As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
If I have my way and time, I intend on writing of a period which fascinates me in Naval warfare. Like most there is always the interest of sea battles from sailing ships of 1776 to the Naval battles of World War II, but what draws me a great deal is the almost hidden war in American inland waters.
To the modern mind the Gulf of Mexico, the Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence Seaway to the Mississippi River, hardly seem the arena of Naval contests, and yet there were gunboats and paddle boats moving up and down these waters as major arteries and battle zones.
The Mississippi River from it's first discovery was the water which would control America, and passed from hands of Indian Empire, to European Empire to American Empire.
First though we study a war arena which no one contemplates in the Gulf of Mexico, and yet that Gulf has been utilized by democrats twice in the overthrow of America in the beginning of the 21st century.
The first instance was the hurricane which disrupted the Republican convention in Minneapolis Minnesota of John McCain and Sarah Palin, as linked with Katrina in New Orleans, and the second, was the sabotage of the British Petroleum deep well in the Gulf, which Obama biographer of Time magazine noted on the Charlie Rose program to Rose's bewilderment, that Barack Obama did not care about the GOP Gulf inhabitants as they did not vote for him.
So you see that the Gulf has been used as a weapon against Americans by the leftists and has been effective.
The best port in the Gulf is Pennsacola, home to the Naval Station there. The primary ports are Appalachicola, Tallahassee in Florida, Mobile in Alabama, New Orleans in Louisiana and Galveston in Texas in history. Houston now becoming a major terminal for oil transportation.
The Gulf has little tidal surge of less than 2 feet, but is particularily disrupted by wind, as in hurricanes. There is a story of the 7th Cavalry which Libby Custer recorded in being transported by steamer to Texas, in being caught in a hurricane and they having to push their horses overboard in order to lighten ship to save themselves.
It was a ghastly thing, but the Gulf of Mexico has been the scene of numerous deaths in it is unforgiving waters when they are in tempest.
The area is a natural waterfowl haven, and also for ships of shallow draft, and the little transports would scurry inside the sounds into the shallows with loads of Confederate cotton to escape capture. Mobile Bay until the last of the war when taken by Admiral David Farragut, was the bastion of the South in her trade with the world.
These areas seem as nothing now, but Charleston in South Carolina on the Atlantic was a major military point for the British and Americans in the Revolution and was a focal point of the Union and Confederates.
The Gulf is approximately 850 miles east to west, but the entire shoreline is in the 1600 mile half circle with anchor points of Key West, another fine port in the east and Galveston in the west.
The first tin clad vessels appeared not in the Civil War on the coast, but on inland rivers of the east in America in the war between England and America.
The Gulf was an area of access to the world for the Confederates, as much as an invasion point in the War of 1812. The British landed in New Orleans and were shredded by the American Rangers and Militia of Andrew Jackson. In like manner the Unionists of Abraham Lincoln had one sound military campaign from the start, and that was control of the Mississippi, for it would divide the South, east from west in supplies and men to the Confederacy. The second object was the blockade to keep trade from taking place in import and export from the South.
The most successful warship of the South was one featured here, which destroyed a great part of the whaling fleet in ocean waters, which was the source of much needed oil to light homes, as whale oil burned cleaner than beef tallow in candles.
The ships of the period focus on the sailing and the infamous ironclads in the Merrimack and the Monitor partial submersibles, but the real terrors were actually based on the Greek ships and their art of warfare, as they were called Rams, and had "rams" or extended bow spikes of iron which were used to ram into ships and rip them to pieces.
Yes the ships were armed with cannons and shot, which bounced off the iron clads, but the balls were used as battering sledges to knock rivets or machinery loose inside to cripple the vessels.
One must contemplate these torture chambers, as they were steam powered, meaning coal or wood were the fuel, so they were an oven of great heat. They had to be sealed primarily as shell would penetrate through the holes, and if that took place, you had a huge ball or shrapnell moving at 1000 feet per second, bouncing like a ping pong ball inside a ship in richochet.
That with the sound of balls thudding off a ship like a giant bell, leaves the reality that it was not a pleasant thing to be in these water tanks, as in the battle of Mobile, a Union shell struck the main ram, and the ball splintered an iron column inside and drove a shard of it into the commander's leg.
Sailing ships had passed from the world of wood, to the vista of iron clads with paddle wheels and rams doing the damage, as the ship was the weapon during this period of history as it was with the Greeks.
The battlefield was from Cairo Illinois to New Orleans for the control of the Mississippi. Neither sounding in the least like anything lethal in modern times, yet one harkens to the name, Vicksburg, and that city was of the vast importance to the South and the North, as it was laid seige to by General Grant, as it was the inland control of the Mississippi River and Valley.
That is why the greatest military battles were fought in Missouri and the infamous Chicamauga followed in this theater, as the western war was all revolving around not States, but the state of control of the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico.
The Gulf Fleet of the Civil War is lost as much as the Naval Officers who made war there. The Home Squadron in 1860 patrolled the entire Gulf under G.J. Pendergast. With war starting in 1861, the Home Squadron was divided into three division by Flag Officers, Pendergast in command of the West Indian, Mexican, Central American Squadron, Stringham the Atlantic Squadron and Mervine until September to the Cape of Flordia to the Rio Grande, whereby he was replaced with W.W. McKean.
The first battle of the Civil War on American inland waters was on October 12th, 1861, and it was a Confederate victory.
The Union ships of Richmond a steam sloop, and sailing sloops, Vincennes and Preble had anchored in the Mississippi River to control the waters. It was then a most interesting contraption appeared in the Confederate ram of no name.
She was a tug boat out of Boston with twin screws and two engines, and named the Enoch Train. She was covered over with railroad iron, had a cast ram on her prow, and a 9 inch cannon which was not operating and lashed to her front.
One boiler was not fully operational and the other was, so when she rammed the Richmond, she tore a hole in her, but did about as much damage to herself as the Richmond.
The Richmond suffered from a 5 inch hole below waterline, but the Enoch Train which started life in helping to clear out the channel of the Mississippi, in the collision her prow was wrenched off, her smokestack collapses and the condenser of her second engine gave out.
She laid off the Richmond once freeing herself and Lt, A. F. Warley of the Confederate Navy contemplated the events, and decided prudence was the better part in a victory as this, and sailed off, at which point fire rafts were sent in to burn up the Union sloops.
The Unionists hove anchor and went down the west channel where the Richmond and Vincennes grounded, and later came under a long distance bombardment by the Confederate rifle cannons, without effect, as the Confederates did not care to come under the range of the Richmond's heavy cannon.
With tide up, the Union ships were afloat and this ended the first engagement on American inland waters in the Civil War.
The Union commander did not deploy a picket boat to warn of the Confederate advance and was caught unawares by neglect. The lone bright spot was a fourth Union ship, a side wheel steamer by the name of the Water Witch.
She under the command of Lt. Winslow, steamed up river, avoided the fire rafts and held her ground until it was seen the main squadron had gone down the channel.
McKean of the Union, seemed to be shell shocked or ram shocked, or more sympathetic to the South, as most Union commanders were. The heavies of the Richmond appear to have never been limbered up on the Enoch Train which at that close range would have rattled teeth and rivets loose in the tug.
All exciting work and so much the more so when that great inland water wolf appeared in David Dixon Porter in his freshwater Navy.
That though is another fetching tale of the forgotten Naval Wars which have been the scenes of some of the most pivotal and savage of battles in American history.
agtG
