Part 16 (1/2)
XX
The Blockade--Hatteras Inlet--Roanoke Island--Fort Pulaski--Merrimac and Monitor--The c.u.mberland Sunk--The Congress Burned--Battle of the Ironclads--Flag-officer Farragut--Forts Jackson and St. Philip--New Orleans Captured--Farragut at Vicksburg--Farragut's Second Expedition to Vicksburg--Return to New Orleans
In addition to its heavy work of maintaining the Atlantic blockade, the navy of the United States contributed signally toward the suppression of the rebellion by three brilliant victories which it gained during the first half of the year 1862. After careful preparation during several months, a joint expedition under the command of General Ambrose E.
Burnside and Flag-Officer Goldsborough, consisting of more than twelve thousand men and twenty s.h.i.+ps of war, accompanied by numerous transports, sailed from Fort Monroe on January 11, with the object of occupying the interior waters of the North Carolina coast. Before the larger vessels could effect their entrance through Hatteras Inlet, captured in the previous August, a furious storm set in, which delayed the expedition nearly a month. By February 7, however, that and other serious difficulties were overcome, and on the following day the expedition captured Roanoke Island, and thus completely opened the whole interior water-system of Albemarle and Pamlico sounds to the easy approach of the Union fleet and forces.
From Roanoke Island as a base, minor expeditions within a short period effected the destruction of the not very formidable fleet which the enemy had been able to organize, and the reduction of Fort Macon and the rebel defenses of Elizabeth City, New Berne, and other smaller places.
An eventual advance upon Goldsboro' formed part of the original plan; but, before it could be executed, circ.u.mstances intervened effectually to thwart that object.
While the gradual occupation of the North Carolina coast was going on, two other expeditions of a similar nature were making steady progress.
One of them, under the direction of General Quincy A. Gillmore, carried on a remarkable siege operation against Fort Pulaski, standing on an isolated sea marsh at the mouth of the Savannah River. Here not only the difficulties of approach, but the apparently insurmountable obstacle of making the soft, unctuous mud sustain heavy batteries, was overcome, and the fort compelled to surrender on April 11, after an effective bombardment. The second was an expedition of nineteen s.h.i.+ps, which, within a few days during the month of March, without serious resistance, occupied the whole remaining Atlantic coast southward as far as St.
Augustine.
When, at the outbreak of the rebellion, the navy-yard at Norfolk, Virginia, had to be abandoned to the enemy, the destruction at that time attempted by Commodore Paulding remained very incomplete. Among the vessels set on fire, the screw-frigate _Merrimac_, which had been scuttled, was burned only to the water's edge, leaving her hull and machinery entirely uninjured. In due time she was raised by the Confederates, covered with a sloping roof of railroad iron, provided with a huge wedge-shaped prow of cast iron, and armed with a formidable battery of ten guns. Secret information came to the Navy Department of the progress of this work, and such a possibility was kept in mind by the board of officers that decided upon the construction of the three experimental ironclads in September, 1861.
The particular one of these three especially intended for this peculiar emergency was a s.h.i.+p of entirely novel design, made by the celebrated inventor John Ericsson, a Swede by birth, but American by adoption--a man who combined great original genius with long scientific study and experience. His invention may be most quickly described as having a small, very low hull, covered by a much longer and wider flat deck only a foot or two above the water-line, upon which was placed a revolving iron turret twenty feet in diameter, nine feet high, and eight inches thick, on the inside of which were two eleven-inch guns trained side by side and revolving with the turret. This unique naval structure was promptly nicknamed ”a cheese-box on a raft,” and the designation was not at all inapt. Naval experts at once recognized that her sea-going qualities were bad; but compensation was thought to exist in the belief that her iron turret would resist shot and sh.e.l.l, and that the thin edge of her flat deck would offer only a minimum mark to an enemy's guns: in other words, that she was no cruiser, but would prove a formidable floating battery; and this belief she abundantly justified.
The test of her fighting qualities was attended by what almost suggested a miraculous coincidence. On Sat.u.r.day, March 8, 1862, about noon, a strange-looking craft resembling a huge turtle was seen coming into Hampton Roads out of the mouth of Elizabeth River, and it quickly became certain that this was the much talked of rebel ironclad _Merrimac_, or, as the Confederates had renamed her, the _Virginia_. She steamed rapidly toward Newport News, three miles to the southwest, where the Union s.h.i.+ps _Congress_ and _c.u.mberland_ lay at anchor. These saw the uncouth monster coming and prepared for action. The _Minnesota_, the _St. Lawrence_, and the _Roanoke_, lying at Fortress Monroe also saw her and gave chase, but, the water being low, they all soon grounded. The broadsides of the _Congress_, as the _Merrimac_ pa.s.sed her at three hundred yards' distance, seemed to produce absolutely no effect upon her sloping iron roof. Neither did the broadsides of her intended prey, nor the fire of the sh.o.r.e batteries, for even an instant arrest her speed as, rus.h.i.+ng on, she struck the _c.u.mberland_, and with her iron prow broke a hole as large as a hogshead in her side. Then backing away and hovering over her victim at convenient distance, she raked her decks with shot and sh.e.l.l until, after three quarters of an hour's combat, the _c.u.mberland_ and her heroic defenders, who had maintained the fight with unyielding stubbornness, went to the bottom in fifty feet of water with colors flying.
Having sunk the _c.u.mberland_, the _Merrimac_ next turned her attention to the _Congress_, which had meanwhile run into shoal water and grounded where the rebel vessel could not follow. But the _Merrimac_, being herself apparently proof against shot and sh.e.l.l by her iron plating, took up a raking position two cables' length away, and during an hour's firing deliberately reduced the _Congress_ to helplessness and to surrender--her commander being killed and the vessel set on fire. The approach, the manoeuvering, and the two successive combats consumed the afternoon, and toward nightfall the _Merrimac_ and her three small consorts that had taken little part in the action withdrew to the rebel batteries on the Virginia sh.o.r.e: not alone because of the approaching darkness and the fatigue of the crew, but because the rebel s.h.i.+p had really suffered considerable damage in ramming the _c.u.mberland_, as well as from one or two chance shots that entered her port-holes.
That same night, while the burning _Congress_ yet lighted up the waters of Hampton Roads, a little s.h.i.+p, as strange-looking and as new to marine warfare as the rebel turtleback herself, arrived by sea in tow from New York, and receiving orders to proceed at once to the scene of conflict, stationed herself near the grounded _Minnesota_. This was Ericsson's ”cheese-box on a raft,” named by him the _Monitor_. The Union officers who had witnessed the day's events with dismay, and were filled with gloomy forebodings for the morrow, while welcoming this providential reinforcement, were by no means rea.s.sured. The _Monitor_ was only half the size of her antagonist, and had only two guns to the other's ten.
But this very disparity proved an essential advantage. With only ten feet draft to the _Merrimac's_ twenty-two, she not only possessed superior mobility, but might run where the _Merrimac_ could not follow.
When, therefore, at eight o'clock on Sunday, March 9, the _Merrimac_ again came into Hampton Roads to complete her victory, Lieutenant John L. Worden, commanding the _Monitor_, steamed boldly out to meet her.
Then ensued a three hours' naval conflict which held the breathless attention of the active partic.i.p.ants and the spectators on s.h.i.+p and sh.o.r.e, and for many weeks excited the wonderment of the reading world.
If the _Monitor's_ solid eleven-inch b.a.l.l.s bounded without apparent effect from the sloping roof of the _Merrimac_, so, in turn, the _Merrimac's_ broadsides pa.s.sed harmlessly over the low deck of the _Monitor_, or rebounded from the round sides of her iron turret. When the unwieldy rebel turtleback, with her slow, awkward movement, tried to ram the pointed raft that carried the cheese-box, the little vessel, obedient to her rudder, easily glided out of the line of direct impact.
Each s.h.i.+p pa.s.sed through occasional moments of danger, but the long three hours' encounter ended without other serious damage than an injury to Lieutenant Worden by the explosion of a rebel sh.e.l.l against a crevice of the _Monitor's_ pilot-house through which he was looking, which, temporarily blinding his eye-sight, disabled him from command. At that point the battle ended by mutual consent. The _Monitor_, unharmed except by a few unimportant dents in her plating, ran into shoal water to permit surgical attendance to her wounded officer. On her part, the _Merrimac_, abandoning any further molestation of the other s.h.i.+ps, steamed away at noon to her retreat in Elizabeth River. The forty-one rounds fired from the _Monitor's_ guns had so far weakened the _Merrimac's_ armor that, added to the injuries of the previous day, it was of the highest prudence to avoid further conflict. A tragic fate soon ended the careers of both vessels. Owing to other military events, the _Merrimac_ was abandoned, burned, and blown up by her officers about two months later; and in the following December, the _Monitor_ foundered in a gale off Cape Hatteras. But the types of these pioneer ironclads, which had demonstrated such unprecedented fighting qualities, were continued. Before the end of the war the Union navy had more than twenty monitors in service; and the structure of the _Merrimac_ was in a number of instances repeated by the Confederates.
The most brilliant of all the exploits of the navy during the year 1862 were those carried on under the command of Flag-Officer David G.
Farragut, who, though a born Southerner and residing in Virginia when the rebellion broke out, remained loyal to the government and true to the flag he had served for forty-eight years. Various preparations had been made and various plans discussed for an effective attempt against some prominent point on the Gulf coast. Very naturally, all examinations of the subject inevitably pointed to the opening of the Mississippi as the dominant problem to be solved; and on January 9, Farragut was appointed to the command of the western Gulf blockading squadron, and eleven days thereafter received his confidential instructions to attempt the capture of the city of New Orleans.
Thus far in the war, Farragut had been a.s.signed to no prominent service, but the patience with which he had awaited his opportunity was now more than compensated by the energy and thoroughness with which he superintended the organization of his fleet. By the middle of April he was in the lower Mississippi with seventeen men-of-war and one hundred and seventy-seven guns. With him were Commander David D. Porter, in charge of a mortar flotilla of nineteen schooners and six armed steams.h.i.+ps, and General Benjamin F. Butler, at the head of an army contingent of six thousand men, soon to be followed by considerable reinforcements.
The first obstacle to be overcome was the fire from the twin forts Jackson and St. Philip, situated nearly opposite each other at a bend of the Mississippi twenty-five miles above the mouth of the river, while the city of New Orleans itself lies seventy-five miles farther up the stream. These were formidable forts of masonry, with an armament together of over a hundred guns, and garrisons of about six hundred men each. They also had auxiliary defenses: first, of a strong river barrier of log rafts and other obstructions connected by powerful chains, half a mile below the forts; second, of an improvised fleet of sixteen rebel gunboats and a formidable floating battery. None of Farragut's s.h.i.+ps were ironclad. He had, from the beginning of the undertaking, maintained the theory that a wooden fleet, properly handled, could successfully pa.s.s the batteries of the forts. ”I would as soon have a paper s.h.i.+p as an ironclad; only give me _men_ to fight her!”
he said. He might not come back; but New Orleans would be won. In his hazardous undertaking his faith was based largely on the skill and courage of his subordinate commanders of s.h.i.+ps, and this faith was fully sustained by their gallantry and devotion.
Porter's flotilla of nineteen schooners carrying two mortars each, anch.o.r.ed below the forts, maintained a heavy bombardment for five days, and then Farragut decided to try his s.h.i.+ps. On the night of the twentieth the daring work of two gunboats cut an opening through the river barrier through which the vessels might pa.s.s; and at two o'clock on the morning of April 24, Farragut gave the signal to advance. The first division of his fleet, eight vessels, led by Captain Bailey, successfully pa.s.sed the barrier. The second division of nine s.h.i.+ps was not quite so fortunate. Three of them failed to pa.s.s the barrier, but the others, led by Farragut himself in his flag-s.h.i.+p, the _Hartford_, followed the advance.
The starlit night was quickly obscured by the smoke of the general cannonade from both s.h.i.+ps and forts; but the heavy batteries of the latter had little effect on the pa.s.sing fleet. Farragut's flag-s.h.i.+p was for a short while in great danger. At a moment when she slightly grounded a huge fire-raft, fully ablaze, was pushed against her by a rebel tug, and the flames caught in the paint on her side, and mounted into her rigging. But this danger had also been provided against, and by heroic efforts the _Hartford_ freed herself from her peril. Immediately above the forts, the fleet of rebel gunboats joined in the battle, which now resolved itself into a series of conflicts between single vessels or small groups. But the stronger and better-armed Union s.h.i.+ps quickly destroyed the Confederate flotilla, with the single exception that two of the enemy's gunboats rammed the _Varuna_ from opposite sides and sank her. Aside from this, the Union fleet sustained much miscellaneous damage, but no serious injury in the furious battle of an hour and a half.
With but a short halt at Quarantine, six miles above the forts, Farragut and his thirteen s.h.i.+ps of war pushed on rapidly over the seventy-five miles, and on the forenoon of April 25 New Orleans lay helpless under the guns of the Union fleet. The city was promptly evacuated by the Confederate General Lovell. Meanwhile, General Butler was busy moving his transports and troops around outside by sea to Quarantine; and, having occupied that point in force, Forts Jackson and St. Philip capitulated on April 28. This last obstruction removed, Butler, after having garrisoned the forts, brought the bulk of his army up to New Orleans, and on May 1 Farragut turned over to him the formal possession of the city, where Butler continued in command of the Department of the Gulf until the following December.