John A Wyeth bushwhacks a gunboat

[TerryB]

Forrest biographer John A. Wyeth was about 15 when the war broke out and was from northern Alabama. After the fall of Fort Donelson, the Federals cobbled together a makeshift gunboat, which Wyeth seemed to think was the only thing they had patrolling the Tennessee River. He and some other un-enrolled boys and old men hatched a scheme to fire on it with shotguns. Following it to a bend in the river where they thought it would come within range, they set up an ambush, but their buckshot only slightly wounded one man. The gunboat answered with canister, scattering the would-be bushwhackers hither and yon.

Wyeth went on to ride with Morgan's scouts, as a civilian scout, until he officially enlisted in 1863 in Russell's 4th Alabama Cav. His father finally agreed to let him enlist, even though I think he was still under age. He was captured later that year and spent most of the rest of the war in a POW camp.

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

Do you happen to have the date of their attempted bushwhacking? We could probably narrow down what gunboat it might have been.

 

[TerryB]

Do you happen to have the date of their attempted bushwhacking? We could probably narrow down what gunboat it might have been.

He dates it June 8, 1862. Apparently I can't paste it here, so it must be copyrighted. http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/wyeth/wyeth.html#wyeth160

 

[truthckr]

Good and interesting read, thanks for posting.

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

From the description (and from checking the ORN in June 1862), it sounds like this was an impromptu "gunboat" got up by a local Army officer... records of those are pretty scarce, as from their nature they didn't generate a lot of paperwork...

 

[TerryB]

From the description (and from checking the ORN in June 1862), it sounds like this was an impromptu "gunboat" got up by a local Army officer... records of those are pretty scarce, as from their nature they didn't generate a lot of paperwork...

I want to say they named it the Tennessee, but I don't see that in the account. He does mention the name somewhere.

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

Yeah, I saw that... I'll need to look in the records of the Army vessels I have, but I'm not terribly confident I'll find anything. There's definitely no US gunboat Tennessee in the appropriate ORN.

 

[TerryB]

Yeah, I saw that... I'll need to look in the records of the Army vessels I have, but I'm not terribly confident I'll find anything. There's definitely no US gunboat Tennessee in the appropriate ORN.

Being an army-built and manned boat, I wonder if there would be anything in the OR dealing with army matters?

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

I found one possible entry in Gibson & Gibson's Dictionary of Transports and Combatant Vessels, Steam and Sail, Employed by the Union Army 1861 - 1868 (Camden, Maine: Ensign Pres, 1995), p. 311:

"TENNESSEE; horse-powered ferry boat, converted to steam powered gunboat; tonnage unknown. During the spring of 1862, Captain John B. Yates converted this former horse ferry into a gunboat equipped with one artillery piece and powered by a steam engine taken from a sawmill. She was to patrol the upper Tennessee River from Decatur, Alabama, to Bridgeport to suppress enemy partisan activity on the river. An attempt to armor the vessel was discarded as her natural flotation would not have stood the extra weight. Thought to have made one patrol on the river before it was decided that she was not adequate for the task. Was taken downriver to Decatur and turned back into ferry service. [ORA, I, 16]"

(This is based solely on the assumption that the name Tennessee was correct, but it seems to fit reasonably well.)

 

[TerryB]

I found one possible entry in Gibson & Gibson's Dictionary of Transports and Combatant Vessels, Steam and Sail, Employed by the Union Army 1861 - 1868 (Camden, Maine: Ensign Pres, 1995), p. 311:

"TENNESSEE; horse-powered ferry boat, converted to steam powered gunboat; tonnage unknown. During the spring of 1862, Captain John B. Yates converted this former horse ferry into a gunboat equipped with one artillery piece and powered by a steam engine taken from a sawmill. She was to patrol the upper Tennessee River from Decatur, Alabama, to Bridgeport to suppress enemy partisan activity on the river. An attempt to armor the vessel was discarded as her natural flotation would not have stood the extra weight. Thought to have made one patrol on the river before it was decided that she was not adequate for the task. Was taken downriver to Decatur and turned back into ferry service. [ORA, I, 16]"

(This is based solely on the assumption that the name Tennessee was correct, but it seems to fit reasonably well.)

Could well be. Like all vets writing at a later date, Wyeth claimed his memory of the events was clear, yet he also has inaccuracies in his accounts. So the fit looks good.

 

[TerryB]

Capt. Yates gives his account of the affair in a lengthy interview. OR, Series 1, Vol 16 (Part I) pp 485-86

http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/c...aro0022;view=image;seq=500;page=root;size=100

 

[TerryB]

Forgot to mention that Yates and Wyeth are obviously talking about the same incident. The main difference is that Wyeth thought the vessel mounted two Parrott rifles instead of just one.

 

[NeilL]

(Hopefully this will not be a repeat; I tried to post a reply, but it did not appear.) The gunboat sounds a lot like the type of ferry that the Burlington horse-drawn ferry was. The Burlington ferry was 62'5" long, with a beam of 15'3". There is a 1993 Park Service report on the Burlington underwater wreck that details the Burlington boat.

 

[NeilL]

A point of clarification: the boat I described was the Burlington Bay horse ferry; not really horse-drawn, but (literally) horse-powered, as the horse walked on a turntable which then revolved and,m through gears, moved the side-wheels.

 

[TerryB]

A point of clarification: the boat I described was the Burlington Bay horse ferry; not really horse-drawn, but (literally) horse-powered, as the horse walked on a turntable which then revolved and,m through gears, moved the side-wheels.

This boat only took one run as a gunboat. It was then made into a ferry boat at Bridgeport, as described in the Yates interview in the OR (See link above). I didn't read his testimony all the way to the end, but it sounds like he had some 'splainin' to do. It may be that the ferry sank, since this sounds like some sort of official inquiry.