What Happened To 'Em Part V. The Union Ships at The Battle of Mobile Bay

What Happened To 'Em Part V

The Union Navel Force at the The Battle Of Mobile Bay

As I noted in the last post (Which was far, far too long ago...Sadly routine life sometimes gets in the way of things like, oh, I dunno, working on a Blog) the collection of navel vessels at The Civil War's largest navel battle just begs for a couple of  'What Happened To 'Em '  posts. I took care of the Confederate Naval Force last time. The US Navy...known as the Union Navy during the Civil War...gets it's turn this go-round.

This one's going to be just a bit more complicated, and way longer, than the 'What Happened To 'Em ' post for the Confederate Naval Force. There were four Confederate Navy ships at Mobile Bay, but there were eighteen Union ships, so we're going to split this one up into sections (And indeed, subsections).

Also, most of the Union Navy ships didn't have overly blog-worthy careers after the battle...they and their crews did their jobs and duty and did it well, but the most notable part of their career was The Battle of Mobile Bay.

OF course, that wasn't the case for all eighteen.

You have an ironclad that has become what's likely the most complete example of a Union Navy Monitor type Ironclad in existence...and she's completely inaccessible. Another ironclad...this one a twin turret river monitor...was in service, sort of, until the 1950s.

The ships of the line? One was around until 1956...and her story is not only sad, it's tragic, especially if you're a History Buff. Another was involved in one of the most controversial incidents of the late 18^th century...a deadly incident that caused a major British shipping line to be banned from American ports for decades and put a memorial to the crew of a U.S. Navy ship place smack dab in the middle of a city that would be a major Axis port during WW II. This incident has earned this particular ship a place in two of my blogs, BTW. A third was carried a mile inland by a Tsunami and deposited high and dry on a nearly even keel.

I'm going to divide this post into sections...Ironclads, Ships Of The Line, and Gunboats...with subdivisions within each for the ships with the more interesting after-battle histories. Ok, now that the Technical doin's of this post are taken care of...on the The Ships!

First a real real quick review of how Dave Farragut set things up for The Battle of Mobile Bay...for a more in-depth description of the battle, take a look HERE for my post on the battle.

He had to engage, and get past both Fort Morgan, on the eastern side of the bay's entrance, and the heavily armed Confederate ironclad CSS Tennessee to take the bay. He had to do this with his ships and crews intact. And he had to pass between the fort and a minefield (Called 'Torpedoes' back during the Civil War) to do it.

So he sent his four turreted ironclads...Tecumseh, Manhattan, Winnebago, and Chickasaw...in to deal with the CSS Tennessee and engage the fort while he slipped his fourteen unarmored wooden ships past. Tecumseh and Manhattan and their pair each of big 15 inch Dahlgren cannon were there specifically to deal with CSS Tennessee while the Winnebago and Chickasaw were there, with twin turrets and four 11 inch guns each, to keep Fort Morgan's gunners busy. 

There would be seven Ships Of The Line, all Sloops of War, and seven gunboats passing the fort. Admiral Farragut lashed the gunboats to the port sides of the sloops so the gunboats' engines could pull the larger ships clear in the event they became disabled. All of them needed to stay to the right of a set of buoys marking the minefield. OH, yeah. They also had to contend with CSS Tennessee as her  main reason for being was to prevent just what Dave Farragut and Company were trying to pull off.. 

So they had business toward the fort and the bay, started engaging Fort Morgan's guns, annnnnd....

CSS Tennessee sortied, obviously intent on positioning to engage and ram the ships of the line as they cleared Fort Morgan Point, the narrow peninsula that Fort Morgan sits on the tip of.

USS Tecumseh's captain saw this, and ordered her helmsman to maneuver to engage Tennessee, ordering her helm to port, and heading right into the torpedoes, striking one. The ensuing explosion blows a barn-door size hole in her hull, and she goes down in a minute and a half, taking most of her crew with her...

THE IRONCLADS

USS Tecumseh

USS Tecumseh did not have a long career. Her keel was laid in late 1862, she was launched in Sept of 1863, commissioned in April of 1864...and she made that fateful turn to port and had a barn door opened in her side by a torpedo on August fifth of that same year, so she was in commission for a shade under 4 months, meaning she was essentially still brand new when she was sunk.

A highly detailed model of USS Tecumseh, photographed from her starboard bow. The torpedo got her just forward of her turret, about where the first of the three supports below the center of the model's hull is, below her armored raft, blowing a hole in her hull about the size of a garage door. Not having any watertight bulkheads, she filled all but instantly, going down in under 90 seconds.

She was a Canonicus class Monitor, and like all of her sister ships she was named after an Indian Chief. It took almost 18 months to build her...a long long time back th the 1860s...due to changes being rung in her design almost daily as battle experience with other monitors revealed weakness in design. Among other changes, the thickness of the armor on her turret and pilot house was increased by two inches, from 8” to 10”, her turret was relocated to 'Trim' her properly, her hull was deepened (Increasing her buoyancy...but also increasing her draft) and bolts securing her armor were replaced by rivets to prevent the bolts from becoming deadly missiles from a hit.

She was 223 feet long with a beam of 43 feet and a draft of 13 feet and change. She was powered by an 310 HP Ericsson-type vibrating lever engine that turned a single 4 bladed screw to give her a top speed of 8 knots (Well below her designed top speed of 13 knots). As I noted above, she boasted a pair of huge 15" Dahlgren smooth-bore cannon...the largest naval artillery that could be had in 1864.

She was originally assigned to the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, based in Newport News, Va, and her first sortie was to escort the transports carrying General Ben Butler's Army Of The James up-river to kick off the Bermuda Hundred Campaign. She helped sink obstructions in the river to bottle the Confederate forces up north of Bermuda Hundred (Which is just north of City Point, where the James and Appomattox Rivers become one, and within sight of where I work), fired on breast works under construction, and, along with her sister ships Canonicus and Saugus, had it out with several gun emplacements near Howlett's Farm, knocking one of the guns out in the process. She also exchanged shots with Confederate warships near Dutch Gap (The CSN Naval Academy ship Patrick Henry likely among them) in an indecisive battle. The warships were firing all but blind as the two opposing forces were hidden from each other by trees and a bend in the river.

She headed back down river for Norfolk two days later, only to run aground when her steering cables parted after being weakened by the heat from her boilers (Likely creating yet another mod to be made on Monitors, both already in service and abuilding). She was refloated, towed into Norfolk, underwent repairs, and got orders transferring her to the West Gulf Blockading squadron. She departed Hampton Roads heading South on July 5^th. She'd meet her date with a torpedo exactly a month later.

This painting by Xanthus Smith of Tecumseh enroute to Mobile Bay is one of the few views of Tecumseh of any kind. Note the canopies above her deck and on her turret...below decks on a Civil War ironclad in August in the Gulf of Mexico was not the place to be if you could avoid it. The crew spent as much time topside as possible.

When Tecumseh hit the torpedo, it struck on the port side just about directly below the turret, and the explosion was beyond huge, boosting a geyser of white water dozens of feet into the morning air, and sending a double thunderclap across the bay as the sound was transmitted through both air and water. According to witnesses Tecumseh's bow actually lifted several feet out of the water, then just kept on going when it came down, twisting her as she sank by the bow with her propeller still turning. She took 93 of her crew with her...many of them were either killed or injured by the torpedo explosion and those who weren't injured barely had time to comprehend what had just happened, much less try to get off of her. Estimates of how long it took her to go down range from 25 seconds to a minute and a half. Escape would have been all but impossible even on the long end of that scale. There were relatively few ways to get on deck, all involving climbing a vertical ladder, and by the time anyone still able to try to escape made it to one of the few routes topside, climbed the ladder, and got to a hatch, she was under. This even included her two gun crews, who were trapped in the turret. So Tecumseh still has 93 of her crew on board, making her a war grave. And this set up the first bit of controversy involving her.

The wreck lay on the bottom of Mobile bay, forgotten, for several years. She was deep enough that she wasn't a navigation hazard, and while most everyone knew she was there and had a good idea about where 'There' was, she kind of slipped out of everyone's mind. That is, until several individuals realized just how much valuable scrap metal was sitting on the bottom of various bays and rivers courtesy Civil War naval battles. A Mobile businessman named James Slaughter was thinking along those very lines in 1873 when he bid on Tecumseh's wreck for the sum of 50 dollars, and won the bid. The Department Of The Treasury passed title to him and Slaughter made his intentions more than clear...he intended to have divers plant explosives on the wreck so he could blow it apart, thereby exposing her boilers and machinery for salvage as well as breaking her hull into pieces small enough to raise and sell for scrap.

One problem here...or actually, 93 problems. What about the remains of the brave sailors who went down with her? Slaughter obviously didn't give a rats ass about them, and sadly, it seems that the Navy forgot about them as well. The Media grabbed this story and ran with it. True, Newspapers were the only way to distribute the news to the public back in the1870s, but distribution of news had advanced leaps and bounds over what it had been a quarter century earlier. Two things helped speed the distribution of news nationwide...the Telegraph, and the oldest News Agency in the U.S., The Associated Press.

The A.P. Grabbed the story of the businessman who, in the name of profit, intended to blow up the remains of 93 brave sailors who made the supreme sacrifice for their country, newspapers published the story and the public went ballistic. You think the public was irate? The families of those 93 men pretty much wanted to take a trip to Mobile, Alabama and deal with Mr Slaughter personally. Me thinks it would not have been pleasant for him.

The negative publicity put the project on hold before it even got going. More than a little negative publicity was heaped on the Federal Government for selling a War Grave for salvage in the first place, and Congress actually realized 'We Blew This One' fairly quickly. Amazingly, they acted to fix it real fast. They quickly passed Joint Resolution No. 23 on 15 August of 1876, directing the Dept Of The Treasury to return Mr Slaughter's 50 dollars with interest, and directing the Navy to regain ownership of the wreck while also empowering the Secretary Of The Navy to protect it.. While salvage wasn't forbidden, a very important stipulation was made...ANY salver had to see to the proper handling and identification of the remains, and return them to their families if identification was possible. If Identification was not feasible (And with the technology existing in 1876, it likely wouldn't have been) they were to see to proper burial of the remains. There were no more bids on the wreck for salvage.

So, Tecumseh's wreck sat on the bottom, slowly sinking into the mud, for a century. Once in a while divers ventured down to explore the wreck, occasionally items were removed...and then came 1965.

The National Geographic Society organized a project to raise the ship, and articles were even published in both newspapers and periodicals describing the process that would be involved. She was to be the centerpiece of a National Armed Forces Museum Park in D.C., which would have meant transporting her by barge after she was raised and preservation efforts had been accomplished.

They found her, upside down and mostly buried in the bottom mud. Me Thinks they they really didn't understand what would be required to raise and preserve a nearly 225 foot long 2100 ton warship that had been submerged for a century, but they were willing to give it a shot. ANNNNND...their primary source of funds had to back out, ending that project. Divers did make it inside of her though, and raised her bell as well as chinaware from her crew's or possibly Officer's Mess, among other artifacts and these items were put on display at the Smithsonian. The divers reported that she seemed to be in a remarkable state of preservation.

Location of Tecumseh wreck site, from Wikimapia.

She slowly sank further into the mud for another decade until Mobile Naval Historian Jack Friend was tapped to lead a feasibility study RE: Raising Her. They surveyed the wreck, entered her and explored her and were amazed. See, that mud she's buried in? It's preserved her. Yes, she's in one piece, upside down and lying on top of her turret. Loaded with 50,000 or so artifacts. The white paint on her interior bulkheads supposedly looked like it had just been applied. In short, Tecumseh's a literal time capsule. 

It was estimated that it'd cost 10 million to raise and preserve her and properly and respectfully handle the remains of her crew back in 1974. Multiply that by about ten today, so she's probably not coming to a museum near you anytime soon. But some things have gotten much better for her. She's been added to the register of National Historic Places, and is, of course, considered a War Grave. Technically she still belongs to the U.S, Navy. And don't even think about trying to dive on her without a permit. Drop a 'Divers In The Water' flag above the wreck and, trust me, you'd barely even get an anchor in the water before a Coast Guard patrol boat was boiling up next to you with her guns manned, a Coastie hailing you in a no nonsense tone of voice.

So she's still there, about 1500 feet or so off of Fort Morgan Point, marked by a can buoy, waiting for someone to figure out how to raise her and give her crew a proper Military Funeral.. For now her 93 crew members are still On Watch, peacefully guarding the Entrance to Mobile Bay.

USS Manhattan

USS Manhattan  was one of USS Tecumseh's sister ships and was identical to her right down to the design changes during construction that delayed her completion. She was launched in October1863 (A month after Tecumseh), commissioned in June 1864 (Two months  after her sister ship) and, also like Tecumseh, she was nearly brand new when she participated in the battle of Mobile Bay. Unlike her sister ship, though, The Battle of Mobile Bay was Manhattan’s first taste of war…she was assigned to the Gulf Coast Blockading Squadron when she was commissioned, and dispatched to Mobile Bay as soon as her sea trials were completed. Of course, Manhattan also survived the battle.

An 1860s lithograph of USS Manhattan at sea.

After the battle she steamed to New Orleans, and was assigned to patrol duties at the mouth of the Red River, where she stayed for the rest of the war. After the war she was decommissioned and mothballed (‘Put In Ordinary’ as it was termed then) until 1870, when she was transferred to Pensacola Florida…from there she steamed to Philly, where she underwent a year-long refit at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. After her refit she returned to Pensacola, and was utilized for patrol duties off of the Carolinas until 1877. She was then transferred to Norfolk, and either steamed or was towed a little further up the James River with each passing month until she ended up moored at Richmond Va. (More on that in 'Notes'...trust me it's an interesting little story)

Personally, I think the Navy was trying to figure out what they were going to do with her. And decide they ultimately did.  In 1888, she steamed to League Island in Philadelphia…home of the Philadelphia Navy Yard and of The Navy Reserve Fleet. She was decommissioned and laid up in the reserve fleet, to be recommissioned and pressed into service in 1898, along with several of her sister ships, for coastal defense duty off the East Coast during the Spanish-American War. She was in commission for this task for less than a year before again being decommissioned and returned to League Island, where she stayed until she was sold for scrap in 1902.

USS Chickasaw

USS Chickasaw and USS Winnebago were sister ships, both being shallow draft Milwaukee class twin turret river monitors, both mounting a quartet of 11 inch Dahlgrens in those twin turrets, two guns to a turret. Both were just shy of 230 feet long with a beam of 56 feet and an extremely shallow draft of 6 ft that allowed them to operate efficiently on rivers. Chickasaw was ordered in 1862, launched on February 10^th, 1863, commissioned on May 14th, 1864, and spent a couple of months patrolling the Mississippi before she was assigned, by request, to Admiral Farragut's West Gulf Blockading Squadron in July, 1864...just In time for the Battle of Mobile Bay

Chickasaw mounted a pair of Eriksson design turrets, very similar to Monitor's. Winnebago (And the other three Milwaukee class boats) mounted a single Eriksson-type turret and a single Eades-type all-steam powered turret. As similar as the two sisters were, what happened to them is about 180 degrees ... and nearly a century...apart. USS Chickasaw...or at least portions of her...were around until the 1950s, so we'll take a look at her first. 

A period photo of USS Chickasaw...

 

...And a modern digital rendering of her. The cone-topped tower is her conning tower/wheel house and the frames visible in both images supported canopies that were used to shelter her crew during the steamy-hot summers of the Deep South. These frames could be quickly dismantled...or possibly folded downward...for battle.

Having a pair of Eriksson type turrets ended up being a major plus for her...though the turrets' rotation was steam powered all the other operations were powered by good old elbow grease. And, like a car with manual windows and locks a century and a half later, while it required a little more effort to operate there was far less to go wrong. Her two Eriksson turrets never missed a beat and she basically became Admiral Farragut's heavy hitter and big-gun workhorse for the entire battle.

She fired over 70 shells at fort Morgan, but her best trick of the battle was 'Crossing The T' at CSS Tennessee's stern and sticking to her like a leach while pumping 11 inch shell after 11 inch shell at her at ranges as close as 10 yards...yep, 30 feet...while getting hit eleven times herself. Chickasaw's gunners never managed to put a shell through the armor on Tennessee's casemate (One of USS Manhattan's 15 inch guns almost managed that one) but she did managed to jam most of Tennessee's gun port shutters, all but remove her funnel, and most importantly take out her steering chains, then towed her to the U S Fleet anchorage after she surrendered.

Then she shelled all three forts..Morgan, Gaines, and Powell... leaving shell holes in Fort Gains' wall that are still there. In short, If Admiral Farragut needed big guns to pummel a Confederate target, it was a pretty good bet that Chickasaw would get the job. She hung around Mobile Bay for the rest of the war, performing patrol duties and being put to work whenever her combination of big guns and shallow draft was needed. She participated in the battles of Spanish Fort and Fort Blakely (Arguably the last battles of the Civil War) and sortied up the Tombigbee River along with a pair of other warships to capture the side-wheel ironclad CSS Nashville, the gunboats Morgan and Baltic, and the riverboat Black Diamond.

That was pretty much her last hurrah...of the war, at any rate. She headed for New Orleans on July 3^rd to be decommissioned...a status she'd enjoy for nearly a decade. She was finally sold on September 12^th, 1874, and that's when her career took more of an interesting turn...see, unlike most former Civil War ironclads that survived the war, when she was sold, she wasn't sold for scrap.

She was purchased by the New Orleans Pacific Railway Co, whose marine division took a look at her, did some calculations, and picked her up, probably for a song or less.

The Navy removed her ordinance and turrets and likely salvaged some of her machinery, then The N.O. P. R.C. stripped her down to her bare hull, made a couple of modifications, and converted her into a coal barge. She spent another ten years and change transporting coal on The Mississippi, probably to supply their locomotives rather than for commerce.

I can hear everyone thinking 'So She Became a barge...so what?? Things got a bit more interesting in 1880...The N.O.P.R. needed a car ferry at one of it's crossings on the Mississippi. Saving money's always been high on the list of corporate America. The N.O. P. R.C. suits' thought process was likely along the lines of 'Why build a bridge when traffic volume's low enough that you can use a ferry, and why contract to build a new ferry from the keel up when you have a 225 foot long iron-hulled barge that was built as a warship originally, meaning she had lots of reserve rigidity, toughness, and capacity built into her. We'll just build the ferry on the barge's hull...' And that's  exactly what they did.

She was highly modified of course...She was rebuilt as a side wheeler with a two track car deck flanked by crews quarters and machinery spaces and an ornate pilothouse perched above the car deck,  renamed Gouldsboro, and placed in service at a crossing a bit north of New Orleans.

A 1938 pic of Chickasaw near the end of her third life as the New Orleans & Pacific Railroad car ferry Gouldsboro. She was converted to a barge both after she was struck from the Navy roles in 1874 and in the early 1940s, after her days as the Gouldsboro ended. Her hulk is buried beneath a levee north of New Orleans

She operated at a crossing near New Orleans and, as it was a short river crossing, she either had no passenger accommodations or very rudimentary ones. The locomotives would have kept steam up on the crossing, and in colder weather, the string of cars still coupled to the engine would be heated by steam from it's boiler. As for the detached string of coaches, I'd bet lunch at Applebees that there was a dedicated steam connection from the Gouldsboro's boilers for just that purpose.

At some point the N.O.R.C. either merged with or was purchased by the Texas and Pacific, and the Gouldsboro soldiered along, transporting trains across the Mississippi for another sixty or so years until 1939. (When, likely, she was finally replaced by a bridge). Oh she was rebuilt a couple of times and by the time she was sold again and converted into a work barge in the early or mid 40s about the only thing left from the original Chickasaw was her keel and part of her hull. But what was left of her was still the longest surviving in service vessel from The Civil War.

You'd think that once she was converted to a work barge, she's just fade on out to obscurity, ultimately being scrapped or just forgotten, rusting away at some backwater, and you'd almost be right...almost. For un-noted reasons she sank near New Orleans sometime in the mid-50s, and by all rights that should have been it. Should have, you may note I said.

For anyone not familiar with the Mississippi’s wandering ways, it does just that…wander, that is  The Mississippi regularly changes course, sometime a couple of times over the course of a half century. So, when a section of riverbank collapsed several miles above New Orleans in 2004 it didn't come as any surprise at all that said riverbank had, at some point in the past, been in the middle of the river.

 The Army Corps of Engineers was called in to repair and stabilize the collapse area and while they were surveying the collapse so they could figure out how to do just that, they struck metal. And after probing and digging, and probably using ground-penetrating radar/sonar they realized they had found a sunken barge. After consulting records and making inquiries, they realized they had found the remains of the Gouldsboro, AKA Chickasaw. 

Her hull’s in a pretty decent state of preservation, but as noted, only the keel and the bottom of the hull are original to the ironclad.  Digging her out and restoring her to her Civil War configuration was both practically and financially out of the question, but the Corps of Engineers does plan to preserve the wreck in place. 

USS Winnebago

 USS Winnebago was ordered in May of 1862, launched on the 4^th of July, 1963, and commissioned on April 7^th, 1864. Like Chickasaw, she spent several months patrolling the Mississippi before she was assigned to the Mobile Bay operation. Winnebago was Chickasaw's sister ship and, other than one big glaring difference was virtually identical to her.  That big difference, as I noted above, was the fact that one of Winnebago’s two turrets was one of the new Eades type turrets that had all  of it’s functions powered by steam. And, as often happens with new technology, that high-tech turret brought a lot of bugs with it to Mobile Bay. This became obvious in a huge way when she arrived off of Mobile Bay with her high-tech Eades turret jammed...and no amount of head-scratching, tinkering, prying, or cursing would unjam it. Even with this little ongoing problem she still managed to slug it out with Fort Morgan's guns, as well as taking on ten survivors from Tecumseh who had been rescued by one of USS Metacomet's boats.

After all of the ships of the line had entered Mobile Bay she suffered more mechanical bad luck when the Eriksson turret's rotating gear jammed as she was getting ready to engage CSS Tennessee, putting her out of that action completely. SOOOO, while Chickasaw became the hero and workhorse of the battle, Winnebago’s crew had to stand off from the action and watch her sister ship take on CSS Tennessee, very likely fuming and cursing any and all new technology as they watched. 

Their fates after the war were also 180 degrees apart….while at least  part of Chickasaw was still afloat nearly a century later, Winnebago didn’t even make it all the way through the next decade. OF course, there’s a reason for this.

 As happens at the end of any war, the military was immediately downsized at the end of The Civil War, and this of course included the U.S. Navy. Budgetary concerns, logistics, and plain old common sense kind of call for it. While any nation must keep a strong military up and running for it’s own protection, the need for wartime levels of manpower and resources just doesn’t exist during peacetime.

 USS Winnebago became a victim of this down-sizing when she ended up enjoying the shortest post-war career of any of the three surviving U.S. ironclads at Mobile Bay. She was laid up at New Orleans in September 1865, and stayed right there until 1874, when she was sold for scrap.

The Ships Of The Line

All of the Ships of The Line were steam and sail powered Sloops of War...a 19th century Sloop of War is generally defined as 'A warship with a single, usually open gun deck'...but they were of a couple of different classes, and enjoyed post war careers that ranged from Worthy Of their Own Post and a Place In History Post Battle of Mobile Bay to Routine Assignment-Shuffling until they were decommissioned and sold. Soooo, that being the case, I'm going to post the stories of the three Ships Of The Line with the most interesting (IMHO, anyway) post battle careers ...USS Hartford, USS Oneida, and USS Monongahela...first, with the other four following.

The Sad Fate OF The USS Hartford

As the weather warms up, flowers blossom, birds sing, and winter coats go into mothballs, it’s time to load the kids in the family highway cruiser, aim the front end towards Mobile, Ala, and take a tour of the immaculately restored USS Hartford…Oh, wait…ya can’t. You shoulda  been able to. And if things had gone the way they should‘ve gone, ya woulda been able too. But…well the Government was involved. We’ll get to what happened here in a bit…but first let’s take a look at Dave Farragut’s favorite floating war-horse. 

Lets get the vitals out of the way first. She was launched at Boston Navy Yard in November of 1858 and commissioned in May of 1859. She was 225 feet long with a beam of 44 feet and a draft of 17’2”.  For shootin' purposes. she mounted twenty 9” smooth bore  Dahlgren guns, a pair of 20 pounder Parrott rifles (Probably her bow mounted chase guns) as well as a pair of 12 pounder howitzers on wheeled carriages.  She had a single steam engine as well as a full suite of sails, and could cut through the water at a shade over 13 knots, or about 15 MPH.

Two views of an outstanding model of USS Hartford.

 

Hartford's first assignment was The East India Squadron (One of the forerunners of the legendary Asiatic Fleet), and while serving as the squadron flagship, she transported the U.S. Minister (Now called Ambassador) to China on a voyage that saw numerous ports of call. Not a bad assignment for her crew at all...Sailing to exotic ports, beautiful sunsets over the Pacific…

…And then cannon balls started falling on Fort Sumter.  Hartford was ordered home, sailed for Philly at the end of August, 1861, arrived at The Navy Yard on December 2^nd, and the next thing ya know, yard workers were scrambling all over her getting her fitted out for War, and a fella named David Farragut was told he was in command of The West Gulf Blockading Squadron, and that the Sloop Of War Hartford was to be his flagship.

Yep…Hartford  was Admiral Farragut’s flagship almost from the git-go (He was in command of USS Brooklyn before the West Gulf Blockading Squadron was formed), and Hartford participated actively in every major waterborne campaign in the Gulf, the very first task being capturing New Orleans. (The CSA’s largest and most prosperous city and the guard-dog of the Mississippi). After taking New Orleans they planned to move North up Old Man River and meet the Confederate forces as they moved south. In short, they wanted the Mississippi…all of it. That campaign would continue through the entire war. As for New Orleans, a quick word’s definitely in order. To approach New Orleans, the Union fleet had to pass between a trio of forts, get through a very effective set of obstructions, and take on a couple of dozen Confederate warships of various descriptions, all of which were crewed by very capable crews who were very determined not to let New Orleans fall.

And then there were the fire rafts, which were exactly what you’re probably thinking they were. Wooden barges loaded to the gunwales with combustibles that were lit off before said burning barges were floated among the attacking warships. All of which were wooden.

The Confederate ironclad Manassas tried to ram her, and as she dodged that ploy, a fire raft floated across their bow. Emergency helm and engine orders were given and she missed the fire raft…and grounded solidly on a mud bar. And then Manassas pushed the fire raft up against her hull, managing to light her off. Her fire pumps and hose lines were manned, and as the guys on the hose line (s) fought fire while under fire, Hartford’s gunners kept up a withering fire of their own. Hartford, and Farragut, made a name for themselves that’d be proven valid again and again throughout the war (And this made her ultimate fate all the more sad.)

They took New Orleans, securing the mouth of the Mississippi, and giving the U.S. Navy a base on the Gulf.

The fleet proceeded up the Mississippi, taking Baton Rouge and Natchez without firing a shot…and then they got to Vicksburg. When a request for surrender was sent, it was answered by this little gem:

"... Mississippians don't know and refuse to learn, how to surrender to an enemy. If Commodore Farragut or Brigadier General Butler can teach them, let them come and try."

(It’s been strongly suggested by Ole Miss fans since time eternal that, if you substitute the names of the opposing coaches for Farragut and Butler,  that very same philosophy is still in force on the gridiron today)

Did I mention that the Confederate forces had big guns on a nice 200 foot high bluff that the Union naval cannon could not elevate high enough to hit? There was no way the Navy could pull that one off, and the Army had LOTS of other fish to fry. They basically ended up laying siege on Vicksburg and blockading the river, denying them any supplies and waited them out. The fort on the bluff surrendered in mid July. 

Then came the Battle Of Mobile Bay, where one of the most famous and most often misquoted battle-born catch phrases in history was coined. I covered both the battle and the catchphrase in detail HERE.

Hartford at anchor in Mobile Bay, sometime in August 1864

Hartford remained in Mobile Bay though the end of the war, then steamed for New York where she was overhauled and repaired, then reassigned to her comfortable old pre-war stomping grounds in the newly reorganized…and renamed…Asiatic Squadron. She had that assignment until 1868, when she returned home and was decommissioned. She was recommissioned in October 1872 and rejoined the Asiatic Squadron, where she stayed until 1875 before returning home to be put in Ordinary until 1880 or so, when she was again recommissioned and assigned as the flagship of the North Atlantic Squadron. I can't help but think that the 'North Atlantic' part was a mere suggestion considering the fact that she sailed to ports as far removed from the North Atlantic as Valparaiso, Chile and Honolulu, Hawaii.

She then sailed to San Francisco and was pressed into service as a training ship before being decommissioned once again at Mare Island for refurbishment and rebuilding, a process that took much of a decade. In 1899 she was officially designated a Midshipman Training Ship. She served in this capacity, with her lines and sails handled by hundreds of Midshipmen, until 1912, when she was taken to Charleston, S.C. and converted into a receiving ship, a process that involved removing all but the stubs of all of her masts, all of her machinery and basically turning her into a floating receiving center for new sailors as well as a floating office building for the base staff. 
 

Irony does exist, By The Way. Charleston, S.C. is, of course, the home of Fort Sumter and the Civil War's first shots. A bit ironic that it also became the home of one of the most celebrated of all Union warships.

USS Hartford after she was converted into a receiving ship

Speaking of Hartford's stint as a receiving ship...ever heard of a fellow named Norman Rockwell? He was in the Navy briefly during WW I, and ended up assigned to Charleston as an artist for the base newspaper. His studio was aboard the Hartford, and the description he gives of her made it clear that when they turned her into a receiving and headquarters ship they went upscale with her decor. Of course the Officers' quarters were pretty lavish when she was an active warship, but as a floating office building the entire ship was extremely well appointed. Carpeted and paneled companionways (My dad was in the Navy during World War II...I refuse to call a passageway on-board ship a 'Hallway'), a well appointed galley (If it's on-board ship, it's not a 'kitchen') manned by a bevy of chefs of all culinary specialties, well appointed and equipped office space, and U S Marines in full dress uniform guarding the gang planks.

She served in this capacity until 1928 when she was decommissioned for a final time after 60 years of active service in one capacity or the other. And that's where the story gets sad.

She was declared a relic, and by all rights she should have been restored, and become a museum ship, A La USS Constitution, AKA 'Old Ironsides'. Didn't happen.

She remained in South Carolina, moored to the proverbial backwater pier in an out of the way corner of the naval base in Charleston for 12 years or so, until Franklin D Roosevelt heard of her plight.

Among the many other things that FDR was deservedly well known for, he was also a history buff as well as the former Assistant Secretary Of The Navy, and he had a special love for the U.S.Navy The thought of Hartford slowly rotting away in Charleston just did not sit well with him. One of his pet projects was a naval history museum, proposed for the Washington, D.C. and an immaculately restored USS Hartford would be a perfect centerpiece.. 

 

Hartford was actually towed to the Washington Navy Yard in 1938, where she joined the historic old cruiser USS Olympia and a WW I vintage destroyer in awaiting funds for restoration...and waited...and waited...and The Depression got in the way...and then WWII happened.

Obviously with a global scale war to win, the Government had other things to expend funds and effort on, but FDR kept the idea for the museum simmering on the back burner. It was, after all, his baby. 
The museum actually came very close to happening, but unfortunately his death in 1945 put an end to plans for the project, so Hartford was claimed by the Navy base in Norfolk. They too had vague ideas of restoring her, and even drydocked her to evaluate her for possible restoration in 1946, but it didn't happen. What did happen was work immediately started on a massive resto...oh, wait. It didn't.

Every time the pier she was moored at in Hampton Roads was needed she was towed to another pier somewhere else in Hampton Roads until finally everyone got tired of moving her. Then she was towed to, very literally, an out of the way, backwater pier in the St Helena Annex, across the Elizabeth River from the main portion of Norfolk Naval Ship Yard where she was promptly all but forgotten as were, apparently, any plans for: her restoration.

Anyone who owns a wood constructed boat of any size and age, much less one that's 225 feet long and just shy of a century old, can tell you what happened next...she deteriorated until her hull started leaking. Pumps were put on board and ran constantly to keep her afloat, and she was monitored regularly to make sure that she was still afloat but other than that little was done.

This was her status into and through the 50's and here's the wild part of her entire sad ordeal. The City of Mobile wanted her...they were planning a National Monument dedicated to the men on both sides lost during the Battle of Mobile Bay, centered on Fort Morgan, with the restored Hartford moored nearby and open for tours. The City of Norfolk also (Again) expressed an interest, and while Norfolk would have been nice (And closer to me than Mobile by about 850 miles), Mobile would have been where she belonged. The city of Mobile may have even offered to help fund her restoration...which would have cost two million dollars in 1954 dollars. That'd be just shy of $17,570,000 in 2014 dollars.

A bill was introduced to provide funding, and while it passed the House, Congress adjourned before the Senate could do anything with it. This, BTW, has been a favored stalling tactic used by Congress to stall an unpopular bill (Often to forestall the expenditure of money) since there has been a Congress. Of course, Hartford's restoration would have been a major undertaking with a Capitol 'M'. Her masts were gone. Her below decks had been totally reconfigured. Her machinery was long gone as were her cannon (All of the above were probably now razor blades and other metal goods). Restoring Hartford wouldn't be simply a case of slapping on some paint and calling it a done deal. Congress proceeded to do one of the things they do best...procrastinate.

The Navy wanted to scrap her then and there...she was, after all, still the property of the U. S. Navy and they sure didn't need her. Yeah, any and all thoughts about restoring her had been long forgotten by the USN....but even so, in June1956 some enlightened members of The House Armed Services Committee introduced a bill that would provide funding for the project. And the Bill was put in the queue for consideration and action. And it was still awaiting said consideration on November 20, 1958 when the pumps that had been dewatering her for nearly a decade gave up the ghost, likely with a final forlorn gurgle. Hartford promptly flooded and settled into the bottom mud, 27 feet down.

Bow-on shot of Hartford after she sank at her mooring in Portsmouth, Va

Pumping her out to refloat her after she sank at her mooring. What happened next was one of the saddest things to ever happen to a piece of Naval history.

More pumps were lowered into her flooded below decks spaces, she was pumped out and raised, and an examination and survey of her hull was carried out...and the Navy realized just how bad a shape she was in. (You can bet that the Navy Brass did not think 'How bad a shape we let her get in).

The Navy got their permission to scrap her. Her sad and leaking hulk was towed to an even more out of the way, derelict, and semi-forgotten pier (Much easier to find in Hampton Roads in the late fifties than in the mid 2010s) and she was ripped apart. And her death was not quick. Between raising her, surveying her, deciding what to do with her, and finally doing it, she hung on for almost a year.

By Nov. 6^th. 1957. all that was left was her keel and part of the bottom of her hull. This was pulled out of the water, soaked with diesel fuel, and lit off...and Hartford met the fate intended by the Confederate Navy nearly a century earlier when the Manassas pushed the fire raft against her hull.

OK, I'm just a major History nut, and Naval History's one of my favorite subjects, with historic ships being way up on the list, so maybe my opinion is a bit skewed...but when a shipyard worker threw a lit road flare into the capsized, diesel soaked remains of Hartford's hull, that was way up in the top ten most shameful ways a floating piece of history's ever been treated.

She should be permanently docked at Fort Morgan, crewed by families on vacation and kids on field trips, and dads explaining to their kids just how the heck they fired those huge freaking cannon. But she's gone. And a piece of history was lost forever.

USS Oneida and the infamous hit and run in Tokyo Bay

USS Oneida was so new she still smelled like a new ship when The Civil War started. She was ordered in February 1861, two months before the shooting war actually started, but during that period of over-wound clock-spring war-is-inevitable tension that comes just before the shooting war does start. She was 201 feet long with a beam of 33' 10”, a draft of 8' 11” and displacement of 1,488 tons, making her a bit smaller than most of Admiral Farragut's ships of the line, and the 12 knots that her single engine and single screw could push her through the water at made her slightly faster than all but USS Hartford. Like all of the Sloops of War, she was well and heavily armed, mounting a quartet of 32 ponders, a trio of 30 pounders, a pair of 9 inch guns, along with a single 12 pounder howitzer.

She was launched in November of 1861, commissioned in February of 1862, and was assigned to Admiral Farragut's West Gulf Blockading Squadron right out of the box. She was also in the middle of the action just as soon as she hit the Gulf, participating in the daring and successful nighttime sortie from the Gulf into the Mississippi, passing Forts Jackson and Saint Phillip, and the capture of New Orleans. During these actions she engaged both of the ships that sank the big gunboat USS Varuna...CSS Governor Moore and CSS Stonewall Jackson. She sank the Governor Moore and chased the Stonewall Jackson off. She then headed up the Mississippi attached to the Union fleet, commanded by Admiral Farragut, that was charged with taking possession of the Mississippi River.

During this portion of the campaign, she destroyed obstructions that were set up to prevent them from doing just what they were doing, then got right into the middle of the action in The Battle of Vicksburg.

After this campaign she was back on blockade duty, harassing, capturing, and occasionally sinking several vessels, until August 5^th 1865, when she acted as the Tail End Charlie of the line of ships passing Fort Morgan and entering Mobile Bay. She also proved the validity of Admiral Farragut's tactic of lashing a Ship Of The Line and a gunboat together when a shell form Fort Morgan took out one of Oneida's boilers, and USS Galena towed her out of range of the fort's guns.

After the battle she sailed to New York Navy Yard and was decommissioned for repair...

...And had that been it, she would have been little more than a footnote, the ship that proved Admiral Farragut was just as smart as everyone pretty much knew he was. But that wasn't it.

See, she was the victim of a hit and run collision, a collision between her and a British steamer that's still on the upper end of the list of the deadliest peacetime accidents involving a U.S. Navy vessel. This same accident also managed to get a major British shipping company banned from US ports for decades.

Oneida was recommissioned in May 1867 and assigned to The Asiatic Squadron, home basing in Yokohama Japan and visiting exotic Asian ports...until the very chilly evening of January 24^th, 1870.

Her crew had actually gotten a tiny taste of disaster a few weeks earlier when a storm caused some damage and destroyed two of her boats...boats that her captain had spent a frustrating chunk of time sending messages back and forth trying to get funds authorized to replace them. So far, said funding had been denied, or at the very least the request and approval was stuck deep within the bottomless cavern of Federal bureaucracy. (We keep seeing proof that some things just haven't changed in 144 years or so).

She was scheduled to sail for home on January 24^th, and U.S. Navy sailing schedules are one thing that, barring major disaster or seriously nasty weather, are pretty much set in stone. So, at 1830 hours (That's 6:30 PM for the military-time-challenged among you guys) she was outbound and coming up on an out-jutting point of land on Tokyo Bay's northern shore then known as Saratoga Spit. now known as Futsu Cape. They needed to keep their distance from the Spit and the shoal waters surrounding it, and while steering clear of the spit, they were also keeping an eye on the running lights of an inbound steamer. They could see her green starboard running light, and her white masthead light, and as long as that light combination remained constant, they would pass starboard to starboard...that is if both the steamer and Oneida kept to their current courses.

The steamer was the British Peninsula and Oriental Line steamer City of Bombay, and when the two ships were within a couple of hundred yards of passing harmlessly, her red port running light suddenly popped into view. She was turning in to them! Eyes on Oneida popped open wide in disbelief, new curse words were invented loudly, and emergency helm orders were given. Oneida's helmsman spun the helm hard to port as the steamer's bow bore down on them, and as happens in many disasters, they came painfully close to making it. The City Of Bombay's straight up-and-down bow ripped into Oneida's starboard stern quarter at an angle, about 80 or so feet from the stern, and tore a wedge shaped hunk of her stern quarter off, opening all decks to the sea.

Oneida was built long before watertight compartments and compartmentalization...technologies that were just coming into use on new all iron constructed ships...were a standard feature of ship construction, so the in-rushing waters of Tokyo Bay had the run of the ship. Her crew desperately tried to get topside if they were below deck and get the boats they did have loaded and away, but it was a loosing battle from the git-go. Oneida went down in about 15 minutes, taking 124 sailors and one boy...a Japanese orphan who'd been adopted by one of Oneida's officers...with her. The child's newly adoptive father died trying to save his adopted son.

A contemporary wood-cut of the sinking of the Oneida. When the City of Bombay, which is barely visible in the extreme left center of the wood-cut, hit her the impact sliced a wedge shaped hunk out of the Oneida's starboard stern quarter, opening \her up to the sea, and sinking her in about 15 minutes. Though she was actually only a couple of miles off shore, without the modern communication technology we take for granted, she might as well have been 200 miles out...had it not been for a pair of Japanese fishing boats that were nearby, the loss of life would have been even higher than the 125 lives that were lost.

Sixty-six sailors got off of her, the majority making it to shore aboard her two small cutters. Several swam for shore and made it. You may note that nowhere is any rescue effort by the City of Bombay mentioned...that's because there was none.

She kept on getting up, anchoring off shore in Yokohama Harbor about an hour later, her captain acting as if nothing had ever happened. During the investigation of the disaster, City of Bombay's captain claimed that he barely even realized that he'd hit Oneida, and figured it was a minor collision, with little or no damage. Unfortunately for him, his crew...who were just about as disgusted with him as everyone else who'd heard about the disaster...pretty much ratted him out. Both the captain and the company were sanctioned, and the British Peninsular and Oriental line was banned from U.S. Ports for years.

The U.S didn't plan to attempt to raise or salvage Oneida, so the wreck was sold to a Japanese firm almost three years later at auction. Divers entered her and recovered the remains of most of those lost. The remains were buried with honors at the expense of the salvage company on the grounds of Ikegami Temple, in Tokyo. An ornate headstone bearing inset metal letters telling the story of the wreck, was made and set at the grave site. Ironically, the letters were removed and melted down in W.W.II for the Japanese war effort...

...But that's not the end of the story. Oneida was on her way home, and she had on board a goodly bit of moolah that was payment for arms purchased by the Japanese government, and it was generally assumed that this money was still on board the wreck. So, in 1955 a crew, funded by a gentleman named Takeshito Haseo dived on the wreck to look for the strong box. They recovered quite a few artifacts, including coins, personal belongings, the steam guage from the engine room, and some remains missed by the original salvage and recovery effort (The latter were interred with the rest of their fellow crewmen), but no strong box...no money at all except for the vintage coins found among the wreck's timbers.

She sat on the bottom undisturbed until 2010 when another attempt...this one sponsored by one of the Japanese TV Networks, and sponsored by one of Takeshito's relatives...came up just as empty handed as the 1955 attempt, mainly because they weren't even sure they'd relocated her. They found a shipwreck that resembled her, and they're pretty sure that it was indeed her, but they weren't absolutely sure.

SO Oneida still sits on the bottom of Tokyo Bay, about opposite what used to be called Saratoga Spit, not quite ready to give up all of her secrets.

USS Monongahela hangs ten on a Tsunami

The crew of  USS Monongahela ended up taking a waterborne thrill-ride the likes of which modern-day water parks haven’t even begun to fantasize about creating....but that was a bit after the war, and her little trip past Fort Morgan on the fifth of August, 1864.

Monongahela was yet another War-Child…she was built at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, launched in July of 1862 and commissioned in January of 1863. She was 227 feet long, had a beam of 38 ft and drew 17.5 feet of water while displacing 2078 tons. Her single steam engine and single screw could push her through the water at 8.5 knots, and like 90% or better of the ocean going steam ships of her era, she had a full suite of sails as well as an engine.

For armament she mounted a single big 200 pounder Parrott rifle, a pair of 11” smoothbores, and a pair each of 24 pounder and 12 pounder howitzers. The Parrott Rifle and both of the smoothbores were all pivot guns.

USS Monongahela as she was originally built, with a schooner rig,  straight bow and no bowsprit..the latter two features both a bit ahead of their time.  Her three pivot guns are also visible. I think that the big 200 pounder Parrot Rifle was just forward of her funnel, and the fore and aft pivot guns were both 11" smoothbore Dahlgrens. She'd be greatly modified after the war.

 

After her shakedown cruise she was first assigned to the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, then almost immediately transferred to Dave Farragut’s outfit in the West Gulf…I have a sneakin’ suspicion that the West Gulf Blockading Squadron was fast becoming known as one of the squadrons that saw lots and lots of  action.

She patrolled the mouth of Mobile Bay for a while before being assigned to head up the Mississippi with Admiral Farragut’s fleet. Monongahela caught a bit more than her share of Confederate heavy cannon fire at Port Hudson when she and USS Kineo, lashed along side of her, grounded directly beneath the guns of a Confederate heavy battery. The battery’s crew took great joy in pounding Monongahela as she and her escort worked desperately to pull her off the mud. They finally worked loose and almost managed to head upriver, beyond Port Hudson, when Monongahela’s engine called it quits, leaving them with only USS  Kineo’s engine to pull the both of them. On top of that, somewhere during the ordeal Monongahela lost her steering. Heading upstream against the current wasn't going to happen.. Soooo, they had to make another run past the Confederate batteries (Which they’d never really gotten out of range of in the first place) and the Confederate gunners had no problem at all with sending more heavy shells their way…and this time they got one, though it wasn’t Monongahela or her escort.

  The big steam  sidewheel frigate USS Mississippi also grounded right under the guns defending Port Hudson…running hard aground at all ahead full… and the gun crews just as gleefully pumped shell after shell into her as her crew desperately tried to refloat her. The Confederate gun crews managed to set her on fire, and her crew took to the boats, leaving Mississippi to burn until the fire reached her magazines, blowing her up spectacularly. USS Mississippi's loss was likely Monongahela's and Kineo's gain, as they probably slipped past, with Kineo's engine pounding to drag them out of harms way, while the Confederate gunners were concentrating on Mississippi.

Monongahela was repaired, and continued both blockade and bombardment duties as needed while also supporting amphibious operations. Her next biggie was, of course, The Battle of Mobile Bay, after which she continued blockade duty of of the Gulf Coast until the end of the war.

It after the war that things got interesting!

She was assigned to the West Indies Squadron as soon as the war ended and set sail for Caribbean waters. One of her early big assignments was as part of a fleet acting as the floating headquarters and water-taxi for the group of diplomats handling the transfer of ownership of St Thomas and St John from Denmark to the U.S. Of course, when these diplomats headed for the soon-to-be-former Dutch West Indies they had no clue that they were about get slammed by a triple-disaster the likes of which the world...thankfully...seldom sees.

First, on October 28^th 1867 a hurricane that would have probably been a category 4 or 5 in modern measurement of force slammed the Caribbean, killing at least 900 people between the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and the Dutch West Indies, the majority in the latter. Twenty days later, as the carnage and devastation from the hurricane was still being dealt with, an earthquake, centered on the floor of the Virgin Island Basin and estimated to have hit around 7.2 on the current Richter Scale shook the Dutch West Indies like a dog shaking a chew toy...and then came the Tsunami, and with it the Monongahela's ride from hell.

Monongahela had just taken several of the commissioners and diplomats involved in the negotiations on a tour of St Johns and St Thomas and had disembarked them at Frederiksted, St Croix, where she was at anchor when the quake hit. The quake let go energy equal to about one thousand Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-bombs, and was powerful enough that all of the ships at anchor shivered like just-rung bells for well over half a minute. The crews and officers on Monongahela (And every other ship at anchor) made quick inspections of their ships to try and figure out what was happening and to check for damage. The huge clouds of dust rising from just collapsed buildings throughout Frederiksted made it clear what was going on, and crews were preparing to send rescue parties ashore when they noticed a strange phenomenon...the harbor was emptying of water.

As the Tsunami barreled across open water at around 300 miles per hour it sucked water from ahead of it, dropping the harbor water level until Monongahela was almost high and dry...but that wasn't what really worried her crew...they were for more concerned with the twenty or thirty foot high wall of water that they spotted about three miles out, stretching all the way across the horizon, and moving faster than any wave had a right to move.

The harbor refilled in a violent roiling instant, lifting Monongahela and carrying her towards the beach at a speed no man made vehicle would reach on it's own for about fifty years. Her anchor didn't as much drag as it lifted up and bounced across the bottom before snagging something and ripping it's capstan loose from the deck, which in turn took out several feet of ships rail as it shot overboard like an unguided missile. She crossed the coral offshore and then the beach with a good ten to fifteen feet between her keel and the bottom, enough water that her crew set the jib and stay sails and tried to bring her head around and sail out to deep water...her engine was useless right then because she didn't have any steam up, but it wouldn't have mattered. A modern destroyer probably wouldn't have been able to steam against that current, much less Monongahela with her 300 horsepower steam engine. Trying to sail against it was pointless.

She grounded first on the first street inland from the beach, then was lifted again, and taken further inland until she was deposited somewhere between 400 yards and a mile from the beach, depending on which source you read...far enough inland that refloating her would be a major undertaking.

They had only lost four crewmen, all aboard a boat that had been lowered to check her for hull damage after the 'quake...all had been bodily ejected from the boat when the Tsunami lifted it and tossed it like a kid trying to skip a rock across a pond. One of them was crushed beneath Monongahela when she landed the first time on the street.

Monongahela aground after the Tsunami...long after, actually, as this unfortunately low quality photo was taken during an unsuccessful attempt to refloat her, months after the Tsunami. Note that she's had a bowsprit added after her post-war refit, though it appears that she retains her straight up and down bow.

Damage wise she must've been one of ol' King Neptune's favorites, because she ended up sitting almost on an even keel...heeled over maybe 15 degrees...with minor bottom damage and no damage at all to her keel, propeller, propeller shaft, or machinery. Her crew spaces were intact, as were her stores. Her captain composed a report outlining what happened, her damage, and suggested that a team be dispatched to Frederiksted to refloat her as she was all but intact. Meanwhile, beings they were there, their crew rolled up their sleeves and dived headfirst into disaster relief in what was one of the U.S.Navy's first major efforts in that direction. Some of her sails were even donated to the citizens of Frederiksted for use as tents as aftershock after aftershock hit...the good people of Frederiksted quickly learned not to trust any portions of buildings that were still standing, and much preferred makeshift tents, as they were far softer than buildings when they collapsed on top of them.

Refloating her was a major undertaking, commanded by Thomas Davidson and undertaken by a crew from New York Navy Yard, that took the better part of six months of repairing the damage to her hull, blasting channels, building a slipway, and finally relaunching her in May of 1868. She was towed to New York Navy Yard, where the temporary hull repairs were made more permanent, then to Portsmouth Navy Yard, in Maine, where she was refurbished over a period of several years.

Why so long, you may ask...simple. Naval Technology was advancing in leaps, bounds, and broad-jumps. Within two decades sails and the forest of masts and rigging supporting them would be long gone, hulls would be all iron and later steel, and warships would begin to resemble what we think of today as a fighting ship, and would resemble the big, traditional wooden wall 'Ship Of The Line' only in that they both floated and both carried guns. Though the last Sloop of War was launched in the late 1870s, the sail equipped warship (And ship in general) would be all but replaced in front line service by all iron or steel steam powered warships by the late 1880s. Therefore funding tended to favor the newer ships, and repair work on Monongahela was moved off of the back burner to the shelf behind the stove, undertaken, apparently only when funding was available and the 'Spirit moved them'.

When she was finally recommissioned in 1873 she was assigned to the South Atlantic Squadron, an assignment she enjoyed for three years before returning home to become a training ship for a couple of years before being assigned to The Asiatic Fleet. She was on that assignment for about two years before returning home for repair in 1879. She was decommissioned and was In Ordinary until 1883, when she was converted to a supply ship.

All of her machinery was removed to allow more room for stores, her rig was changed to a Barkentine rig so a smaller crew could handle her, and she was assigned to the South Pacific Squadron, acting as the supply ship at Callao, Peru until 1890. That was the year that her crew sailed her 'Around The Horn' and to Portsmouth Navy Yard for another refit. This refit restored her full sailing rig, and converted her to an Apprentice Training Ship, a role she served in until she was assigned to The Naval Academy in 1894 as the Navel Academy Practice Ship. She relieved the venerable old 'USS Constitution in that role, BTW.

Monongahela after her 1890 rebuild...she now has a full ship rig as well as the  sharply raked 'Clipper' bow and true bowsprit traditionally found on the front-end of sailing ships.

USS Monongahela under sail as the U.S. Naval Academy practice ship

USS Monongahela's helm from a pic taken in 1894. Note the ship's bridge, added during one of her later refits. Bridges became a feature of paddle wheelers, to give the captain or Officer Of The Deck an unobstructed command platform, and were also well liked by the command staff that they were added to all new construction, and retrofitted to older warships during refits. One tradition that most of the older ships retained, though...an open helm position.The object peeking above the bridge's forward bulkhead, just about dead center, is a compass binnacle, identical to the for the helmsman, which is hidden both by the big ships wheel and the hatch.

 She made annual Midshipman training cruises for four of the next five years...she missed 1898 because of The Spanish-American War...and was again reassigned to the training station in Newport, Rhode Island as a practice ship, a capacity she served in for another three years.

She was released from the training squadron in 1904 and assigned to Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba as a stores ship. By all rights she should have stayed in this capacity...basically a floating warehouse...until her upkeep became more expensive than her scrap value, but she didn't. Monongahela apparently decided that, rather than being unceremoniously scrapped a couple of decades in the future, she would go out in a blaze of glory. Literally.

Sometime in the early hours of March 17^th, 1908, bells rang in Guantanamo Bay Naval Stations fire station(s), banging out a box at the docks, and when the guys pushed the bay doors open as the horses trotted to their positions in front of steamers and hose wagons, they could already see what looked like the sun rising over the waterfront several hours early, boosting an orange bottomed column of smoke into the predawn Cuban sky.

Now, when a fire call comes in at Oh Dark Hundred for a 225 foot long wooden structure...be it afloat or land locked...and the sky's lit up from a mile or so away when you hit the street, the outcome';s pretty much already determined, and the way it's handled hasn't changed in basic form in 106 years. Lay in, set up master steams and big water, and perform what is known, in highly technical fire fighting terminology, as 'Surround And Drown'. She was fully involved when the first steamer rolled up, and despite also having at least one or two fire boats hitting her with few big streams from the water side as well as land companies lobbing big water into her burning hull from the pier, there was no saving her. (Nor would she have been saved today.). Monongahela burned to the waterline, and then her remains sank into Guantanamo Bay's murky water. 

I can't help but think that, as she burned into the night, she was thinking 'Think I'm gonna survive a freaking Tsunami and let you let me rot away loaded with consumables until you scrap me? HA! Scrap this!

Supposedly her wreck's still right where she burned, 106 years ago, on the bottom of Guantanamo Bay at her old mooring.

USS Brooklyn

When Dave Farragut ordered  USS Hartford  to swung out and around the lead ship of the squadron attempting to enter Mobile Bay so could coin his catch phrase while listening to torpedo primers ‘snap!,  it was his old command…USS Brooklyn…that she swung out and around.  

For a quick mini-recap, Brooklyn backed down after Tecumseh exploded, blocked by both the torpedoes and by the quickly sinking Tecumseh and the few survivors who made it off of her. This threatened to trap the rest of the ships directly beneath Fort Morgan’s guns, so Farragut ordered his helmsman to go around, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Brooklyn, like Hartford, was launched in 1858, and was a slightly smaller version of  Admiral Farragut’s flagship.  Brooklyn was actually longer than  Hartford …233 feet to Hartford’s 225 feet, but she drew a foot less water, (16 feet vs 17 feet ), and was less beamy by a foot (43 feet vs 44 feet). Brooklyn also displaced almost 400 tons less than Hartford.

A sadly very poor pic of USS Brooklyn  as she appeared during the Civil War.

 Brooklyn was given to then-captain David Farragut when she was launched and her shakedown cruise took her to Beaufort, South Carolina. After that, she had a busy career, both pre, during., and post war. She spent just about all of her prewar time in Central American waters…unstable Central American Governments are not a new phenomenon. Her first Central American voyage  had her investigating  the coup that disposed Haitian Emperor Soulouque .

Next she acted as the floating headquarters for former U S  congressman and then Minister (Ambassador) to Mexico Robert McClain during negotiations to end the civil war in that country…this saw her shuttling back and forth between Veracruz, Mexico and Pensacola, Florida for recoaling, as well as to to New Orleans several times to deliver McClain to that city to so he could catch a train to DC and report to Congress. They also sailed to both New York and Norfolk on a couple of occasions to pick McClain up and return to Veracruz. 

After her Mexican operations, she carried a scientific survey team to Panama to search for a route across the Isthmus…one of the early operations that would result in the Panama Canal being opened sixty or so years later. It was during this operation that Farragut got the promotion to Flag Officer, and was relieved by Captain William Walker…

…And it was shortly after this that Brooklyn  became involved in the turmoil that immediately preceded The Civil War when she was sent to Charleston, S.C. to assist in resupplying Fort Sumter, an operation that failed due to the entrance to the harbor being blocked by obstructions.

She returned to her then home port of Norfolk and was immediately assigned to the Gulf of Mexico where she operated to intercept Blockade runners and Commerce raiders…this is before a true blockade had been established, and though she, along with several other warships, made several captures as many Confederate ships got past them as were intewrcepted.

She ultimately steamed for Philadelphia, where she was decommissioned for refurbishment and repair. When these were complete she was nearly a new ship…with a new Captain. Thomas Craven, who’d be in command at Mobile Bay, took command of her while she was in Philadelphia. She returned to the Gulf and was involved with pretty much every major operation in the West Gulf Blockading Squadron’s domain. It was during one of these ops…attacks on Confederate Forts St Phillip and Jackson...that the Confederate forces unleashed pretty much everything they had on her from heavy artillery to fire rafts to the Confederate ironclad Manassas, which managed to ram her and cause enough damage that she had to have a 24 foot long patch applied to the gash the ironclad ripped in her hull.

That operation was the battle of…and ultimate capture of…New Orleans, and one of the first major, if temporary repairs made at the Union Navy’s newly captured base was the aforementioned hull patch. After repairs she was with Admiral Farragut’s fleet when he was given the orders to, basically, ‘Clear the Mississippi of anything that so much as looks like it’s Confederate'.  This operation is what took them to Vicksburg where Brooklyn was, once again, right in the middle of the action. 

After Vicksburg she sailed for Pensacola where more permanent repairs were made to the damage bestowed upon her by CSS Manassas

She also participated in the battle of Galveston, which ultimately restored the blockade after a Confederate surprise counter attack broke it, and captured several vessels while she was at it. Before reinforcements arrived to restore the blockade, Brooklyn  became a pretty efficient commerce raider as her crew chased down and captured a slew of small, fast blockade runners loaded down with products such as cotton. 

The Battle of Mobile Bay and her participation in the creation of David Farragut’s renowned catch phrase came after another round of repairs and refurbishment for her, and rest and recuperation for her crew. After the Battle of Mobile Bay she was reassigned to the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, and it was during this assignment that she was in on the very last major naval operation of the war…the attack on Fort Fisher at Wilmington, North Carolina.

After the battle of Fort Fisher she sailed north to the New York Navy Yard where she was decommissioned for repairs on January 31^st 1865. She was under repair for the final few months of the war, and wasn’t recommissioned until October 1865. She was then assigned to Brazilian waters, where she stayed for two years until her next stint in ordinary, which began in Philadelphia in September 1867.

When she was recommissioned in 1870, she was assigned to European waters (Primarily the Mediterranean, not a bad gig at all then or now) where she stayed for another three years until she returned to U.S. waters and was decommissioned for repairs at New York Navy Yard.  

She was recommissioned in January 1874, and patrolled off of the southern US until fall of that same year when she was assigned as the flagship of the South Atlantic squadron.  For much of the rest of her career she operated in South American waters, also sailing to Africa. She had this gig for about a decade, visiting every South American Atlantic port and several African ports before being decommissioned yet again in New York in October 1884. She was in ordinary for nearly a year before being reassigned to the South Atlantic Squadron, and this time she only stayed in South American waters for about seven months before being ordered to return home. Her next assignment would be her last…but it’d be a biggie.

She was fitted out for duty in the Asiatic Squadron, and in August 1886 set sail for the far east…via the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Suez Canal, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean. She spent two years showing the flag in the orient before being ordered home in August 1888. She returned via Honolulu, then rounded Cape Horn before returning…for the last time…to New York, where she was decommissioned for the last time in May, 1889. She had managed to circumnavigate the globe during her last assignment...a nice little final note in her career.

Brooklyn as she appeared shortly after she returned from her stint with the Asiatic Squadron, and shortly before she was decommissioned for the last time.

She was in ordinary for almost two years before she was sold to E.J.Butler. While it wasn’t noted specifically, it’s a good bet that she…like many proud ships before and after her…was sold for scrap. 

USS Richmond

USS Richmond was identical to Hartford in size and armament, though she did get rid of the 12 pounder howitzers and mounted an 80 pounder Dahlgren smoothbore and a 30 pounder Parrott rifle to complement her 20 9” Dahlgrens.

She was also two years newer than Hartford (And despite this, two knots slower). She was built at Norfolk Navy Yard and launched in January of 1860. As soon as her shakedown cruise was completed she was assigned to the Mediterranean and spent about ten months in the Med before coming home to find that All Hell had broken loose.

She was immediately fitted out for war and sent to Jamaica in hot pursuit of the infamous Confederate commerce raider Sumter.  Richmond searched the Jamaican and Cuban waters where Sumter was supposedly hanging out extensively, but the Commerce raider…under the able command of Raphael Semmes…had managed to slip past them and return to New Orleans without even getting within a mile of being caught.

NOT an auspicious start to her career at all. After this FMF (That’s First Mission Fail) Richmond was reassigned to the West Gulf  Blockading Squadron, where one of her first assignments was at the Head of Passes…the mouth of the Mississippi River…to maintain the blockade of the river. 

The Confederate forces weren’t having any of that.

Under cover of darkness on the 12^th of October, a trio of gunboats from Confederate Commodore Hollins’  Mosquito  Fleet, backed up by the Confederate Ironclad Manassas, fell upon Richmond,  USS Preble, USS Vincennes, and several support ships, included among them the coal schooner that  was tied up next to Richmond re-coaling her. A general waterborne melee ensued.

CSS Manassas… The Confederate Navy’s first ironclad,  a small, fast, completely enclosed ironclad that was built almost exclusively as a ram…made for Richmond, but glanced off of the schooner before hitting her a glancing blow. The impact still shook Richmond down to her keel, and punched a hole in her hull, thankfully above the waterline. Manassas slipped astern and to port of  Richmond and began a tight turn to come back around and try to ram her again.

While this was going on, of course, buglers on all three U. S.warships were blowing General Quarters and gunners were scrambling to their guns, slamming powder bags and shot home, and running their guns out. Richmond’s starboard guns roared and puked fire as she got off a solid broad side as Manassas was coming around. Though her rounds  bounced off of the Ironclad like oversize, over weight hailstones, it definitely gave the  Confederate crew something to think about, and she retired upriver. Meanwhile, USS Preble and USS Vincennes,  both of which had steam up, retired towards the Gulf with Richmond covering their retreat as shells from the Confederate gunboats began raising geysers at all points of the compass. As if that wasn’t enough Oh-Dark-Hundred excitement, the river lit up as a trio of fire rafts were lit off and sent their way, the gunboats behind and covered by the burning barges. Richmond got under way as well even as shell-splashes crept closer as the the Confederate gunners began to find the range.

All of the U.S. ships tried to make it across the bar at Head of Passes but the Confederate force,  with the possibility of a U.S.,Navy retreat in mind, had timed their attack with the tide going out perfectly. Richmond and Vincennes both grounded on the bar. Shore batteries joined in and things were beginning to look a bit on the grim side until the timely arrival of the U.S. Army transport Mclellannd arrived, armed with some big rifled guns that quickly evened the score.

USS Richmond at anchor in Baton Rouge in 1863, a year or so before the Battle Of Mobile BAy

So we have a pair of missions that didn’t exactly inspire the singing of ‘Anchors Aweigh’ to kick off Richmond’s career. After this she cruised off of the mouth of the river, both blockading the river and protecting Army engineers building gun batteries on the banks of the south and southwest passes. In November she sailed to Pensacola Bay to the US Naval yard there (Not to be confused with Pensacola Navy Yard, which was in Confederate hands at the time) for repairs, then joined USS Niagara  and Fort Pickens' guns in the bombardment of the aforementioned Pensacola Navy Yard, Confederate shore batteries at Fort McCrea, and the town of Warrenton. She didn’t come out unscathed and it was a near miss that came fairly close to doing her in when a shell went in the water just off of her stern and exploded four feet beneath her, causing her to begin taking on water.

She retired to Key West for temporary repairs, her pumps running wide open to keep her afloat, then sailed to New York Navy Yard for more permanent repairs.

After she was repaired she headed back to the Gulf and the West Gulf Blockading Squadron, where she ended up in the middle of The capture of  New Orleans, as well as the battles of Vicksburg and Port Hudson. She made it through the first two all but unscathed, and they almost  got them selves a Confederate iron clad as the Confederate casemate ram Arkansas slipped out of the Yazoo River and made a dash past the U.S.Fleet. Several of Farragut’s ships went after her, but she managed to make it to Vicksburg and the protection of the gun batteries there.

 Port Hudson, however, was another story.  First and notable, Port Hudson was the trial run of the same tactic Admiral Farragut was going to use at Mobile Bay…lashing a smaller gunboat to a larger ship of the line so they could provide mutual assistance to each other and the gunboat could pull the larger ship out of harm’s way should she become disabled. Works fine in a bay without any real current running. Not so much, as they were to find out, in a river with a strong, constant current,.  Port Hudson was about 15 miles up-river from Baton Rouge, and Naval battle ferocity-wise, the battle probably ranked about  2^nd or 3^rd  after The Battle Of Mobile Bay.

Admiral Farragut attempted to get his fleet past Port Hudson’s heavily armed, well manned, and well fought set of fortifications in order to cut off supplies coming into Vicksburg from the west. Only his flagship, USS Hartford and her gunboat USS Albatross made it it past the guns. The rest of his fleet swung around and headed back down river.  On top of the guns, the river was running high and fast and Richmond and her gunboat,  USS Gennessee  couldn’t make any headway against the current once they got just about even with the guns…so they ended up coming under fire for longer than any of the paired ships as they turned just about directly under the Confederate gun muzzles while the Confederate gunners pumped shell after shell at them. Richmond’s executive officer was fatally wounded, then a 42 pounder shell tore through Richmond’s engine room and took out a steam line, filling the machinery spaces and berthing spaces with steam.  Meanwhile another shell found Gennessee  and managed to touch off a 10 inch shell in one of her ready magazines, causing major damage and loss of life. While all of this was going on, both ships’ rigging was ripped to shreds.

Richmond underwent some more repair work before finding herself third in line in the queue of ships passing Fort Morgan in Mobile Bay where, BTW, no fewer than 29 of her crew were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for their actions. Four  more of her engineering crew won the Medal of Honor for their actions when the engine room was hit during The Battle of Port Hudson, for a total of 33…the most medals awarded to any crew of any U. S.ship during the Civil War.

She hung around Mobile Bay for a bit after the battle before being reassigned to the Southeast Pass of the Mississippi, at Head of Passes, in April of 1865…she scored a major win the very first night she was there. 

That evening the Confederate sidewheel ram Webb made a run for the Gulf of Mexico She popped out the Red River, made it past Union warships at the mouth of that river, then headed south, probably with the safety valves on her boilers tied down and tallow and coal oil in her fireboxes to squeeze an extra knot or two out of her.

It’s been told that she had a legitimate bone in her teeth as she passed New Orleans, paddlewheels thrashing the water, her wake boiling dirty brownish-white astern as the wind of her passage flattened the smoke column boiling from her funnels into a fan behind her.  Several of the ships that she blew past in at the Red River’s mouth were close behind, and a couple of the ships at New Orleans joined in the chase as well. And she almost made it…until she chose the southwest pass as her route to the Gulf and found Richmond  between her and the Gulf. With her guns already manned, Richmond was sending 9” shells down range in matter of seconds. With Richmond ahead of her and a bevy of  gunboats whose crews were just itching to add a ram to their score behind her, Webb was trapped. Her captain ran her ashore where she was set on fire to prevent her capture. 

Richmond was decommissioned at Boston Navy Yard in July 1865, and over the next year or so she was refitted and refurbished, complete with a new set of engines and new rigging. Her first post-war assignment was in January 1868, to European waters where she called at Mediterranean ports and showed the flag and protected American interests and citizens possibly endangered by the Franco-Prussian war. She spent two years in the Med before returning home to Philly and another stretch in Ordinary in November 1871.

Her next assignment was to the West Indies in November of  1872…again she ended up displaying a show of  force when she assisted in securing the release of U.S. sailors being held in Santiago, Chile in April 1873.  The very next month she received orders sending her around The Horn to San Francisco where she underwent repair, and was assigned to the South Pacific Squadron. She spent the next two years cruising the western coast of South America, then rounded the Horn again, cruised the east coast of South America, then headed home, this time to Hampton Roads where she was decommissioned, underwent a year or so of repair, and was then, in January 1879, assigned to what had by now been named The Asiatic Fleet as the fleet’s flagship, visiting ports of call in Japan, China, and The Philippines. She headed back for home in April of 1884 

Brooklyn in January 1879

 

Her final active assignment was a year on the South Atlantic Station, cruising off of Brazil and Uruguay,  beginning in January 1889 and ending when she returned to Norfolk in June of 1890. She was immediately sent to Newport, Rhode Island where she served as a training ship until 1893…she steamed to Philadelphia  a year later and was converted to a receiving ship, a capacity she served in until 1900, when she was moored at League Island, in the reserve fleet.
  
In 1903 she was decommissioned as a receiving ship and sent to Norfolk…then as now the largest Navy base in the world. She served as a receiving ship in Norfolk (Actually as an auxiliary to the USS Franklin, already assigned to Norfolk as a receiving ship), an assignment she filled until after World War I. 

She was decommissioned the final time June 1919,  struck from the Navy list in, then sold for scrap the following month.

USS Richmond, along with USS Franklin, in her last days as a receiving ship at Norfolk. USS Richmond's on the right, Franklin on the left.

USS Lackawanna

USS Lackawanna was yet another of the Sloops of War that were the mainstay of the U.S.Navy in the mid 1800s, and was comparable size and armament-wise to the other six Ships Of The Line that she joined forces with at Mobile Bay. She was 237 feet long with a beam just north of 38 feet, and she drew just over 16 feet while displacing 1558 tons.

USS Lackawanna  about 1880.

 She was also another ‘War-Child’, sliding down the ways At New York Navy Yard on July 9^th 1862. She was commissioned five months later, in January 1863, and was immediately assigned to Admiral Farragut’s West Gulf Blockading Squadron, patrolling off of Mobile Bay, and she immediately got down to the business of intercepting blockade runners. She didn’t actually score until June, when she captured two blockade runners in two days, chasing one of them for hours. That particular ship’s crew jettisoned her cargo in a desperate attempt to escape, so even if she had gotten away, it would have been a partial victory for Lackawanna’s crew as the now sodden, now ex-cargo of cotton couldn’t be sold abroad to help fund the Confederate war effort. 

She shuttled between Galveston, Texas and Mobile Bay for the next month, returning to Mobile just about a month before the Battle Of Mobile Bay, and just in time to join USS Galena, USS Monongahela, and  USS Sebago  in shelling the steamer Virgin, which had managed to run aground at the mouth of Mobile Bay…right under Fort Morgan’s guns, which kept the four Union warships out of effective ship-shellin’ range. The Union ships did manage to discourage efforts by a couple of Confederate vessels to assist the Virgin… at least until nightfall, when the Southerners managed to refloat the steamer, which then quickly headed into the bay.

After the fifth of August, such incidents became a memory…August 5^th was, of course, the Battle of Mobile Bay. Lackawanna’s crew enthusiastically gave the Confederate forces, both afloat and on land, everything they had…they were so enthusiastic during that profoundly one sided naval brouhaha, in fact, that she managed to ram Hartford during her second attempt to Ram CSS Tennessee. Neither Hartford or Lackawanna suffered more than cosmetic damage and not much of that, and the aquatic fender-bender between them barely even interrupted the cannon fire they were sending Tennessee’s way. The first time she rammed Tennessee she hit the Confederate ironclad hard enough to heel her over about 15 degrees, and crush her own bow in about 8 feet, thankfully mostly above the waterline..

After the battle of Mobile Bay,  Lackawanna continued to plug away on blockade duty,  keeping that assignment until the end of the war…as soon as the war ended she headed for New York Navy Yard, where she was decommissioned on July 20th 

She was recommissioned in May, 1866  and  assigned to the South Pacific, arriving at Honolulu, Hawaii in February 1867 after transiting the Straits of Magellan….this wasn’t a bad gig at all. She patrolled off of the California and Western Mexican coast as well as Hawaiian waters for four years until she was again decommissioned at Mare Island Navy Yard.

She was recommissioned in 1872 and assigned to the Asiatic Fleet until 1875, when she returned to San Francisco and was assigned Coastal patrol duties…musta been nice to stay close to their home port for a change.  In 1880 she was traveling again, this time to the West Coast of South America for the specific purpose of assisting in efforts to arrange a truce in The War Of The Pacific…no not that The War Of The Pacific. This one was between Chile and a united Bolivia and Peru, lasting from 1879 to 1883, and started over mineral rights.. No agreement was reached, and the war continued for another three years.

She continued to operate off of the west coast for another five years before finally being decommissioned at Mare Island on April 7^th, 1885, and was In Ordinary for a shade more than two years before being sold for scrap in July 1887

USS Ossipee

USS Ossipee was also laid down and launched after the war started...her keel was laid in June 1861, and the crews building her were apparently working double overtime because she was launched barely five months later, in November of the same year. She had three sister ships, one of which, USS Housatonic, found fame a couple of years later in Charleston harbor when she lost a one sided come-to with a little vessel known as the CSS Hunley.

USS Ossipee, about 1867

Though Ossipee was launched five months after her keel was laid, she wasn't commissioned until almost exactly a year later, in November 1862. She was put to work in the Hampton Roads based North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, and hung out off of the Atlantic Coast until May 1863, when she was assigned to Admiral Farragut's outfit, the West Gulf Blockading Squadron. Like pretty much every warship assigned to that squadron, she found plenty of action just about right out of the gate. 

In her first two months off the Gulf Coast she captured a schooner and a pair of steamers, one of which, the James Battle had been one of of the finest river packets on the Alabama River before the war. At the war's onset the Battle was stripped of her finery and turned into a fast blockade runner, and it actually took a couple of warships to chase her down and capture her after a pretty wild chase. Like the other blockade runners Ossipee and every other ship on the blockade captured, the steamer was loaded down with goods for sale abroad to fund the Confederate war effort.

In September of 1863 her station was changed to the Texas Gulf Coast, where she hung out successfully harassing blockade runners for about six months, until March of 1864, when she returned to Alabama and Admiral Farragut's build up of his Mobile Bay Invasion Force.

Ossipee ended up taking CSS Tennessee's surrender at the battle simply because she was making a run to ram the Confederate ironclad when she surrendered...Ossipee was so close in fact that, despite ordering astern full, she still bumped the Tennessee. Her crew ended up being the crew to board Tennessee and raise the stars and stripes.

After the battle, Ossipee went back to harassing blockade runners off of the Texas coast, and continued that duty until April of 1865, when she was reassigned to New Orleans...she got there just in time to join in the chase of the Rebel ram CSS Webb that resulted in that ship's crew grounding and burning her to prevent her capture.

After the war, Ossipee was decommissioned at Philadelphia Navy Yard, and stayed in ordinary for about 18 months before being recommissioned and assigned to the South Pacific Squadron, operating generally off of Mexico's and Central America's Pacific coast. She didn't always stay down in those always warm waters, though...in September of 1867 she was sent north to Sitka Alaska with various Russian commissioners on board, to participate in the October 18^th ceremony transferring Alaska to the U.S.

She operated in the Pacific until Spring of 1872, when she returned to New York, and was decommissioned there on Nov 30^th, 1872.

She was recommissioned on Oct 10^th. 1873 and assigned to the North Atlantic Squadron, and a month later got deeply involved in what was to become known as the Virginius affair...A fraudulently registered steamer (False U.S.Registry) that was seized by the Spanish cruiser Tornado, and held in Cuba where 53 of her crew were executed as pirates...did I mentioned Cubans hired the ship to bring insurrectionists in to attack the Spanish, as Spain had control of Cuba at the time.

To make a long and complicated story short, The US...who was considering declaring War on Spain over the incident...negotiated reparations to the families of the executed men and return of the ship. Virginius was turned over to the crew of USS Despatch, and taken to Tortugas, a group of islands near the Florida Keys. USS Ossipee was to meet them and tow Virginus north...and she left Tortugas on December 19^th doing just that, but the Virginius had one more trick up her sleeve. She foundered off of the North Carolina Coast...Cape Hatteras to be exact...to become one of the hundreds of shipwrecks off of the beautiful beaches of The Tarheel State.

Ossipee operated in the North Atlantic area of operations until May 1878, when she was decommissioned at Boston Navy Yard.

She was recommissioned in January 1884,and assigned, almost inevitably, to the Asiatic Squadron. She transited the Suez Canal enroute to the far east, and spent three years in that exotic part of the world, returning to New York and another assignment to the North Atlantic Squadron...she had this assignment for two years, until her final decommissioning in Norfolk in November 1889. She was sold, probably for scrap, in March 1890.

The Gunboats

The Union Navy had a slew of gunboats during the Civil War, all of them either built or acquired and modified for a specific purpose...as a heavily armed jack-of-all-trades that could act as escort craft, fast scout and attack boats, and generally wade right into the middle of things and start slugging it out.

Though smaller than the Ships Of The Line, these were not small vessels by any means…most were good sized side-wheelers of  600-1000 tons pushing (And often exceeding) 200 feet long. Keep in mind here that some of the smaller Sloops of War barely cracked 200 feet, and displaced only 1500 or so tons.

The great majority of these gunboats were all steam without a single mast, much less sails, most of them were side-wheelers, and all were fast and nimble for their era...the majority could crack 12 knots without breaking a sweat, which was flat out getting' it on the water under steam power back in the 1860s. Also, while they couldn't necessarily turn on a dime they could easily turn inside of any of the larger warships or merchant ships of the era, a very useful ability when chasing blockade runners.

The biggest difference in the gunboats and the Ships Of The Line came in their post-war fates. Most of the Sloops of War were still in active service of one sort of the other for several decades after the war, and several of them lasted well into the twentieth century. The gunboats however, almost to a ship, were decommissioned as soon as the war ended and sold within a year or two, either for scrap or to a commercial owner who converted them to freighters or passenger boats,.

All were well designed, well built, scrappy, well fought vessels crewed by sailors who had no problem with going into harms way and fighting their way back out, kicking maritime Rebel butt and taking names while they were at it. And a couple of them even found themselves in the middle of a historic engagement or two.

Soooo….let's take a look.

USS Octorara...Friendly Fire and Torpedo Boats

USS Octorara went into Mobile Bay lashed to the side of USS Brooklyn, but she had a couple of other claims to at least minor fame and/or infamy during the course of the Civil War…she had the dubious distinction of almost being sunk by a Union Navy ship (Guess which one), and later in the war she almost became the only Union ship actually sunk by a Confederate torpedo boat.

She was a double ended side-wheeler with an overall length of 193 feet, a beam of 33 feet and a draft of just 4’9”. She displaced 829 tons and had a single steam engine turning a pair of paddle wheels that could push her through the water at 11 knots. For armament she mounted a single 80 pounder Dahlgren rifled gun, a single 9 inch Dahlgren smoothbore, and a quartet of 24 pounders. 

She was built at Brooklyn Navy Yard, launched on December 7^th, 1861, and commissioned only two months later in February 1862.  Her first assignment upon completing her sea trials was the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, but she wasn’t in that outfit long at all before she was reassigned to the Gulf.

A model of USS Octorara

Her duties were pretty much routine, if there’s such a thing in the middle of a war that’s tearing a nation in two. Then she was assigned as the flagship of a very unique squadron of vessels.
  
At both the Battle of New Orleans and the Battle of Vicksburg, fortifications and gun emplacements needed some serious softening up, so several small schooners were obtained and modified as bombardment ships...one or two big bombardment mortars were mounted aboard each of them them so the enemy fortifications...especially the high, bluff mounted and near impregnable fortifications at Vicksburg...could be bombarded from the river, and from a safe range. This deadly little flotilla was under command of David Dixon Porter, who answered to Admiral David Farragut, and their mortars…probably 10 inchers…arced shell after shell behind the fortifications, wreaking havoc in the process and keeping the Confederate gunners’ heads down while Admiral Farragut’s ships passed Vicksburg and headed up-river.

Octorara leading Commander Porter's flotilla of Mortar Schooners in to position to bombard New Orleans.

It was in the middle of all of this explosive commotion at Vicksburg that Octorara gained her first minor claim to fame when her steering ropes jammed, probably due to jumping a pulley somewhere below decks between her helm and the rudder.

Had she been a twin engine side-wheeler this wouldn’t have been as big a problem…she could have been steered using her paddle wheels, making her at least manuverable enough to get out of harm’s way until the steering rope could be cleared. Unfortunately she had a single engine turning both paddle wheels, so she quickly became unmanageable, drifting at the will of Old Man River's current. While she was drifting, several crew members hustled below, tracing the steering ropes until they found the jam, and then, straining and cursing, muscled it back into place. This wasn’t an entirely uncommon event back in the day when all ships had truly manual steering, with the wheel moving the rudder via a rope or cable that led from the helm to the rudder posts, so re-tracking a rope that had jumped a pulley was probably a pretty well oiled operation. It wasn't exactly a fun job in peace-time on a nice 70 degree day, it was probably particular hell during on an ultra-humid Deep South summer day while several hundred guys with big guns were trying to blow you out of the water. 

It also took a considerable bit of time and minutes seemed like hours as the crew members assigned to get her steering back in operation sweated and strained to pull the rope back up and around the pulley (Think trying to get a bicycle chain back on the sprocket, multiplied by about fifty) while shells screamed past.

Newsflash...all of the danger wasn't from Confederate shells. The bombardment of Vicksburg continued, and Porter’s mortar ships weren't the only Union ships shootin'…the ships of the line were also pounding the fortress as they passed, including USS Brooklyn. And Octorara managed to drift past her just about the time she let go with a broadside....

A couple of Brooklyn's shells found Octorara, but thanks to sheer luck, the damage was actually minimal and the only casualties, were some of the crews' likely now damaged underwear. It could have been far far worse. The shells that found her actually fell short of their intended target, splashing into the river water just short of and exploding beneath Octorara's stern quarter rather actually than hitting her. Had Brooklyn been firing on a target at a lower level Octorara could well have caught a full broadside, which would have either severely damaged or sunk her, and killed or injured many of her crew. 

She sustained enough damage to need a dry dock once temporary repairs were made, so she headed for Baltimore, MD for more permanent repairs…and on July 24^th, while enroute to Baltimore, promptly ran up on the British blockade runner Tubal Cain off of Savannah, Georgia as she tried to slip into Charleston, S.C loaded down with munitions destined for the Confederate battlefields. Octorara captured the British vessel, and promptly took her in tow. 

She was back in service by September, and was assigned to a squadron of ships whose whole mission in life was to find and sink the infamous Confederate commerce raiders CSS Florida and CSS Alabama. While they didn’t as much as get a glimpse of the commerce raiders, Octorara still had a successful year or so, capturing nine, count ‘em, nine blockade runners.

 On October 19^th, 1863 Octorara was reassigned to the West Gulf Blockading Squadron, and spent the next ten months or so assisting with the blockade of Mobile Bay as well as lobbing a few shells at Fort Powell on a couple of occasions. 

On August 5^th, 1864, of course, she entered Mobile Bay lashed alongside USS Brooklyn…the very ship that had nearly sunk her at Vicksburg.  Brooklyn, of course was the lead ship in the line attempting to enter Mobile Bay, primarily due to her torpedo rakes, but the sinking of USS Tecumseh threw a wrench into the plan when her wreckage blocked the channel. Brooklyn (and Octorara) stopped dead, trapping the rest of Admiral Farragut’s fleet just about under Fort Morgan’s guns, and Admiral Farragut ordered his fleet to go around Brooklyn and through the torpedo field, resulting in the creation of the most famous catch phrase to come out of the war. 

Octorara stayed around Mobile Bay until the end of the war, and it was during his period that she snagged her second minor claim to fame. January 28^th, 1865 wasn’t but about an hour old when lookouts on board Octorara, which was anchored in Mobile Bay, peered into the Oh-Dark-Hundred darkness, trying to decide if they really did see something or if their eyes were playing tricks on them.

Everyone on board well remembered USS Housatonic’s fate at the hands of CSS Hunley nearly a year earlier, and also knew that the Confederate Navy was still actively developing combat capable subs (Though they didn’t know that they hadn’t launched another successful sub) but they also knew of…and probably feared even more…the Confederate David class torpedo boats.

These potentially deadly little craft were all but submarines. They were iron, cigar shaped, and 50 feet long with a single steam engine that could push them through the water at around 12 knots. They also had ballast tanks that, when flooded, submerged everything except her ten or so foot long, two foot high conning tower/ventilation intake structure, and her funnel, which was about 10 feet tall. Their only weapon was a 135 pound explosive charge mounted on the end of a 20 foot long horizontal spar mounted on her bow…in practice this would be rammed into the hull of a Union ship, firing a contact fuse (Primer) which would set the charge off, blowing a hole in the hull of the ship's hull. (I’m not sure how they figured the torpedo boat would come out of this unscathed)

The Davids were painted overall black and their single boilers were fired with nearly smokeless anthracite coal. They’d get within several hundred yards of the target, fill their ballast tanks, and charge for their target at about two to four knots, so the structures still above water wouldn’t leave much of a bow wave.

On a dark night they’d be hard to see until they were right on top of their target, and that’s exactly what happened when the Confederate David class torpedo boat St. Joseph made a run on USS Octorara on that early Alabama morning. 

A lookout probably finally spotted her funnel, likely when she was only a couple of boat-lengths out…around a hundred feet, at four knots just under twenty seconds out. By the time the call to arms was sounded,  St Joseph had rammed her torpedo into  Octorara’s starboard side, just forward of the wheel-box. St Joseph’s crew was jolted forward by the collision even though they were braced for it and everyone on both vessels heard the loud ‘SNAP!!’ of the primer firing and braced for the explosion. On board St Joseph, the captain called for full reverse to get her out of the way of the explosion that didn’t come. She backed off possibly as much as fifty feet, then charged again but by now small arms were firing at her, and at least one cannon got a shot off, her second hit was a glancing blow (And wouldn’t have been effective had it been a solid hit because her primer had already fired, unless they could embed the charge and back away, using a line and trigger to fire a second primer).

 At any rate, her captain called for hard right rudder and all ahead, swinging parallel to Octorara’s hull as they preformed a ‘U-Done-It’ to get thew hell outa Dodge. According to one popular illustration of the period, one of the gunboat’s crew actually grabbed the funnel as she swung close to Octorara’s side, apparently with the thought of holding her. He may have even managed to heel her over before he was very likely pulled overboard, to be fished out by his shipmates as the torpedo boat disappeared back into the darkness. The entire encounter, in all probability, lasted less than five minutes. Had the charge fired, she would possibly have been the only Union ship actually sunk by one of the torpedo boats, though they did manage to damage a couple.

A popular Harper's Weekly illustration of the era, showing a USS Octorara seaman attempting to 'detain' the Confederate torpedo boat CSS St Joseph. If this really did happen, I can just about bet the sailor went for a swim.

After that, Octorara operated ‘as required by the fleet commander’ on Mobile Bay until the end of the war, and the Department Of The Navy wasted no time getting rid of her. She left Mobile Bay on July 20^th, 1865, arrived at New York Navy Yard on July 29^th, was decommissioned a year to the day after The Battle Of Mobile Bay, and was sold fifteen months later, in November 1866. 
 

USS Metacomet

A bit of irony here...though USS Metacomet is, after USS Galena, arguably the best known of the Union gunboats at the Battle Of Mobile Bay, she had the shortest and least diverse career of any of them. She was launched on March 7^th, 1863 and commissioned three days into 1864, and was a 205 foot long wooden side-wheeler with a beam of 35 feet drawing 8.5 feet of water. Her 1173 ton displacement made her a big gunboat, and the 12.5 knots that her single steam engine could push her through the water at made her a big fast gunboat. Her armament wasn't anything to sneeze at either...she mounted four 9 pounders, a pair each of 100 pounders and 24 pounders, and a single 12 pounder. 


 

Period Pen-and-Ink drawing of USS Metacomet

She was assigned not only to the West Gulf Blockading Squadron but to the blockade of Mobile Bay right out of the box, and immediately got down to serious work. Possibly her best known engagements before The Battle of Mobile Bay both occurred in June 1864. On the sixth of that month she captured the British blockade runner Donegal, then on the last day of the month she engaged the blockade runner Ivanhoe...a big British side wheeler...and forced her aground. Only problem was, Ivanhoe's crew managed to get beneath the protection of Fort Morgan's guns, which meant that Metacomet, or any Union warship for that matter., couldn't get close enough to her to pound her into kindling as they sorely desired to do...Fort Morgan's guns would have happily returned the favor had they tried it.

Metacomet, joined by USS Monongahela, tried to shell her from long range, but they couldn't find the range, and watched all of their shells fall short of the target...their efforts actually extended over several days off and on and involved several other Union ships, all of which had equally little success. Admiral Farragut decided something to the effect of 'The hell with this noise', and called off the shelling, then conferred with the crews of Metacomet and USS Itasca, made a plan, and after dark, boats from each of the gunboats slipped in under Fort Morgans Guns, and went to work. The soldiers at the fort had no idea anything was amiss until they heard commotion and saw flames rolling from Ivanhoe's hold. They also likely tried firing on the boats as they departed the scene, sailors pulling at oars with renewed strength as Rebel bullets wizzed past and possibly a couple of shells screamed over, raising geysers far ahead of them. Providence and luck was with the Union sailors as all of them got away with nary a scratch.

Of course, as it would turn out, the action wasn't as successful as the Union Navy would have liked it to have been...there was a reason that they were able to light the Ivanhoe off with little or no resistance. While the Union Navy was ineffectually shelling her, The Confederate forces, with help of the blockade runner's crew, had salvaged all of her cargo and the majority of her machinery. All that the crews of Metacomet and Itasca burned was, basically, an empty hulk.

A month and change after her action with the Ivanhoe, Metacomet became one of Admiral Farragut's workhorses at Mobile Bay when she steamed past Fort Morgan as USS Hartford's escort. As soon as they cleared Fort Morgan, Farragut cut Metacomet loose,and sent her after the Confederate gunboats that had been very efficiently harassing them, and Metacomet wasted no time what so ever returning the favor. She ended up engaging at least two of, and likely all three of the Confederate gunboats in CSS Tennessee's support squadron. She engaged CSS Morgan first, and that scrappy little gunboat;'s very feisty crew managed to hold her off long enough to get under the protection of Fort Morgan's guns. Next she was probably among the group of Union gunboats that chased CSS Gaines down and damaged her so badly that her crew abandoned her and set her on fire so she wouldn't be captured. Finally she engaged CSS Selma in an hour long aquatic dogfight, both gunboats twisting and turning as Selma tried to get under the protection of Fort Morgan's guns, and Metacomet successfully cut her off each time. Selma's Captain finally called for 'All Stop' struck her colors and raised a white flag. Metacomet came alongside and took her surrender.

A sketch of Metacomet capturing CSS Selma, drawn by renowned historical artist Robert Weir.

That night, when CSS Morgan made her epic and successful dash for Mobile, Metacomet was probably one of the gunboats she left in her wake as, with her boiler relief valves likely tied down, she managed to squeeze about 12 or 13 knots out of her engines and out run them for a solid 30 miles, guns on all of 'em booming into the sticky-humid Deep-South August night.

Metacomet even acted as a hospital ship and floating ambulance when she transported all of the wounded...both Union and captured Confederate...to a military hospital in Pensacola. This included Confederate Admiral Buchanan, whose serious injuries were the inspiration for Metacomet's mission of mercy. Admiral Farragut noted that his now vanquished rival and former arch foe Admiral Buchanan was in a bad way. The worst of his injuries included a compound leg fracture, and compound fractures are even now not minor injuries. A century and a half ago they were debilitating, almost always requiring amputation. The US naval hospital in Pensacola was far better equipped to handle serious battle caused injuries. (This is relative of course...today a Patient First is hundreds of ways better equipped than that hospital would have been). Quite a few Union Navy personnel had been injured, and the captured CSS Tennessee's surgeon was adamant that Admiral Buchanan be removed to a hospital...a view that Admiral Farragut concurred with. He sent a message to Fort Morgan's C.O...Brigadier General Richard Page...asking that Metacomet be allowed passage out of the bay...taking injured from both sides to Pensacola...and back into the bay, bringing back nothing that she didn't leave with. Brig. General Page agreed to the arrangement, and Metacomet added 'Hospital Ship' to her many talents. 
 

Of course records indicate that she might not have completely stuck to the arrangement. The arrangement said she couldn't bring back anything she didn't leave with...it said nothing about capturing a couple of blockade runners and taking them somewhere else on her return trip. Or, in fact, postponing her return trip while she engaged in a bit of blockade runner interdiction. After offloading the wounded in Pensacola, she headed for and hung out off of the Texas coast, staying there for about four months. She captured at least three blockade runners off of Galveston during November and December 1864, and January 1865.

She returned to Mobile Bay in March of 1865 and acted as a mine sweeper to rid the bay of torpedoes, then hung around Mobile Bay until the end of the war (Likely getting involved in the Battles of Spanish Fort and Fort Blakely, often considered the last battles of the Civil War, while she was at it).

After the war she steamed to Philadelphia, where she was decommissioned on August 18^th, 1865. She was sold to John Roach and Sons on October 28^th. While it doesn't say she was scrapped, John Roach and Sons was a shipyard, so she was probably broken up, with her machinery being salvaged, soon after she was sold.

USS Port Royal

There's really not a whole lot out there on the USS Port Royal. She was another of the double ended side-wheel gunboats that the U.S. Navy put in service in droves during the Civil war. She was launched in January 1862 and commissioned three months later in March. She was 209 feet long with a beam of 35 feet, a draft of 9 feet, and a displacement of 1163 tons. She had a single steam engine that could push her through the water at 9 knots. While her armament isn't listed anywhere, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it was probably about the same as the other gunboats of similar size and layout.

She was assigned to the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron right out of the box, and withing three weeks of her commissioning she was slugging it out with gun batteries at Sewell's Point. A week later she was part of the squadron that steamed up the James River to (Attempt to) knock out the fortifications and gun batteries at Drewry's Bluff, a campaign that did not go as planned. The guns at Drewry's Bluff were on a 100 foot or so high bluff that could fire down on the Union ships, while only the lightly armored ironclad Galena's guns could elevate high enough to return fire, and her crew quickly found out just how thin her armor was when the 8 inch shells from Fort Darling...the fort atop the bluff...started ripping through her armor like it was made of paper. Port Royal, being of wood construction and easily turned into smoldering kindling, retired out of range of the Confederate gunners early on in the battle.

These actions were in support of Union Army General McClellan's push up the peninsula towards Richmond, a drive that a guy named Robert E. Lee turned back very skillfully.

After the Peninsula campaign, Port Royal operated off the North Carolina coast, then the Florida Coast as she worked her way around to the Gulf. She actually saw the most action patrolling off of Florida. On several occasions she sent raiding parties ashore, attacking and destroying a schooner laden with cotton as well as shore facilities at Apalachicola, Florida, and later destroying a ship repair facility at Devil's Elbow...near St Augustine.

She ended up assigned to the West Gulf Blockading Squadron, and was part of the fleet that took Mobile Bay on August 5^th, 1864, entering the bay as USS Richmond's escort. She assisted the other gunboats in wreaking general havoc after they entered the bay, and was assigned to Mobile Bay for the rest of the war. 

 

She was decommissioned in May 1866, in Boston, and sold at the same city in October of the same year. Like the majority of the gunboats in the battle (And likely in the war) the trial goes cold at that point.

USS Seminole

USS Seminole was unique among the escorts that were lashed to the port sides of Admiral Farragut's ships of the line because she wasn't built as a gunboat. She was actually a smaller version of the Sloops Of War that comprised all seven of Admiral Farragut's Ships Of The Line.

She was launched in June 1859 and commissioned almost a year later in April 1860. She was 188 feet long with a beam of 30' 6”. She displaced 801 tons, and while I couldn't find her draft listed I'm going to make a guess based on other ships her size and displacement and say she probably drew somewhere between six and eight feet of water. She had a single steam engine turning a single screw...her speed isn't listed but I'm going to guess again and say she could probably make somewhere in the neighborhood of about 8-10 knots..

She was assigned to the South Atlantic Squadron, at the Brazilian Station, shortly after her commissioning, but didn't stay there long. Shortly after cannonballs fell on Fort Sumter she got orders to head for Philadelphia Navy Yard, where she was fitted out for blockade duty. As soon as her fitting out was complete she was assigned to the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron out of Hampton Roads, and she wasn't at her new home port long enough for her crew to get liberty before she sailed for Savannah, Ga, making a stop at Charleston enroute.

She patrolled off of Savannah for close to a month and proved the value of having sails as well as a steam engine while she was at it...she actually ran out of coal. She headed back for Hampton Roads under sail, and on the way got in an old school wind-powered chase with the schooner Albion. She chased down the blockade runner, likely fired the legendary and traditional warning shot over the schooner's bow, captured her, and took her in tow...arriving at Norfolk, under sail, with the Albion at the end of a towline at her stern.

Here coal bunkers were filled, and on August 30^th...while she was still in Hampton Roads...the Confederate armed tug Harmony attacked the Sloop of War USS Savannah. Seminole closed with the tug and exchanged shots with her, but the tug managed to stay out of range and get away.

A shade more than a week later, on September 10^th, she steamed to and up the Potomac River accompanied by the small steamer USS Rescue on a recon mission to scout an enemy position near Alexandria. She stayed on the Potomac for about a month, proving herself a major pain in the butt to all things Confederate while she was there. She captured at least one blockade runner and exchanged fire with Confederate gun batteries (Knocking out a couple of the guns while she was at it). After making her presence well known she steamed to Washington Navy Yard for repairs, returning to Hampton Roads October 16^th.

In her absence the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron was formed, Commanded by Flag Officer Samuel DuPont. (Yep...he was indeed one of those DuPonts, of Ginormous chemical company fame. He was a career naval officer who pushed hard and successfully for modernization of the Navy)

The new squadron headed south, steaming from Hampton Roads and all but immediately attacked Forts Walker and Beauregard, at Port Royal, South Carolina. They forced the abandonment of the forts, then captured Port Royal itself, raising the Stars and Stripes over the port and wasting no time turning it into the home base for the squadron...they operated out of Port Royal, blockading the Georgia coast and the East Coast of Florida from the base for the duration of the war. Seminole and her crew again quickly got into the swing of making a nuisance of themselves, capturing a couple more blockade runners and getting in on the capture of Fernandina, Florida.

In March of 1862, when the Union Naval forces in Hampton Roads were in a near panic state over CSS Virginia, Seminole was sent back north to to Hampton Roads to strengthen Union naval defenses. She was involved in the shelling of Sewell's Point. It wasn't too long after this that Gosport Navy Yard (AKA Norfolk Navy Yard) was abandoned by the Confederate forces...and Seminole was sent to New York Navy Yard for repair.

When she came out of the Navy Yard almost a year later, on June 8^th, 1863, she was assigned to the West Gulf Blockading Squadron, and on the way to her new assignment she ran up on the blockade runner CSS Charleston, which she promptly chased down and captured. She was initially assigned to the blockade of Galveston, where she captured at least one more blockade runner...the British merchant ship Sir William Peel...before being sent to Mobile to join Admiral Farragut's invasion fleet.

She entered Mobile Bay lashed to USS Lackawanna's port side, and her main claim to fame during the battle was as a floating brig to hold CSS Tennessee's crew after the Confederate ironclad was captured.

She was sent to Pensacola for repairs after the battle, then on September 14^th, 1864 she was sent back to her old post off of Galveston. She helped maintain the blockade off of Galveston for the rest of the war, capturing or destroying at least two more ships before war's end.

She headed for Boston Navy Yard on July 20^th, 1865, and was decommissioned there on August 11^th. She'd be 'In Ordinary' until July 20^th, 1870, when the firm of Mullen and Winchester bought her. Sad to say, like many of the less well known ships of the Civil War, her fate after that's unknown but I have a feeling she was sold for scrap.

USS Kennebec

USS Kennebec was part of the U.S. Navy's build-up at the beginning of the war...she was one of 23 Unadilla class screw-propelled gunboats thrown together in six months or less (They were nicknamed 'Ninety Day Gunboats' if that tells ya anything) during 1861 and 1862.

Like all of her sisters she was 158 feet long with a 28 foot beam and a draft of 9.5 feet. She displaced 691 tons and had a pair of 200 HP back-acting steam engines spinning a single screw that, theoretically at any rate, could push her through the water at 10 knots. Note that I said 'Theoretically'

All 23 Unadilla class boats were originally armed with a single 11 inch Dahlgren smoothbore and a pair each of 24 pounder Dahlgren smoothbores and 20 pounder Parrott rifles. All had their armament increased as the war progressed, and seldom was was any individual gunboat's armament when the war ended recorded for posterity.

She was actually one of two Unadilla class gunboats in Admiral Farragut's fleet, so I'll throw in a quick word about the class itself. These were not well-loved ships. They were considered slow and ponderous, some of their hulls were built with unseasoned lumber, promising future problems with structural integrity and short service lives, and their engineering staffs developed a special hatred for the engines, which were almost three times as heavy as they needed to be and had a tendency to be a bit cantankerous.

They also didn't always live up to their promised performance...though the gunboats were rated at 10 knots, and one or two touched 11 knots, their usual top speed was was around 8-9 knots. Remember, these gunboats were also two masted schooners, so I have a sneaking suspicion that the 11 knots was with sail and steam, or even possibly sail only. Early steam/sail combination ships were renowned for often being faster under sail than they were with their engine only. Remember, steam, propulsion was still a fairly new technology, though it's level of sophistication was growing with leaps and bounds, especially with wartime development. Engines the size of a room produced the same horsepower as a modern 4 or 6 cylinder gasoline engine that'll fit on a kitchen table does today, while sail powered ships were a centuries old, well proven technology with crews that were trained to get every bit of performance \possible out of every breeze.

All of that being said, the Unadilla class gunboats still managed to rack up a pretty impressive service record, and the Kennebec was no exception. She was launched in October 1861, commissioned in February 1862, and assigned to the then-newly formed West Gulf Blockading Squadron right out of the box. She Left for the Gulf on Feb 12^th, 1862, arrived at Ship Island on March fifth, and three days later was crossing the bar at the mouth of the Mississippi. She performed patrol and recon functions and occasionally mixed it up with Confederate vessels.

She really got her baptism of fire as the Battle of New Orleans approached.  She and another Unadilla class boat, USS Wissachickon, made a recon sortie to check out the obstructions setup to bar Admiral Farragut’s fleet from steaming towards New Orleans. The obstructions were made by partially sinking the hulks of old schooners then linking them together using cable. They had to steam almost right under Fort Jackson’s guns to take a look at the obstructions, and while their officers were brainstorming the best way to get rid of them, the gun crews at Fort Jackson realized that yes, indeed, there were a pair of Union gunboats almost within rock-throwing range of them, and they knew how to take care of that problem.

 As the officers of the two gunboats ruminated upon ‘How To Get Rid Of The Obstructions',  their thoughts and discussions were interrupted by the consciousness-shocking ‘BOOM!!’ of heavy cannon fire from Fort Jackson, the piercing scream of big shells streaking past close aboard, and shell splashes blooming from the river far closer than anyone was comfortable with. It's a good bet that Fort Jackson’s gunners loaded the first volley en masse, and were now firing one at a time so the later gun crews in the sequence could adjust elevation and train by watching the shell splashes from the earlier shots, giving Kennebec's crew the dubious privilege of watching the shell splashes walk closer to them with each successive shot.

Kennebec’s and Wissachickon’s crews decided that where they were was not the place to be and retired down river, both escaping any damage or casualties. Kennebec wouldn’t be so lucky in her next encounter with Union cannon fire.

On April 18^th, Union Commander David Porter’s Mortar Bombardment Squadron opened up on Forts Jackson and St Phillip, the throaty, echoing ‘BOOM’s of the big 10 inch bombardment monitors echoing across the delta, followed by the ‘Whump-WHOOM of the big shells hitting. The forts were pounded by the mortar-boats for a week, and they really ramped it up on the night of the 24^th, when Admiral Farragut planned to take his fleet past the forts and on to New Orleans.

Kennebec, Itasca, and Winona were tasked with taking out the obstructions, and they opened a hole big enough for the main assault and invasion force to pass through a couple of times over. Unfortunately, Kennebec also managed to get tangled in the cable linking the sunken schooners,  and as she tried to free herself she only managed to swing herself into one of the hulks. The other two gunboats attempted to assist her, and found themselves the subjects of the Confederate gunner’s ire as Admiral Farragut’s fleet sailed through the hole in the obstruction and headed for New Orleans.

Though it isn’t stated anywhere that I could find, Kennebec’s captain probably sent someone over the side to disentangle her from the cable, and as dawn broke and the Confederate gunners got a good bead on her and her sister ships, her captain told his crew to lie low on the deck as they drifted down stream, out of range…and out of the action. She sustained some damage and casualties, but her crew did get to see the Stars and Striped raised over Fort Jackson four days later.

She spent the next two months on convoy escort and patrol duty on Old Man River. She got in the middle of the river-borne action at Vicksburg as she and USS Brooklyn pounded the gun emplacements there as Admiral Farragut steamed past, then resumed her former convoy and patrol duty. In August 1862 she was reassigned to Blockade Duty on the Gulf, and it was here that she and her crew really hit their stride. Over the next year and a half, she captured or assisted in the capture of six blockade runners, the final one, the schooner John Scott on January 7^th, 1864 after chasing her for 8 hours

.

She was assigned to the blockade of Mobile at the beginning of  the summer of 1864 as Admiral Farragut began the planning and build up for the assault on Mobile Bay. On August 5^th she entered the bay lashed to USS Monongahela’s port side, and became possibly the only ship that CSS Tennessee managed to ram…barely…when Tennessee overshot Monongahela and glanced off of Kennebec. Tennessee also managed to get off a broadside, firing into Kennebec’s berth deck and injuring four of her crew but only causing minor damage to the ship.. After the battle Kennebec assisted in the rounding up of Confederate merchant vessels, shelling of the forts, and generally making herself a thorn in the side of all things Confederate. 

She was finally sent to Pensacola for repair, and then rejoined her squadron for patrol and blockade duties off of the Texas coast. One of her very last victories was a biggie. There was one blockade runner that had been a thorn in Admiral Farragut’s side, and her name was the Denbigh, a small British built, civilian owned iron hulled side-wheel steamer. She made over half a dozen runs between Mobile and Havana, handily eluding the Union blockade each time, before the capture of Mobile Bay sealed off Mobile as a Confederate port. Denbigh shifted her base of operations to Galveston after the Battle of Mobile Bay, made another half dozen or so runs to Havana, and was trying to enter Galveston during the Oh-Dark-Thirty hours of  May 24^th, 1864 when she ran hard aground on Bird Key, to the north and east of Galveston. She was spotted shortly after dawn, and Kennebec, along with three other gunboats including USS Seminole, wasted no time in turning her into scrap metal.

After the war Kennebec continued occupation patrol in the gulf until July 6^th, when she sailed for Boston, stopping at both Pensacola and Norfolk while enroute. She reached Boston on August 1^st, 1865, was decommissioned on August 9^th, and was sold on November 30^th. 

I'm going to use this drawing of a Unidilla class gunboat to illustrate both USS Kennebec and  USS Itasca  because I couldn't find any good, clear images, be they drawings or photos, of either. This very drawing...actually of USS Ottawa... was used by periodicals of the era in the exact same way.

USS Itasca

USS Itasca was the second of the Unidilla class gunboats attached to Admiral Farragut's Mobile Bay Invasion Force, She was identical to USS Kennebec (And her twenty-one other sister ships) dimensions and specs wise, and was launched in October 1861, commissioned the next month, and was assigned to the Gulf Blockading Squadron as soon as she finished her shakedown cruise. 

She arrived in the Gulf of Mexico around Christmas, and began racking up an impressive score of prizes right out of the gate, capturing a pair of ships in January 1862. One of them...the steamer Magnolia...had a bonus on board when Itasca assisted USS Brooklyn in chasing her down. Magnolia had on board letters and documents outlining Confederate plans to import arms and ammunition. This documentation included dates, time-frames, ships, sailing schedules...the works, The Union brass were likely collectively all but drooling when they received news of it's capture.

Also in this intelligence haul were plans on how the Confederate Navy planned to assist the 'Phantom CSS Tennessee' ...the side wheel blockade runner that no one ever talks about...escape through the blockade at New Orleans. CSS Tennessee, the Forgotten Blockade Runner, never made it out of New Orleans.

The Gulf Blockading Squadron was split into East and West squadrons on January 20^th, 1862 and Itasca was assigned to the West Gulf Blockading Squadron, specifically to the task force that would attempt successfully to retake New Orleans, then proceed northward up the Mississippi, wreaking havoc on Confederate forces and towns as they went.

She got right smack in the middle of the bombardment of Forts St Phillip and Jackson on April 20^th, then the next day she steamed in close to the forts along with two other Unidilla class boats, the gunboats' own guns firing to keep the Confederate gunners' head down and assisted in taking out the obstructions that were blocking the fleets passage upriver to New Orleans.

As the fleet passed the fort, a shell from a Rebel 42 pounder ripped through Itasca's engine room, taking out one of her boilers and filling her machinery spaces with steam. She was hit no fewer than 14 more times as she drifted past the forts, by sheer luck receiving only moderate damage and few casualties. She was repaired...probably at Pensacola...then returned to the Mississippi, where she saved Hartford's and Admiral Farragut's bacon at one point when Hartford grounded. Working like crazed banshees alongside Hartford's crew, Itasca's crew refloated the flagship in three days.

Itasca was reassigned to the blockade of Galveston in early 1863, where she continued to be a thorn in the Confederate navy's side as she harassed blockade runners, capturing two that were inbound with vital war materials and supplies. By June 30^th 1863 she was desperately in need of an overhaul and general repair...she steamed to New Orleans for temporary repairs to make her seaworthy, then sailed to Philadelphia, where she was decommissioned for a three month stretch in dry dock. She left Philly on the day after Christmas, 1863, and arrived back in New Orleans on New Years Eve. She was assigned to the Blockade of Mobile, harassing blockade runners trying to enter and/or leave Mobile Bay until August 5^th 1864, when she steamed past Fort Morgan lashed to USS Ossipee's port side.

After the Battle of Mobile Bay, she returned to the blockade of Galveston, and took up right where she left off, capturing one British blockade runner (The Carrier Mair) and chasing the sloop Mary Anne into shallow water, where she grounded. Itasca's gunners then set to work methodically and loudly pounding her into kindling wood and scrap iron.

She remained in the Gulf until August of 1865, when she returned to Philadelphia for decommissioning, The Navy wasted no time getting rid of her...she was sold on the last day of November 1865, and her new owners renamed her Aurora...so we know that she wasn't scrapped. The trail goes cold in 1867, when she was sold abroad.

 

USS Galena

USS Galena not only had a career deserving of her own blog post, she already does have her own article on this here very learned cyber-tome you’re now reading (I know…I know…control the ego, Rob!) 

In all seriousness though…for a detailed report on USS Galena  CLICK HERE. 

To hit the high points, Galena started life as a wooden hulled ironclad six gun steam sloop. She was 210 feet long with a beam of 36 feet, a draft of 11 feet, and a displacement of 950 tons, 200 tons of which was her armor. When she was commissioned she mounted four 9” Dahlgren smoothbores and a pair of 100 pounder Parrott rifles. She had a larger version of USS Monitor’s vibrating lever steam engine turning a single screw, and was capable of 8 knots . She also featured a radical ‘Tumble Home’ hull design, with the sides of the hull curving inward as they rose and making her main deck a good bit narrower than her beam.

USS Galena, anchored in Hampton Roads.

Galena was the second iron-armored warship built for the U.S. Navy, was commissioned by shipbuilder Cornelius Bushnell,  designed by noted naval architect Samuel Pook…and failed dismally as an ironclad.  She was basically a wooden warship disguised as an ironclad, with an experimental armor scheme consisting of about three inches of interlocking plates tacked on to the wooden sides of her hull, a scheme that may have worked had they given her enough armor to actually stop an enemy shell.  

She was built to counter the threat posed by CSS Virginia,  and was laid down in September 1861, launched in February 1862, and commissioned in April of the same year…a month after CSS Virginia and USS Monitor mixed it up in arguably the most famous naval battle of all time. By the time she departed for Hampton Roads at the end of April, almost two months had passed since that epic battle. Considering that Virginia would have very likely pounded her into scrap due to her ineffective armor, it's probably a Very Good Thing for both the Union blockade of Hampton Roads and USS Galena that (A) Monitor was commissioned first and was the ship that CSS Virginia tangled with, and (B) Galena never did actually engage the iconic Rebel ironclad. 

She arrived at Hampton Roads on the twenty forth of April, and exchanged exactly one shot with  CSS Virginia several days later during one of the Confederate ironclads many unsuccessful attempts to entice Monitor  to come out for a rematch. The single shot Virginia  fired at her seemed almost more like an explosive flipping-of-the-bird than the opening of a battle. Galena  may or may not have answered with a single shot of her own depending on which source you read and believe. If she did, her shell simply splashed into the waters of Hampton Roads far short of Virginia.

On May 8^th , with it obvious that she really wasn't needed in Hampton Roads, Galena was assigned to assist General McClellan on The Peninsula Campaign…his attempt to  take the Confederate capitol by advancing up what was then and is still today known as The Peninsula. Galena kicked considerable Confederate butt during the first part of the campaign, taking out an 11 gun battery at Rock Wharf Point and engaging another at Mother Tynes Bluff, She also managed to run aground during the trip up-river, and it took the effort of both of her escorts…USS Port Royal and USS Aroostook…to refloat her. 

On May 15^th her crew found out just how crappy her armor was when she, Monitor,  and several other Union warships tried…and the operative phrase here is ‘Tried’ ...to take out Fort Darling, which is located on 80 foot high Drewry's Bluff at Dutch Gap, about eight miles south of Richmond. The fort had a trio of big guns, all Colombiads, a ten incher and a pair of 8 inch guns. The ten incher cracked her gun carriage the first time she fired, but the eight inchers proved to be more than up to the task at hand.

Galena ended up being the only one of the five ships at Drewry's Bluff that morning whose guns were capable of elevating enough to fire on the fort effectively, and when she swung broadside to the channel and began firing, the Confederate gunners demonstrated just how easily their eight inch shells punched through Galena’s less than adequate armor. Confederate shells penetrated her armor13 times, killing 14 of her crew and injuring 10. Fort Darling lost 8, with 10 injured and minor physical damage. Fort Darling would ultimately be a major military installation with about three times as many guns, but this battle would be the only time that an assault on Richmond via the James would be attempted, and the only time the fort’s guns fired in anger. 

She stayed on the James River, supporting McClellan’s retreat, harassing Confederate positions and performing escort duty for supply ships and transports until September, when she returned to Hampton Roads to assist in the defense of the now all Union military installations there. 

A year after her pounding at Fort Darling, and after a good bit of pondering by the Navy brass RE: the epic crappyness of her armor, Galena was sent to Philadelphia Navy Yard, and when she arrived there on May 21^st, 1863 repair and refurbishment began immediately. Almost all of her armor was stripped off of her, leaving  her hull armored only in the area of her engine room and boilers, her armament was increased to nine guns with the addition of four more nine inch Dahlgrens, (but the removal of one of 100 pounder Parrott Rifles) and she was generally refurbished and repaired.

She was recommissioned on Feb 15^th, 1864…and promptly got trapped in ice off of New Castle, Delaware and had to be chiseled, towed, and worked free before she could continue to Norfolk, where she was promptly dry-docked to repair the hull damage that the ice had caused. Thankfully for her and her crew, Galena's pumps proved themselves more than worthy of the job during the trip, running just about full time the whole way to Norfolk.

USS Galena after her refurb

As soon as her repairs were complete she was assigned to the West Gulf Blockading Squadron, specifically to Mobile Bay, Leaving Norfolk on May 10^th, and arriving in the Gulf on May 20^th. She was immediately put to work,  tangling with several blockade runners before The Battle Of Mobile Bay on August 5^th. 

She passed Fort Morgan lashed to USS Oneida’s port side, and proved that tactic more than valid when Oneida took one through her starboard boiler, and was towed out of range by Galena.

Galena’s rigging was torn up and she took several hits, but her damage was relatively minor and in the days and weeks after entering Mobile Bay, she got in on the shelling of Fort Morgan and performed patrol duties in and off of Mobile Bay. She was reassigned to the East Gulf Blockading Squadron in August of 1864, then sent to Philadelphia Navy Yard for repair. Work didn’t begin until November 22^nd, continuing until March 1865.  She was then assigned to her original home squadron…The Norfolk based North Atlantic Blockading Squadron.

For the remainder of the war she patrolled the Nansemond River as well as the lower part of the James. She left Hampton Roads for Portsmouth, New Hampshire on June 6^th, 1865, was decommissioned there on June 17^th, and was in ordinary until April 9^th, 1869. On that date she was recommissioned just long enough to steam to Norfolk Navy Yard where she was again decommissioned on June 2^nd. She was condemned the next year, and moldered at a backwater dock until 1872 when she was finally broken up for scrap.

I just slapped the high points of Galena's uber-interesting and historic story really quickly here. here...again, to read my article about her on this blog<<<- CLICK 

********************NOTES, LINKS, AND STUFF********************

This one was a challenge at times because of the number of ships involved, the disparity in the amount of information available for them, and, especially, the conflicting information that all but inevitably crops up when you're dealing with events from a century and a half or so back.

As I noted when I kicked this one off, the battle itself was the career highlight for the majority of the 18 Union ships involved in The Battle Of Mobile Bay. Five or so of them had careers that were memorable because of events other than the battle. The rest, along with their crews, did their job and did it competently, but really didn't do anything that'd make their careers memorable in a historical sense. Because of this, information about several of the ships was either sparse, not all that blog-worthy, or both. As in 'Their Wikipedia Article was all I could find'.

This is why few of the posts read like all but reworded Wiki articles...that's exactly what they are. I don't know about you guys, but I really hate clicking on a blog article and discovering it's nothing more than a cut-and-pasted Wikipedia article. Don't get me wrong, Wikipedea's an awesome resource, one that I wish had been around, along with the Internet, back when I was in school. But if I want to read a Wiki article, I'll go to Wikipedia. If a Wiki article on any subject I'm including in any of my blogs is all I can find, I always rework it, using my own style, and I try to find something, somewhere that the article doesn't include. That in itself was a challenge with several of the ships in this post.

Thankfully, there are a number of Naval history sites that include reams of information about the ships that have served in the U.S. Navy, their captains and crews, and their careers. While we're at it, let me throw in a word on conflicting information...If I have a choice between info found in a Wiki article, and info from one of the Naval history sites, the Naval history site wins hands down...especially if they cite official Naval Archives as a source.

I got lucky and found a few interesting little tidbits that I didn't include in the main posts (That's what my 'Notes' section's for.

Hopefully I made this thing interesting and a fun read. So...On to the notes!

<***>

Here's an interestin' little tale about the USS Manhattan's post war career, and better yet, it happened right here in Richmond...see, for a couple of years Richmond was home of one of the very first Naval History Museums, complete with the first six museum ships...even if it was unofficial

After the war the Navy placed six Canonicus class monitors...Ajax, Canonicus, Catskill, Lehigh, Mahopac, and Manhattan...in reserve, and decided to moor them on the waterfront in the Prince George County, Va town of City Point (Now part of Hopewell), right at the confluence of the James and Appomattox Rivers.

This wasn't a 'Ghost Fleet', and the ships weren't mothballed. All six monitors had skeleton crews assigned to them, and were capable of steaming under their own power, and these crews were not happy. Back in the late 1800s, City Point was about as remote an area as you could find in Central VA. The City of Hopewell didn't even exist yet, and wouldn't for several more decades, and City Point was surrounded by farm land. There was no need for the crews to go on liberty because there was absolutely nothing for them to do. In technical terms, they were bored out of their minds.

Now, about twenty miles or so up-river, in Richmond...

The small squadron's commanding officer was a gentleman named Felix McCurley, and he was apparently the kind of officer all enlisted personnel would like to have. He was just as bored as his crews, probably called a meeting of the minds to figure out just how to defeat said boredom, and all came to the same conclusion...Richmond.

So McCurley wasted no time in sending off a request that the squadron be transferred to Virginia's Capital City, and they steamed up-river to Richmond, likely mooring in the vicinity of what's now Warf Street, near the present day Great Shiplock Park. And what happened next is the interesting part...the six ships became, unofficially, the first museum ships.

USS Manhattan while she was moored in Richmond during the 1880s

The citizens of Richmond were intrigued that these six ships, all of which had still bore scars from combat in the late war, were docked in their city, and wanted to take a look. And Commander McCurley had no problem accommodating them. The flotilla was apparently mobbed during the weekends, with excursion boats bringing crowds from further up and down river, and others making the then kind of long journey from Richmond's residential areas, and even the definitely long trip from Petersburg (An hour or less away by train, 2-4 hours by boat, as much as 8 hours by stage or on horseback) to the mooring. Crowds would walk the decks, and tour below, and the flotilla was described in a couple of publications as a ''Resort for the resident of The Capitol City'

All was well with the world until sometime in 1891, when McCurley was promoted and given command of the Philadelphia Navy Yard. He was replaced by an Naval Academy grad by the name of James D. Graham who was the Polar opposite of McCurley, and the absolute epitome of the By The Book, The Rules Are The Rules Are The Rules type boss all of us just...er...love so much.

One of his first acts as the squadrons new commander was to make the ships off-limits to civilians. The Citizens of Richmond and environs there-of were not amused. They'd come down river in the afore-mentioned excursion boats, and all but ask for Graham's head on a platter...to the point that he moved his family out of the area, and requested assistance and guidance from the Navy Department.

All six ships were transferred to The Norfolk Navy Yard for minor repair and overhaul, then to Philadelphia Navy Yard for their permanent mooring spot. Other than a brief period during the Spanish-American War when they were recommissioned for Coastal Defense duties this is where they stayed until they were scrapped.

Of course, Graham's only mistake was being a Naval officer who took his job and duties seriously and didn't feel that the ships under his command were there for the entertainment of civilians...and to be honest, other than special occasions, warships are not generally open to the public. But lets be honest here...if any of us had been citizens of Richmond in the 1880s, we would have taken advantage of McCurley's hospitality on at least one or two warm spring weekends. Don't deny it...ya know ya would have!

<***>

Several of the ships of the line spent part of their post-war careers as training ships, and all facets of Naval seamanship were covered...including gunnery. By the late 1800s (Definitely by the 1890s) the muzzle loading naval cannon had disappeared from the decks of U.S. Navy warships, meaning that midshipmen needed to be trained in the use of modern naval artillery.

This of course meant that many Civil War era sloops of war were actually armed with modern (For that era) breech loading rapid fire 5 inch...and occasionally larger...guns in their later years. These were, of course, for training purposes only as the idea of a wooden hulled sloop of war tangling with a modern steel hulled cruiser or battleship pretty much redefined ludicrous, not to mention suicidal.

While we're on the topic of gun decks on these training ships...as originally built the spar decks (Or main deck) of these sloops of war also doubled as the gun deck, with their big Dahlgrens and Parrott Rifles open to the weather and firing through ports cut in the rail.

Many if not most had a complete spar deck added during one of their post war refits, with a new main deck being built above the old spar deck, giving them an enclosed gun deck.

I believe that the only one of the fourteen ships-Of The Line and gunboats in Admiral Farragut's fleet at Mobile Bay to be designed and built with an enclosed gun deck from the git-go was The Forgotten Ironclad...USS Galena

<***>

Over the course of a century and a half, Fredeiksted, St Croix has grown and become a tourist destination of choice, but something still remains from that long-ago day when USS Monongahela was carried ashore the way a kid carries a tow boat away from the beach when he heads home. Five bottles from the late 1860s inscribed with 'U.S.Navy' and their contents, have been recovered from under the pier at Fredeiksted., harking back to the time when Diplomatic actions, the purchase of the Dutch West Indies by the U.S., and a Hurricane collided.

Take a look: http://www.peachridgeglass.com/2014/02/bottles-under-the-pier-in-fredeiksted-st-croix/

<***>

As noted in the post on the Hartford, the term 'ships bridge' originated during the Civil War...but it was the gunboats that caused the term to come about...the 'bridge' was actually just that. Originally, a ships captain gave orders from the quarterdeck, the aft most, and highest deck on a sailing ship. When the side wheel gunboats began appearing, the wheel boxes were the highest structures on the ship. This caused them to block the captain's view to the sides, and the 'quarters' of of the bow...if he moved his command platform forward, his view aft would be obstructed.

To remedy this, a 'bridge' connecting the wheel boxes was added, and this became the Captains command platform. Bridges were retrofitted to many of the sloops of war during refits, and became features of all ships well before the end of the 19^th Century.

Another item that began appearing as a standard feature on ships was the enclosed pilothouse, though that was already a feature of many smaller steamboats, and had been a fixture on riverboats for a couple of decades already by the time the Civil War started...in fact by the time the war ended few ships were being built with open helms except for ships such as small schooners that were still all sail. Pilot houses were even added to several of the sloops of war in later refits.

<***>LINKS<***>

First up, the Wikipedia articles of all eighteen of the Union Navy ships involved in the Battle of Mobile Bay.

Tecumseh         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Tecumseh_(1863)

Manhattan       http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Manhattan_(1863)

Chickasaw       http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Manhattan_(1863)

Winnebago      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Winnebago_(1863)

Brooklyn:        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Brooklyn_(1858)

Hartford         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Hartford_(1858)

Richmond       http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Richmond_(1860)

Lackawanna   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Lackawanna_(1862)

Monongahela http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Monongahela_(1862)

Ossipee          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Ossipee_(1861)

Oneida           http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Oneida_(1861)

Octorara        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Octorara_(1861)

Metacomet     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Metacomet_(1863)

Port Royal     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Port_Royal_(1862)

Seminole        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Seminole_(1859)

Kennebec       http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Kennebec_(1861)

Itasca             http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Kennebec_(1861)

Galena           http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Galena_(1862)

If it floated and was at some point in time on the rolls of the U.S Navy, It 's a pretty good bet that info, including history. photos, and commanding officers will be included on this profoundly awesome resource for Naval History buffs and researchers. The website? 

  Navsource.org http://www.navsource.org/

The Navsource posts for almost all fo Admiral Farragut's ships...the only one that didn't have a article on the site were Manhattan and Seminole.

Tecumseh        http://www.navsource.org/archives/01/tecumseh.htm

Chickasaw       http://www.navsource.org/archives/01/chickasaw.htm

Winnebago      http://www.navsource.org/archives/01/winnebago.htm

Hartford         http://www.navsource.org/archives/09/46/46013.htm

Brooklyn         http://www.navsource.org/archives/09/86/86052.htm

Richmond       http://www.navsource.org/archives/09/86/86055.htm

Lackawanna   http://www.navsource.org/archives/09/86/86367.htm

Monongahela http://www.navsource.org/archives/09/46/46915.htm

Ossipee          http://www.navsource.org/archives/09/86/86015.htm

Oneida           http://www.navsource.org/archives/09/86/86115.htm

Octorara        http://www.navsource.org/archives/09/86/86433.htm

Metacomet     http://www.navsource.org/archives/09/86/86228.htm

Port Royal     http://www.navsource.org/archives/09/86/86489.htm

Kennebec       http://www.navsource.org/archives/09/86/86383.htm

Itasca             http://www.navsource.org/archives/09/86/86368.htm

Galena           http://www.navsource.org/archives/09/86/86037.htm


A article from NAvsource.org about Norman Rockwell's career aboard Hartford when she was the receiving ship at Charleston. 

 http://www.navsource.org/archives/09/46/46013a.htm 

The text of a period New York Times article raving about USS Hartford's low-maintenance  Mississippi River battle record.A quick and interesting little read that also accurately outlines her armament during the Mississippi Campaign

http://www.nytimes.com/1863/11/02/news/the-steam-sloop-of-war-hartford.html

An excellent article about Hartford's career from the archives of the University of Hartford.

http://library.hartford.edu/UniversityLibraries/archspeccoll/archives/uss_hartford_1.aspx

 

Another Blogspot blog (Historic Ships) post about FDR's proposed and sadly unrealized Naval History Museum, and the end of USS Hartford. 

http://historicships.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-national-naval-museum-fdrs.html

 Check his entire blog out, BTW...it generally rocks!  

While this article from the Naval Historical Foundation is actually about the historic cruiser USS Olympia,it's an in depth article about FDR's Naval History Museum that shows how painfully close it actually came to being built.

http://www.navyhistory.org/2012/07/franklin-roosevelts-vision-to-save-uss-olympia/

 Modern article from the 'St. Croix Source' looking back on the 1967 earthquake and Tsunami that carried Monongahela inland.

http://stcroixsource.com/content/news/local-news/2013/11/19/terrible-earthquake-and-tsunami-nov-18-1867

Text of a period newspaper article about the sinking of USS Oneida. 

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/13202305