Ironclad Ambush

[Rhea Cole]

IRONCLAD AMBUSH, Confederates Strike Lincoln's Mississippi River Blockade at the Head of Passes, October 12, 1861. By Neil P. Chatelain.

If, like me, you have been reading Neil Chatelain's books about the Civil War in the Mississippi Valley, it will be no surprise that Ironclad Ambush is a revelation. In the early days of the war the U.S. Navy quickly established a blockade of the Mississippi River.

The mouth of the Mississippi looked like your hand. From a single point at the wrist channels fanned out into the Gulf. The junction at Head of Pass was an obvious choke point. The first ever clash between an ironclad & a traditional flotilla of gunboats that included smoothbore cannon, fire ships, & the telegraph. This was the chance for the Confederacy to break the blockade & siege the initiative to facilitate privateers & blockade runners.

More cotton was shipped from New Orleans than all the other ports combined. It had major ship yards & iron works. It was the greatest slave trading center. The list goes on & on, New Orleans was the nexus where every thread of the Confederate economy interacted.

Chatelain is known for his use of historic quotes. He does not disappoint. Letting the historic individuals speak for themselves enlivens the historical narrative.

The narrative of the design & construction of the ironclad ram Manassas. The ram excited all manner of interest. The design was… well, shaped like a football with two smokestacks poking out the top. A single cannon poked out of a hatch in the bow. Due to the shape of the deck it was impossible to reload.

The attack itself is very simple & yet very complex. The Manassas rammed the USS Richmond starting three strakes below the waterline. The steam driven pumps were able to stem the inflow. The ram of the Manassas bent over at a 90 degree angle, one smokestack was shot clean off & the other fell in such a way as to force smoke back down into the hull. A midshipman opened a hatch, climbed out onto the curved carapace & sit the red rocket signal to the rest of the flotilla… he was holding onto the stick when he lit the rocket… it burned his hand & he dropped it into the open hatch. One of the engines driving a propeller shafts broke down. Out of prudence, the Manassas & flotilla withdrew upstream to New Orleans.

An indication of just how vital keeping the mouth of the Mississippi River open can be indicated by the cargos of blockade runners captured by the blockade flotilla. 9,000 long arms, many of them junk but the majority modern percussion rifles. 950 slaves made up the cargo of a clipper ship turned slaver.

I study history because I want to learn new things. On just about every paragraph of Ironclad Ambush I thought, "I didn't know that." What more could you want?

 

[NFB22]

Didn't even know he had a new book out. I've read Defending the Arteries of Rebellion and enjoyed it.

On another note, I believe George Hollins needs a good biography written about him. A career naval officer, he had a lot of interesting exploits both with the U.S. Navy before the war and with the C.S. Navy and may have been under-utilized in my opinion without knowing about his Civil War service more in depth.

 

[Rhea Cole]

Didn't even know he had a new book out. I've read Defending the Arteries of Rebellion and enjoyed it.

On another note, I believe George Hollins needs a good biography written about him. A career naval officer, he had a lot of interesting exploits both with the U.S. Navy before the war and with the C.S. Navy and may have been under-utilized in my opinion without knowing about his Civil War service more in depth.

I preordered Ironclad Ambush. It arrived a few days ago. I find it a bit hard to wrap my brain around 900 slaves crammed aboard a clipper ship. (+/-) $ 1,000,000 1860 dollars or $40 - 50,000,000 today. Add the value of the ship & the loss was an inconceivable amount of money.

What were they thinking? Keeping the Mississippi open should have been priority #1.

 

[rebelatsea]

Didn't even know he had a new book out. I've read Defending the Arteries of Rebellion and enjoyed it.

On another note, I believe George Hollins needs a good biography written about him. A career naval officer, he had a lot of interesting exploits both with the U.S. Navy before the war and with the C.S. Navy and may have been under-utilized in my opinion without knowing about his Civil War service more in depth.

I've always thought that if George N Hollins had been left in Charge at New Orleans and being given support by Mallory, the USN would not have been able to attack. He could have had an ironclad squadron to fight with.
I agree , a good biography is needed.

 

[Rhea Cole]

I've always thought that if George N Hollins had been left in Charge at New Orleans and being given support by Mallory, the USN would not have been able to attack. He could have had an ironclad squadron to fight with.
I agree , a good biography is needed.

Lincoln's Gov's acted with alacrity. The blockading squadron was made up of blue water ships. Running aground & marking channels was a constant activity. Ships used their screws to open & maintain the passageways. Chatelain includes a lot of the nuts & bolts procedures.

Everyone who postulates on the wonder weapon ironclads with 15' drafts breaking the blockade needs to read this book. Frigates & Laird rams were too long to navigate the channels, for example. Screw sloops-o-war were small enough to enter the river.

 

[rebelatsea]

Most of the vessels in Farragut's squadron had drafts in excess of 15ft and had no problems getting into and manoevering in the Mississippi. Of The vessels proposed to be constructed and approved while Hollins was in charge would have been only one had a draught of 21ft. The Manassus, which was not an official proposal was 17.5ft draught.

They were all in answer to Mallory's 1861 request for ironclads for defence of the lower Mississippi, and were by citizens of the port who would have been well aware of the river's characteristics.

 

[Rhea Cole]

Most of the vessels in Farragut's squadron had drafts in excess of 15ft and had no problems getting into and manoevering in the Mississippi. Of The vessels proposed to be constructed and approved while Hollins was in charge would have been only one had a draught of 21ft. The Manassus, which was not an official proposal was 17.5ft draught.

They were all in answer to Mallory's 1861 request for ironclads for defence of the lower Mississippi, and were by citizens of the port who would have been well aware of the river's characteristics.

You haven't read Chatelaine's book. After you read about the challenges of maneuvering deep draft vessels in the approaches & channels in America there will be some conclusions. It might be useful to assume that I am aware of the most obvious facts about navigation in the Mississippi Valley.

"In the river", as the expression goes, the Mississippi River channel at Cairo, Illinois is 100 feet deep; Memphis (+/-) 200 feet deep. Vicksburg 80 - 90 feet deep; New Orleans maximum depth 200 feet.

In the upper river a 9 foot channel is maintained by a series of locks & dams. The pool above Lock & Dam 13 at Clinton, Iowa is three miles wide. My parents lived there for 20 years a couple of blocks from the river. From the levy below the dam it would not be hard to kick a soccer ball & bounce it off a barge.

At Memphis the Mississippi is 0.5 to 0.7 of a mile wide… when it is not 3 miles wide, that is.

Ironclad Ambush.

The challenge of entering the Mississippi, exactly like the deep water ports along the East Coast, was the depth & complexity of the channels leading to the ports. At Charleston ships navigated a complex network of what amounted to narrow rivers. Historically, as is documented by Chatelaine, frigates were too long to make the bends in the channel.

As would have been the case for the 100 yard long Laird rams or HMS Warrior that have fascinated contributors on CWT.

At Charleston there is all kinds of blue on the map. However, the channels amounts to meandering narrow streams. At low tide a person could literally wade across much of the harbor. The Monitors that stood off Fort Sumpter were marooned in a narrow stretch of channel where they were sitting ducks.

Casement ironclads that attempted to break the blockade were handily defeated by Monitors that drew (+/-) 10 feet. They maneuvered to a stern quarter where the casement blocked the line of fire & defeated them with impunity.

Note: Of course, the British wonder weapon ironclads of 1860-65 never fired a shot in anger. They were a transition to steel hulled, turbine powered, big gun battleships.

That being said, in my opinion it seems to me that the thousands of rounds fired by the Mediterranean Fleet while sitting at anchor that scored (+/-) 10% on Egyptian forts should temper the wonder weapon ironclad claims. It is a fact that the 100 yard long monsters could not have maneuvered in East Coast waters & there is a real question that they could have hit anything had they tried. That is just my reading of the documentary evidence.

(Re: Dreadnaught by Robert K. Massie)

 

[rebelatsea]

View attachment 587117

You haven't read Chatelaine's book. After you read about the challenges of maneuvering deep draft vessels in the approaches & channels in America there will be some conclusions. It might be useful to assume that I am aware of the most obvious facts about navigation in the Mississippi Valley.

"In the river", as the expression goes, the Mississippi River channel at Cairo, Illinois is 100 feet deep; Memphis (+/-) 200 feet deep. Vicksburg 80 - 90 feet deep; New Orleans maximum depth 200 feet.

In the upper river a 9 foot channel is maintained by a series of locks & dams. The pool above Lock & Dam 13 at Clinton, Iowa is three miles wide. My parents lived there for 20 years a couple of blocks from the river. From the levy below the dam it would not be hard to kick a soccer ball & bounce it off a barge.

At Memphis the Mississippi is 0.5 to 0.7 of a mile wide… when it is not 3 miles wide, that is.

View attachment 587103
Ironclad Ambush.

The challenge of entering the Mississippi, exactly like the deep water ports along the East Coast, was the depth & complexity of the channels leading to the ports. At Charleston ships navigated a complex network of what amounted to narrow rivers. Historically, as is documented by Chatelaine, frigates were too long to make the bends in the channel.

As would have been the case for the 100 yard long Laird rams or HMS Warrior that have fascinated contributors on CWT.

View attachment 587118

At Charleston there is all kinds of blue on the map. However, the channels amounts to meandering narrow streams. At low tide a person could literally wade across much of the harbor. The Monitors that stood off Fort Sumpter were marooned in a narrow stretch of channel where they were sitting ducks.

Casement ironclads that attempted to break the blockade were handily defeated by Monitors that drew (+/-) 10 feet. They maneuvered to a stern quarter where the casement blocked the line of fire & defeated them with impunity.

Note: Of course, the British wonder weapon ironclads of 1860-65 never fired a shot in anger. They were a transition to steel hulled, turbine powered, big gun battleships.

That being said, in my opinion it seems to me that the thousands of rounds fired by the Mediterranean Fleet while sitting at anchor that scored (+/-) 10% on Egyptian forts should temper the wonder weapon ironclad claims. It is a fact that the 100 yard long monsters could not have maneuvered in East Coast waters & there is a real question that they could have hit anything had they tried. That is just my reading of the documentary evidence.

(Re: Dreadnaught by Robert K. Massie)

I have ordered it but hasn't arrived yet.
The Mississippi has been interfered with by Army Engineers and others, as have most American Rivers, and is now nothing like it was in 1860 - 65.
The USN had an observer aboard the Inflexible. He was surprised at the accuracy of her fire. Did you know that her 16" projectiles were actually visible in flight?
HMS Bellerophon, with her battery of 9"MLR was probably the most effective of the broadside ironclads, but then she was the best gunnery vessel in the fleet for years.

 

[tony_gunter]

One thing to keep in mind about Head of Passes in 1861 versus Farragut sailing up the Mississippi in 1862:

1862 was a great flood year, 800 miles north the river was about 15 feet deeper at St Louis in April 1862 than it was in October 1861. Near New Orleans, the river was so high it broke through the levee at Bonnet Carre and began spilling into Pontchartrain.

 

[Rhea Cole]

I have ordered it but hasn't arrived yet.
The Mississippi has been interfered with by Army Engineers and others, as have most American Rivers, and is now nothing like it was in 1860 - 65.
The USN had an observer aboard the Inflexible. He was surprised at the accuracy of her fire. Did you know that her 16" projectiles were actually visible in flight?
HMS Bellerophon, with her battery of 9"MLR was probably the most effective of the broadside ironclads, but then she was the best gunnery vessel in the fleet for years.

Oddly enough, I am well aware of how visible they would have been. Black powder rounds are subsonic. It is the trans sonic shock wave that causes hearing damage from modern gunfire.

For twenty something years living history volunteers at Stones River National Battlefield fire live rounds from a 12 pound Napoleon veteran of the battle.

They were timed rounds that were fuzed for 800 yards. The rounds were made of a a white plaster mix. A full black powder charge propelled it. Solid shot were also included in the program.

For years they aimed at a metal Tennessee Valley Transmission tower. In the museum store room is the bent L bracket marked with the only hit.

The shot path was north to south. In the afternoons the white balls were ten clearly visible… it was cool following it & POCK!

I was the grazing shots that were the most spectacular. The rounds would bound across a cotton field looking like demonic jackrabbit. ( Calla Jack rabbit because the standing ears look like a mule . Jackrabbits are the size of a dog. My family dog would chase Nebraska jacks through a field adjacent to our house. All we could see was a wake in the grass following the graceful arc of rabbit ears.

At every bound across the field the spinning round spewed a rooster tail of dirt & cotton plants. We could hear it caroming among the cedar ( juniper ) trees. Seeing one of those insane looking things skipping your way would have been shocking… a line of them converging from the flank would freeze the brain.

Sanity prevailed in the 1980's. Six gun batteries firing live rounds four times a day & shooting at a piece of plywood after the park closed are a distant memory. Curiously, that very field was the artillery drill field. Hundreds of soldiers would gather to watch the evolutions & practice fire.

The adjacent first ever field fortification dug by the newly minted Pioneer Brigade was the infantry target range.

Every paragraph of the Ironclad Ambush was a
, " I didn't know that !" Moment.

The tug that the Manassas was built on had twin screws. Sap would be jumping in here right now. There is still debate whether Manassas had one or two smokestacks. Not in dispute is the watertight compartment in the stern. The twin screws were used to agitate the mud banks that constantly formed in the channel & let the current was it away. ( .05 mile / hour ) The stern compartment would filled or emptied to control the draft. The Union gunboats used their screws the same way.

During the brief battle & after all of the participants ran aground, multiple times in some cases. The Gulf trade was carried by lihjy draft vessels. Not typical blue water deep keeled bottoms. That was why, like LST's, they were flat bottomed. Which way why the Laird rams were such awful sea boats. Practically speaking, like medieval caravels, they could only sail down wind.

This is an example of why there is no room in my brain for anything useful.

 

[Rhea Cole]

One thing to keep in mind about Head of Passes in 1861 versus Farragut sailing up the Mississippi in 1862:

1862 was a great flood year, 800 miles north the river was about 15 feet deeper at St Louis in April 1862 than it was in October 1861. Near New Orleans, the river was so high it broke through the levee at Bonnet Carre and began spilling into Pontchartrain.

I have always thought that Farragut had balls of steel. Risking his vessels navigating on the river like that must have been hair raising about every 15 minutes.

 

[rebelatsea]

Oddly enough, I am well aware of how visible they would have been. Black powder rounds are subsonic. It is the trans sonic shock wave that causes hearing damage from modern gunfire.

For twenty something years living history volunteers at Stones River National Battlefield fire live rounds from a 12 pound Napoleon veteran of the battle.

They were timed rounds that were fuzed for 800 yards. The rounds were made of a a white plaster mix. A full black powder charge propelled it. Solid shot were also included in the program.

For years they aimed at a metal Tennessee Valley Transmission tower. In the museum store room is the bent L bracket marked with the only hit.

The shot path was north to south. In the afternoons the white balls were ten clearly visible… it was cool following it & POCK!

I was the grazing shots that were the most spectacular. The rounds would bound across a cotton field looking like demonic jackrabbit. ( Calla Jack rabbit because the standing ears look like a mule . Jackrabbits are the size of a dog. My family dog would chase Nebraska jacks through a field adjacent to our house. All we could see was a wake in the grass following the graceful arc of rabbit ears.

At every bound across the field the spinning round spewed a rooster tail of dirt & cotton plants. We could hear it caroming among the cedar ( juniper ) trees. Seeing one of those insane looking things skipping your way would have been shocking… a line of them converging from the flank would freeze the brain.

Sanity prevailed in the 1980's. Six gun batteries firing live rounds four times a day & shooting at a piece of plywood after the park closed are a distant memory. Curiously, that very field was the artillery drill field. Hundreds of soldiers would gather to watch the evolutions & practice fire.

The adjacent first ever field fortification dug by the newly minted Pioneer Brigade was the infantry target range.

Every paragraph of the Ironclad Ambush was a
, " I didn't know that !" Moment.

The tug that the Manassas was built on had twin screws. Sap would be jumping in here right now. There is still debate whether Manassas had one or two smokestacks. Not in dispute is the watertight compartment in the stern. The twin screws were used to agitate the mud banks that constantly formed in the channel & let the current was it away. ( .05 mile / hour ) The stern compartment would filled or emptied to control the draft. The Union gunboats used their screws the same way.

During the brief battle & after all of the participants ran aground, multiple times in some cases. The Gulf trade was carried by lihjy draft vessels. Not typical blue water deep keeled bottoms. That was why, like LST's, they were flat bottomed. Which way why the Laird rams were such awful sea boats. Practically speaking, like medieval caravels, they could only sail down wind.

This is an example of why there is no room in my brain for anything useful.

Think how it must have felt to stand on the ramparts of Alexandra and watch those four black dots get larger and larger
- until realisation sets in that thry are coming for you !

I'm a gentleman so i must not comment on the last sentance.

 

[Rhea Cole]

Think how it must have felt to stand on the ramparts of Alexandra and watch those four black dots get larger and larger
- until realisation sets in that thry are coming for you !

I'm a gentleman so i must not comment on the last sentance.

There is a bilingual joke that mirrors that sentiment.

Two elderly men sitting together at an outdoor cafe sedan attractive young woman's full skirt was blown by a gust of wind up & over her head exposing her thong.

" C'est La Vie ! " Said the Frenchman with a shrug.

The Spaniard responded with a shake of a finger. " I did, too. But I am a gentleman & looked away. "

It is actually funny in Spanish… how many tri-lingual jokes have you heard?

As to the Egyptians… Two men in a fort are peering over the parapet watching the Mediterranean Fleet banging away while shaking in their boots ( daisy roots.)

One stands up, gazes around & asks, " What the bloody heck are those silly boogers shooting at ?"

The other stands & points at the sailors running back & forth to rock the ship & simulate ocean waves. " I don't know, but those swabs have gone barking mad ! "

As my matriarchy points out, at least I laugh at my jokes… just so somebody does.

 

[rebelatsea]

I was in Madrid visiting CAF back in the 1990's when one of the Spanish factory Supervisors told us a translated extremely vulgar version of that joke. It seems that in France they tell it the other way round, with a Spanish "lady" being the subject.

His English was both colloquial and very fluent. He had learned English and French at school, and as CAF have factories in Catalonian Spain and do business in Germany, the company paid for him to learn Catalan and German.