150 Years Ago: The Navy Leads the Way at Fort Fisher

150 Years Ago: The Navy Leads the Way at Fort Fisher

On January 15, 1865 a column of sailors and Marines led the ground assault on the Confederate bastion at Fort Fisher.   Although their initial assault was thrown back and with heavy losses, their sacrifice was not entirely in vain;  it provided a bloody diversion that helped assist Union infantry under General Alfred Terry when they stormed the "Gibraltar of the South"later that afternoon.

The January 15 attack was the second major operation against the fort.  In December, Admiral David Dixon Porter and his fleet had pounded the sandy fortress which protected blockade runners as they dashed in and out of Wilmington, North Carolina.  General Benjamin Butler sent troops ashore to assault the fortress, but bad weather and reports that the Rebel defenses were still intact caused him to order a withdrawal back to the fleet.  A few weeks later, however, Porter was back, and with an even larger fleet, more troops and a more aggressive and more able commander for his ground forces.

Porter's fleet of more than 60 vessels began pounding the fort on January 13.  It was a steady bombardment that at times increased in tempo to where more than 180 rounds a minute were being fired into the fort.  Porter sent ironclads close in shore to bring near point-blank fire on the defenders, most of whom huddled in bombproofs, emerging only occasionally to return fire at the Union fleet.  Determined to "redeem the Navy's honor" after the December debacle, Porter asked for volunteers to form a naval column to aid the Army in its ground assault.  Over 2,000 sailors and Marines, including many captains and other officers from the ships, did so.  Unfortunately, except for the Marines, most were armed as if going on a boarding party - with cutlasses and pistols.   When the naval bombardment ceased in the early afternoon of January 15, the Navy led the way on land - only to be cut down and pinned down in the sandy ditches in front of the fort, too far away for their side arms to do much more than make noise.

Terry's troops fared better, in part because of close-in fire support from the Navy.  More than 8,000 Union infantry charged the fort, whose defenders numbered less than a quarter of that number.  Overwhelmed at the outer defenses, the Confederates fell back, fought on and even launched a brief counterattack before succumbing to overwhelming numbers.

Fighting the forts and other defenses raised by the Confederate player to protect the ports for blockade runners is a big part of my strategic naval game of the Civil War, Rebel Raiders on the High Seas. Admiral Porter and many of the warships that took part in the attack on Fort Fisher are included in the game, and are represented by cards and counters.   These include the mighty  "unsinkable" screw sloop USS Brooklyn, the armored steam frigate USS New Ironsides, the side-wheel frigate USS Powhattan, the double-ender wooden sidewheeler USS Osceola and the comparatively tiny "90-day gunboat" USS Unadilla.

Farragut At Mobile Bay 150 Years Ago: "Damn The Torpedoes!" - Fact or Legend?

Farragut At Mobile Bay 150 Years Ago: "Damn The Torpedoes!"  - Fact or Legend?

The ironclad monitor leading one column into Mobile Bay hit an underwater mine, exploded, and sank in under a minute.  The "unsinkable" wooden man-o-war leading the other column reduced speed to avoid striking similar "infernal machines" -  all while gunners in Fort Morgan and two other harbor forts began ranging in on the remaining 13 Union warships.  His ships being pounded, and the mighty Confederate ironclad ram CSS Tennessee and her consorts steaming toward the fleet, Admiral David Glasgow Farragut ordered his captains to "Damn the Torpedoes" and go "Full speed ahead."

That, at least, is how the legend goes.

Or maybe that is not exactly what happened, says Civil War historian, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and professor emeritus at Princeton James McPherson.

As he noted in his latest book, War Upon the Waters, and reiterated in a talk at the New York Historical Society two years ago,  Farragut might - or might not have said exactly those words.. Even if he did, says McPherson, the "damn" part might very well have been an exclamation of surprise (or a curse).   

Other source report that Farragut remained extraordinarily cool, and that "Damn the Torpedoes" Full speed ahead" is an abbreviated version of a a much longer statement, a clear set of orders to the captain of the USS Hartford (Captain Percival Drayton) and the commander of the gunboat USS Metacomet, James Edward Jouet, which was lashed to the far side of the larger warship to give it some protection from the Rebel shore batteries.

"Damn the Torpedoes! Four bells, Captain Drayton! Go ahead. Jouett, full speed!"

Again, there are conflicting reports about whether the "go ahead" was part of the command to Drayton or to Jouett, although it seems more likely that command was meant for the later, as it directed him to separate from the protective shield of the USS Hartford, thus freeing him for action.

Then, again, as McPherson muses, it might all just be a combination of what officers and men present on the deck THOUGHT they heard - and with mines exploding, ships sinking, shells blasting overhead, engines churning and guns roaring on both sides, who can be certain what anybody said?

Whatever he really did say, or how he phrased it, Farragut did get his fleet moving from underneath the batteries and into the bay, where they could engage the Rebel flotilla and direct their broadsides at the Confederate ships and forts.   The attack started out looking bad for the Union, but by the end of the day, Farragut had won the U.S. Navy's greatest victory of the American Civil War.

Rebel Raiders on the High Seas allows players to recreate this epic fight at the strategic level, with ships and cards and counters for the forts, ironclads, warships, admirals and even the "torpedoes" that Farragut allegedly damned that day 150 years ago.

“The Unsinkable” USS Brooklyn

The Ships of Rebel Raiders    - The Men o’War

Rebel Raiders on the High Seas is a strategic game of the Civil War which focuses on the role of the navies on the rivers, along the coasts and on the oceans.  While most ships are represented by generic counters for Ironclads, Blockade Runners, Gunboats, Screw Sloops and, of course Raiders, there are cards and corresponding counters for many individual vessels.  This series presents those cards and offers a glimpse into the history of these storied ships.

Part IV – The Union Screw Sloops: “The Unsinkable” USS Brooklyn

The sloop-of-war USS Brooklyn  (USN Card 13)  was practically a one-ship Navy; she did it all, and fought everywhere, in every kind of action.   She helped frustrate Confederate attempts to take Fort Pickens in Pensacola in 1861, then captured several blockade runners.  When Raphael Semmes made his initial foray out of New Orleans on the CSS Sumter (the Raider counter that begins the game there) she gave chase – but the elusive Semmes got away, as he always did.

USS Brooklyn caught several blockade runners in 1862, and battled her way up river past the guns of Forts Jackson and St. Philip to engage the Rebel Ironclad Ram CSS Manassas (CSN Card 71 in Rebel Raiders). The ironclad did ram her, but as the captain reported “did us little injury.”  (Only on the USS Brooklyn was a 24-foot long gash in the hull a “little injury.”)    Later in the summer of 1862 she went upriver to run the batteries at Vicksburg and drove the Rebel gunners away while troops landed at Donaldsonville, La.

USS Brooklyn was pulled out of the Mississippi to blockade Galveston, where she again was stymied by Semmes (who returned in the CSS Alabama (CSN Card 63) to trick, engage and sink the USS Brooklyn’s consort, the gunboat USS Hatteras (USN Card 16).   The mighty warship, however, got some measure of revenge by capturing a pair of blockade runners, including the Kate, skippered by the legendary and until then always lucky Thomas Lockwood – until then “the most successful of many Charlestonnians engaged in blockade running” (according to Robert N. Rosen, in his book, Confederate Charleston).  Kate was one of nine blockade runners captured (and one sunk) by the USS Brooklyn during the war.

Mobile Bay in August 1864, however, was where USS Brooklyn would be most sorely tested – as she led the second column into the Bay; when the ironclad USS Tecumseh immediately off her port bow hit a torpedo (i.e. mine) a sank in seconds, the captain stopped and began backing as the USS Brooklyn had also run into a net of mines.  The Rebel Ironclad Ram CSS Tennessee (CSN Card 86) tried to ram her, but she fended off the ram and added her guns to those of the other Union ships that forced the Rebel ship to strike.

Nearly 100 of those aboard USS Brooklyn were killed or wounded in the action, and 23 sailors and marines aboard were awarded the Medals of Honor.

After extensive repairs, USS Brooklyn was sent to aid in the attack on Fort Fisher.  After the war  she became the flagship of the South Atlantic Squadron and later that of the Asiatic Squadron.  For her final service, in 1889, she circumnavigated the globe – running Cape Horn – before returning home to New York to be decommissioned.

The Ships of Rebel Raiders - The Gunboats

Rebel Raiders on the High Seas is a strategic game of the Civil War which focuses on the role of the navies on the rivers, along the coasts and on the oceans.  While most ships are represented by generic counters for Ironclads, Blockade Runners, Gunboats, Screw Sloops and, of course Raiders, there are cards and corresponding counters for many individual vessels.  This series presents those cards and offers a glimpse into the history of these storied ships.

Part II – The Gunboats: The Mosquito Fleet Rams at New Orleans

“The Mosquito Fleet” (CSN Card 81) represents the rag-tag little squadrons the South hastily cobbled together to defend their ports from the Union Navy.  One such force supported the ironclad CSS Manassas in the battle at Forts Jackson and St. Philip below New Orleans in late April 1862.

While the CSS Manassas is represented in the game (as CSN Card 71), the vessels that accompanied her are represented by the generic Gunboat counters, one or two of which may be added to a Confederate defense by play of The Mosquito Fleet (CSN Card 81).   General Mansfield Lowell had purchased and armed 14 civilian craft for his flotilla in the late winter of 1862 – but was ordered to send more than half of them upriver to Memphis to join Commander Montgomery’s river defense force (see my posting for July 15: http://markgmclaughlin.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-ships-of-rebel-raiders-gunboats_15.html)

When David G. Farragut and his massive Union fleet made their move on the forts below his city, Lowell had only six of his armed riverboats left, a force that even the Confederate secretary of war lamented was “a peculiar one.”  (Lowell himself admitted that his group had “little or no discipline” and was “too much ‘steamboat’ and too little of the man-of-war’ to be very effective.”  Still, when Farragut’s gunboats and screw sloops broke through the barrier of Hulks, Rafts and Chains (as represented in Rebel Raiders by CSN Card 110) Lowell and his makeshift flotilla were there to meet him.

While the turtle-shaped ironclad CSS Manassas   was the spearpoint of Lowell’s counterattack against the screw sloops (notably the massive USS Mississippi – represented in the game by USN Card 23), his gunboats closed with their Union counterparts.  The J.C. Breckinridge and Governor Moore worked together to each ram and sink the USS Varuna, then headed for the USS Cayuga – but were driven off by the fire of another Union gunboat, USS Oneida.  (USS Cayuga broke through the line of Rebel ships, surprised five companies of militia in their camp, who after taking a few rounds from the gunboat became the first Confederate regiment to surrender to a Union gunboat).

Lowell fought on, sending fireships down the river, but after the USS Mississippi’s guns pummeled and set afire the CSS Manassas, the fight was over.  Farragut  (USN Card 1) in the USS Hartford (USN Card 37), along with the USS Brooklyn (USN Card 13) and the rest of the fleet steamed forward, the forts already partially silenced by David Dixon Porter and his Little Mortar Boats (USN Card 2).   From there, it was on to New Orleans for the Union fleet.   As for Lowell, all but one ship in his Mosquito Fleet was lost.

Rebel Raiders Replay  (Turn 6)

Designer Mark McLaughlin as CSA; Naval Historian Brandon Musler as USA

When we left off last time, the Union blockade had become so formidable that nearly half of the vessels trying to run it were caught - most with their cargo.  The net suitably tight, now the North is starting to send out packs of screw sloops to hunt down Raiders....

Four more Blockade Runners go down --- Brandon is capturing them faster than the South can build them.  Twelve victory points are acquired by the South this turn, bust mostly from Raiding, not Running.  Memphis is strengthened by the Gunboat the South built last turn (which was built in Vicksburg, as I failed to mention, as an Ironclad appeared in Memphis last turn and the South may only place one ship per port per Build Phase, other than through card play).

Beauregard (Card 88) again appears, with that blessed third battery, and Nashville and Memphis are now brought up to full strength with three batteries each, and another is placed in Richmond, just to safeguard the capital.   The South builds four Blockade Runners, one for each lost this turn, and builds a Gunboat in Memphis.

Brandon decides it is time to start chipping away at the Atlantic, and goes for an Amphibious Assault on Wilmington.  His fleet of four Gunboats and the Screw Sloop Brooklyn (Card 13) gets a surprise as the Ring of Fire (Card 101) adds a second battery to the defenses…although Mark rolls horribly (even with the bonuses from the card) and sinks only one Gunboat, Brandon backs off rather than take on two batteries with his under-gunned force.

Diplomatic Pressure  (Card 55) is applied through the card of the same name, which sends the Trent and Royal Navy (Cards 83 and 62) to the Discard Pile - this frees up the three screw sloops that were on the later card, giving the North yet more big warships to go a'Raider-hunting.

Brandon buys an extra Attack for next turn, as well as another Ironclad and some Gunboats.   Turn 7 apparently is going to be the start of the "big push," as it will be 1863 - which means the North increases its attack dice from two to three - giving it the edge on the South, which remains at two.  The Union is learning the art of war...and how to use its massive industrial base to powerful effect.

Images below:  The big map situation early in Turn 6, before the Union play...

...and some of the cards played on Turn 6....