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 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 you could bounce a tennis ball off a ship & catch it because the channel skirts the shore that close. 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 amount to meandering 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)