastily recalled from a
planned invasion of New Orleans and intent on breaking the blockade and
extricating the hungry and demoralized Army of the Potomac. In exchange for his
right eye, lost to a cutlass when desperate Union sailors actually boarded
Virginia, Jones won the Second Battle of the Capes.
Meanwhile, in the fertile Shenandoah Valley of Virginia,
Confederate General Jackson smashed the Union forces arrayed against him once
Stanton shifted regiments and even brigades from that arena to defend
Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York from a feared invasion. Then
he entrained his battle-tested corps to support the Confederate siegelines at
Yorktown. The hurried recall of Union troops from the western fields of battle
to the east allowed Confederate forces to recover from the bloody struggle at
Shiloh Church in early April and regain Nashville. On April 30, Commodore
Buchanan led two new ironclads and a score of wooden warships down the
Mississippi from New Orleans and soundly defeated its Union blockaders. Wiring
Richmond that “The Father of Waters again runs unvexed to the sea,” he then
directed his vessels in a lightning campaign that saw all significant Union
naval presence driven from the Gulf of Mexico.
On May 15, President Abraham Lincoln slumped at his desk.
Two messages rested between his outstretched arms. One, a request from
McClellan to be allowed to surrender his starving army to the Confederacy,
noted that General Robert E. Lee (the replacement for General Joseph E.
Johnston, wounded by a Union sharpshooter in front of the Yorktown lines)
offered most generous terms. The other, delivered that morning by the
ambassador from Great Britain, declared that Britain would soon move to
recognize the Confederate States of America formally as a sovereign nation with
all the rights thereof. Her majesty’s ambassador had advised the president that
where Britain led, the remainder of Europe would soon follow. Further, Union
interference with British trade into ports where, obviously, a blockade no
longer existed, would be met with far more than words. Three days later,
McClellan surrendered his army to General Lee and Fortress Monroe to Captain
Catesby ap R. Jones of the ironclad Virginia.
Aftermath
On June 30, 1862, representatives signed the treaty that
officially ended the brief Civil War and recognized the Confederate States of
America as a sovereign nation in its own right. Ten years later, June 30 would
become an official holiday in the Confederacy: Navy Day, in honor of the
service that had contributed so much to establish the new nation. That
particular day would never be celebrated in the old Union, where flags still
fly at half-mast and 26 forever empty seats in the senate chambers are draped
in black each June 30—a silent protest at what Mallory and his navy once
accomplished.
The Reality
Stephen Mallory, though he did much in creating a navy for
the Confederacy, did not perform the miracles needed to win independence for
his homeland. Be thankful for that. Victory would have meant the continuation
of the institution of slavery, an institution that the South would not have
willingly abandoned for generations (if at all). Even now, the lingering
remnants of the mentality created by that old evil erodes much slower than one
could wish.
Sherman, in his letter to David Boyd, had the right of it.
The greater resources and mechanical might of the North created a basis for
victory almost impossible for the weaker Confederacy to overcome, while the blockade
discouraged the importation of war materials desperately needed in the South.
Add to that the disorganized and sometimes almost inexplicable actions of the
Confederate state and national governments, and the miracle is that the
rebellion continued into 1865. Nowhere was the disorganization of the
Confederacy more apparent than in its attempts to construct a navy.
The Confederacy laid the keels for over 20 ironclads (in
almost as many locations as there were warships built). Often constructed in
cornfields instead of proper yards, this haphazard collection of vessels was
meant to challenge the offensive might of the ever-strengthening Union Navy.
Unsurprisingly, the challenge failed. Built of often sub-standard materials by
unskilled labor, the ironclads were invariably underpowered. Strive as bravely
as they might, the inexperienced crews of Confederate ironclads were unable to
resist Northern incursions, especially those supported by concentrations of
Union ironclads, much less break the blockade of Confederate ports.
Yet control of the sea offered the best chance for the South
to win the Civil War. Its ports kept open for European imports and a denial of
Union amphibious capability would have concentrated more resources in Southern
armies. Perhaps with more resources, the talented commanders of Confederate
armies could have won the key struggles ashore. Or, perhaps, had Mallory been a
true Southern Themistocles, the Confederate States Navy could have won the war
for them.
Bibliography
Denny, Robert E., The Civil War Years: A Day-by-Day
Chronicle of the Life of a Nation (Sterling Publishing, New York, 1992).
Foote, Shelby, The Civil War: A Narrative, Fort Sumter to
Perryville (Random House, New York, 1986).
Miller, Nathan, The U.S. Navy: A History, 3d ed. (Naval
Institute Press, Annapolis, 1997).
Morrill, Dan, The Civil War in the Carolinas (Nautical &
Aviation Publishing Company of America, Charleston, 2002).
Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the
War of Rebellion, (Government Printing Office, Washington, 1894–1927).
Still, William N., Jr., Iron Afloat: The Story of the
Confederate Armorclads (University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, 1985).
Symonds, Craig L., The Naval Institute Historical Atlas of
the U.S. Navy (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 1995).
By Wade G. Dudley
