CSS Ashley and CSS Cooper?

[Mad Hungarian]

Hello, everyone -

New to the boards, but not to the site. Really enjoying the excellent information and friendly discourse.
I have been researching and 3d sculpting several ironclads, and that's how I came across the forum! I'm a dyed in the wool Union boy, but I'm very fond of the CSN ships, and I find both sides of the naval war quite fascinating.

I'm curious about something. Recently, I've run into references for two ironclads - "CSS Ashley" and "CSS Cooper" which were, according to the brief information associated therewith, supposed to have been building at Charleston when the city fell.

The only other reference to CSS Ashley I've seen is a note that suggests the name "Ashley" was in fact a name often used mistakenly for CSS Charleston.

Do these vessels indeed exist, or did they at least exist on paper? If so, does anyone have any details?

Thanks,

Alex

 

[rebelatsea]

Hi Alex. This is yet another piece of "received wisdom". The bane of my life researching he CSN.
Here is the info you want.

Name: CSS Ashley & CSS Cooper

These two vessels were originally ordered as 4 gun Charleston class ironclads to a plan by Sydney Porter based on the William Graves drawing.Intended to mount 4 of the heaviest weapons in a short casemate behind 6" armour.

Type: Ironclad steam sloop. Screw/s: one, Speed 8.5 knots
Dimensions: 181ft OA x 43ft EX x 12 -13ft D, 1362 tons,
167ft PP x 32ft B x 13ft DPH
Guns: 4
Armour 6" on 24" timber, top & decks 1" iron.
Design: William Graves & Sydney Porter.

History:

So far as is known construction never started in this form.

As laid down and constructed the vessels were single screw Milledgeville type, making use of machinery already prepared.

Class: Milledgeville

Type: Ironclad Steam Sloop. Screw(s): one , Speed: 7.5 knots
Dimensions: 172ft (OA), 160ft (BP) x 32ft (B, 45ft (EX) x 10ft (D), 1,106 tons
Guns: 4 probably to be 7" Brooke mlr.
Armour: 6 inch iron on 24" timber sloped at 30 degrees.
Design: H. F. Willink

History:

Original plan by the Author, after a plan by Bob Holcombe drawn from the Willink original.

CSS Ashley:
Builder: James Marsh, Market Street, Charleston SC .Launched: /07/1864

CSS Cooper:
Builder: Kirkwood & Knox, North Dry-dock Wharf, Charleston SC.


The details and appearance drawing of these vessels is based on a consensus of opinion on the part of Bob Holcombe, Ben Shuman, Henry Harris and John Wallis as no original documentation appears to have survived. They are Milledgeville type, but single screwed, length and beam reduced and 1ft deeper draught.

Castings and forgings for one of these two were prepared at Columbus GA Naval Iron Works.

Neither vessel was far advanced and both were destroyed when Charleston fell 18/02/1865.


===============================================================

 

[Mad Hungarian]

Fascinating. Thank you!

It is quite a problem, I've found, not only in regards to the Civil War at sea, but in regards to a great deal of military history. Somebody says something in print, usually with no basis other than "I heard this somewhere" and suddenly the entire community accepts it as fact, somehow working itself into general knowledge and then finding its way into source materials. Don't get me started on "received wisdom" regarding the Romans!

Thank you again for the information. Immensely helpful!

 

[rebelatsea]

Alex,
As an example of more "received wisdom" I have just run head on into another one regarding Norths ironclad, which means yet another revision at this late stage. GRRRR.

 

[Mad Hungarian]

North's Ship... "the Santa Ana"? If I'm remembering correctly. I just finished doing a test model of that one. What have you run into? I'm still educating myself on this subject matter, and I'm always happy to learn new things. What I've generally been able to discover, can be summarized pretty succinctly. Said to be designed for a broadside of approximately twelve guns. 271 feet long, beam of approximately fifty feet, with a draft of eighteen feet. I based the (again, basic, but it is for wargaming in 1/600, so I can avoid some of the extreme detail we like to see in bigger models) model on images of the Danmark, although I tried to model her with the quoted gunports, since the sources claim the Danish apparently modified her?

Anyway, all of the references I've found with her (and that isn't much, I'm sure you'll agree) seem to end up ending with some variation upon the same story (which I am wondering might be part of what you've run into)...Confederacy decides she isn't worth the money, attempts to sell her, ends up as Danmark in the Danish Navy, during which time she is said to have "the positive sailing aspects of a brick," goes on a single commissioned cruise, rolls terribly and is never used actively again.

 

[Mad Hungarian]

As an aside, I'm in the process of publishing my second board game, in this case a card game about the Naval War. The publisher likes it, and has asked me to add new ships. I find the amount of disparity in the descriptions given for some vessels simply astounding.

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

The discrepancies in recorded/received "facts" about the various ironclads was precisely the factor that torpedoed my project to collect the specifications of the ironclads (that, and Paul Silverstone beat me to it), and led to me basically dumping my data onto the Web in late 1996 (jeesh, that's almost 20 years ago now! I think I just felt another gray hair form)... that, as well as the fact that I'd realized that since I hadn't kept good track of my source material, that it wasn't really publishable. (http://users.wowway.com/~jenkins/ironclads/ironclad.htm) . I hope I haven't added to the confusion, overall.

 

[rebelatsea]

The discrepancies in recorded/received "facts" about the various ironclads was precisely the factor that torpedoed my project to collect the specifications of the ironclads (that, and Paul Silverstone beat me to it), and led to me basically dumping my data onto the Web in late 1996 (jeesh, that's almost 20 years ago now! I think I just felt another gray hair form)... that, as well as the fact that I'd realized that since I hadn't kept good track of my source material, that it wasn't really publishable. (http://users.wowway.com/~jenkins/ironclads/ironclad.htm) . I hope I haven't added to the confusion, overall.

Mark ,you did pretty well to assemble that 20 years ago, I have a lot more detainl on some vessels , but overall thats a bloody good summary.

 

[rebelatsea]

North's Ship... "the Santa Ana"? If I'm remembering correctly. I just finished doing a test model of that one. What have you run into? I'm still educating myself on this subject matter, and I'm always happy to learn new things. What I've generally been able to discover, can be summarized pretty succinctly. Said to be designed for a broadside of approximately twelve guns. 271 feet long, beam of approximately fifty feet, with a draft of eighteen feet. I based the (again, basic, but it is for wargaming in 1/600, so I can avoid some of the extreme detail we like to see in bigger models) model on images of the Danmark, although I tried to model her with the quoted gunports, since the sources claim the Danish apparently modified her?

Anyway, all of the references I've found with her (and that isn't much, I'm sure you'll agree) seem to end up ending with some variation upon the same story (which I am wondering might be part of what you've run into)...Confederacy decides she isn't worth the money, attempts to sell her, ends up as Danmark in the Danish Navy, during which time she is said to have "the positive sailing aspects of a brick," goes on a single commissioned cruise, rolls terribly and is never used actively again.

Alex,
I'm still assembling what happened into a coherent story with plans , I will put it up here when I've done. The cover name was Santa Maria, and the ship I think you have modelled ,which became Danmark is not the original proposal frm Thompsons which was North's ironclad.

 

[Mad Hungarian]

Santa Maria. That's it... in my defense,it was late here in the colonies Danmark is -not- the same ship, eh? This, I can't wait to read. Very interesting.

 

[Mad Hungarian]

Mark - I've found your site to be immensely helpful. It's still one of the better online sources, and it answers, or attempts to answer, questions that others haven't bothered to touch.

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

Thanks. There are some known errors on it (for instance, I inadvertently gave the Monitor's turret armor as 11" instead of 8"-- either I'd used the Passaic class data as a template and failed to change that or I got mentally confused with the 11" Dahlgrens...). I really should go back and fix stuff. I haven't worked much with it since 2001. Which should be increasingly obvious, since it even says it's optimized for 800x600 resolution and the photos are all optimized for someone connecting using dial-up!

 

[Mad Hungarian]

Without you I would not know a great deal of what I know now about the Naval War, so you have succeeded in that regard. It has inspired a great deal more reading and research on my part, and your data does still hold up well in the vast majority of instances! And where you got something wrong, I don't fault you. You were operating with information that we were told was "Accepted fact." You also broke new ground.. Your theories on CSS Phoenix were some of the earliest I saw regarding that mysterious ship.

 

[vikingbear]

Oh boy, don't i feel dumb, that's your site?
That is really a great site! After finding it used the info to upgrade ship files that had already started and to start new ones,
Even nowdays will visit the site once in a while to go through everything.
Too bad about your book though.

GRIZZ

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

Oh, I found a better book to try to write (the Henry Walke biography) But thanks!

And it did teach me a lot about what sources to go to, and (more importantly) to keep track of where I found what.

 

[chellers]

Welcome to CivilWarTalk.

 

[Mad Hungarian]

Thank you

 

[Stiles/Akin]

 

[rebelatsea]

View attachment 325467

That's great information, I couldn't find out if either one had been launched. More info for the second edition of my book. You wouldn't happen to know if the Cooper was also launched?

 

[Stiles/Akin]

I bumped into that. i will search fr it