150 Years Ago Nov. 6: Last Confederate Raider Surrenders

150 Years Ago Nov. 6: Last Confederate Raider Surrenders

On November 6, 1865 the Confederate raider CSS Shenandoah, her naval ensign still flying, steamed through the thick, morning fog up the Mersey into Liverpool, where Captain James Iredell Waddell offered the surrender of his vessel to the British government.  The last organized Confederate combat unit to haul down its flag, the CSS Shenandoah was also the only Confederate warship to have circumnavigated the globe,  

The CSS Shenandoah was built in Scotland, fitted out in Liverpool and officially taken into Confederate service off the English coast in October 1864.  Waddell and his crew made their first capture on the 30th of that month.  Over the next nine months they would burn or bond 37 more American-flagged vessels, including almost the entire New England whaling fleet of nearly two dozen great ships in the last week of June 1865.  They inflicted over $1.1 million in losses, making the CSS Shenandoah second only to the CSS Alabama as the most successful commerce raider of the war.  The raider's crew took over 1,000 prisoners during their voyage, but they never took a life, and the only two members of its crew to die in service did so of natural causes.

After burning the whaling ships in the Arctic in June, Waddell headed for San Francisco, which he hoped to bombard and hold for ransom. Waddell also planned to cut out and capture the only Union warship in California (the ironclad ram USS Saginaw) and hopefully intercept one of the California gold ships. On August 2, however, Waddell, now only 13 days sail from San Francisco, stopped the British merchant bank Barracouta, where he learned that Confederate Jefferson Davis had been captured, and that the armies and other warships of the southern states had surrendered.  Hostilities having formally ended before his Arctic rampage, Waddell was being hunted as a pirate.   Fearful of the fate he and his men would suffer if they fell into Federal hands,  the rebel raider captain decided to head for a British port, and to throw himself on the mercy of Her Majesty's Government.

The voyage took more than 90 days - all of it out of sight of land - but on November 5 the warship reached Ireland, where Waddell hailed a pilot boat to guide him into Liverpool.  The pilot agreed, but only on condition that the ship steam into port flying her true colors - which Waddell gladly obliged.

Waddell anchored the CSS Shenandoah alongside the English man-of-war HMS Donegal, a massive 101-gunner of the new Conqueror class.  Waddell surrendered to her captain, and hauled down his colors under the watchful eyes of armed British sailors and marines.   A hurried investigation by the British determined that Waddell and his crew had not broken the laws of war, and they were paroled and released, much to the chagrin of the United States Minister to England Charles Francis Adams.

Waddell eventually made it to San Francisco in 1875, where he captained a mail packet.  From there he returned to his native Maryland, where he commanded a squadron of patrol boats that hunted oyster poachers.  He died in 1886.

To relive the adventures of the CSS Shenandoah and other warships (of both sides) of the American Civil War, play my strategic naval game: Rebel Raiders on the High Seas, available from GMT games.

150 Years Ago- "Undefeated" Rebel General Sinks His Battle Flag, Goes to Mexico

150 Years Ago - “Undefeated” Rebel General Sinks His Battle Flag, Goes to Mexico

Rather than surrender his command let alone give up his battle flag, 150 years ago General Joseph Orville Shelby sank his banner in the Rio Grande and took his men to Mexico, where he hoped to lead them as mercenaries serving the French-installed Emperor Maximilian.

Shelby made his career commanding cavalry, first in “Bleeding Kansas” and then at Wilson's Creek and Pea Ridge. The scourge of the Trans-Mississippi, in 1863 Shelby took his “Iron Brigade” of horsemen on a 1,500-mile rampage through Union territory, a feat for which he earned his promotion to brigadier general. He is also one of the few cavalrymen in history to be able to boast of having captured a warship – the Union tinclad river gunboat USS Queen City. Shelby raided and battled his way through Arkansas and Missouri which such distinction that in May 1865 his commanding officer General Kirby Smith, promoted him to major general. Unfortunately for Shelby, as Lee, Richmond and Davis by then had all surrendered, the war was over and the promotion was never confirmed. That did not stop Shelby, however, who convinced most of his brigade to march to Mexico rather than surrender – or go home.

Shelby's column paused as it reached the Rio Grande at Eagle Pass, Texas in July. There with great ceremony the general took the signature plume from his hat and the Confederate battle flag under which he had marched and ordered them sunk and buried “in the river's rushing tide,” or so one of his followers the military poet Brevet Colonel Alonzo W. Slayback immortalized in a poem dated July 4, 1865. The poem concludes with the farewell line: “The glorious flag of the vanquished brave, No more to rise from its watery grave.”

The poem is entitled “The Burial of Shelby's Flag” and the spot where the flag was sunk is known locally as “The Grave of the Confederacy.”

Shelby and his men crossed into Mexico – but Maximilian, though embattled, thought better of taking the ex-Confederates into his service as it might worsen his already strained relations with Washington. After all, Mexico had been a haven for blockade runners for four years. The French, however, did agree to allow Shelby and his men to settle around Vera Cruz, provided they would defend the land from the Mexican rebels. When Maximilian fell, however, Shelby and most of his men finally went home, with the general settling in Missouri in 1867. Twenty-six years later he was appointed as the U.S. Marshal for the Western District.

Not all of Shelby's men made it home. One group of Missouri cavaliers led by Brigadier General Monroe Parsons did join up with the Imperial forces and fought the Juaristas on the Chino River, where Parsons was killed 150 years ago - on August 15, 1865.

John Wayne drew inspiration from Shelby's Mexican expedition for the 1969 movie The Undefeated, where Rock Hudson played the Shelby-esque Colonel James Langdon.

The role played by Mexico and its French-installed emperor in the Civil War is represented in GMT's strategic naval game, Rebel Raiders on the High Seas by the Mexican port of Vera Cruz – where blockade runners can load cargo to smuggle into the Confederacy and by Confederate Card 61 – Maximilian.

150 Years Ago: One Rebel Raider Still Burning Yankee Ships

 

-June 22, 1865:  The clouds of thick smoke from two burning Yankee whalers darkened the sky over the Bering Sea on this day 150 years ago.  That was the handiwork of James I. Waddell of the CSS Shenandoah, the last of the Rebel Raiders still at sea - and still at war.  Although the captains of the vessels he caught showed him newspapers that reported General Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomatox in April, Waddell refused to believe that the war was over.  He pointed to paragraphs in the newspapers that commented on how President Jefferson Davis had fled Richmond as proof that the war was not over. Waddell believed that Davis would try to set up a new base or at the very least wage a guerrilla war against the occupying Union armies - a war he and the CSS Shenandoah would support by continuing to raid Union commerce.

(Ironically, the day after these whalers were burned, President Andrew Johnson formally lifted the Union blockade of Southern ports.)

The two whalers Waddell set afire, the William Thompson and the Euphrates, were but the first of a fleet of whaling ships he would destroy in the coming week.  Another 22 whaling ships would be taken in the next six days - 21 of which he burned and one, the James Maury, he bonded and set free to take the crews of the whalers back home.  

As he left the Bering Sea, Waddell set course for San Francisco:  his goal, to take on the single Union warship guarding the harbor - a ship captained by an old friend - after which he planned to bombard and hold the city ransom, and then proceed on to hunt down the California gold ships.

The CSS Shenandoah is but one of the many Confederate commerce raiders that appear in GMT's strategic naval game of the Civil War - Rebel Raiders on the High Seas.  Her exploits can be repeated as she raids across the map - or can be put to an end by the Union warships sent to hunt her down.

150 Years Ago: Confederate Armies Surrender, But the Rebel Raiders Fight On

150 Years Ago: Confederate Armies & Leaders Surrender, But the Rebel Raiders Fight On

May 3, 1865:  As President Abraham Lincoln's body arrived in Springfield, Illinois, the Confederate leadership continued their efforts to escape the Union dragnet.  Some sought to keep the Cause alive, while others, including Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory and Secretary of State Judah Benjamin realized that the end had come.  On May 3 Mallory tendered his resignation and Benjamin separated himself from President Jefferson Davis's party, telling the Confederate leader at their last meeting in Abbeville, South Carolina, that he would attempt to reach the Bahamas to send final instructions to Confederate representatives abroad.

What was left of the Confederate armies in the field also began to dissolve.   On May 4 the largest of those, some 42,000, were told to lay down their arms by their commander, General Richard Taylor, who surrendered his command to Union forces at Citronelle, Alabama.  Five days later a force of five infantry brigades around which President Davis tried to organize resistance during his retreat through South Carolina are told to go home by their colonels.  On May 10 the guerrilla leader William C. Quantrill was killed in a skirmish at Taylorsville, Kentucky - after which the remnants of his force (which included Frank and Jesse James and Cole Younger) dissolved.  General Kirby Smith remained in the field with his army in the Trans-Mississippi, but directed his delegate, General Peter Osterhaus, to go to New Orleans to seek terms of surrender.  On June 2 Smith surrendered the last Rebel army - although his deputy, Jo Shelby, refused to give up and headed for Mexico with a band of followers.

The Confederate Navy similarly began to fall apart.  The CSS Nashville and a few gunboats and blockade runners fell back from Mobile up the Tombighee River after the city's surrender, but when Rear Admiral Thater and his Union flotilla followed,  Captain Eben Farrand struck his colors, and surrendered the Rebel fleet on May 10.

On May 11, the ocean-going ironclad CSS Stonewall reached Havana, ready to take on coal and provisions for her planned foray to break the blockade.  When her commander Captain Page learned of the surrender at Appomattox, however, he went to the Spanish captain-general and on May 19 struck a deal to sell the warship to Spain. He divided the proceeds among his crew to pay their wages.

One last Rebel warship, however, kept up the fight.  The CSS Shenandoah steamed on from Australia and on to the Bering Strait, where in late June she decimated the Yankee whaling fleet.  Captain James Waddell was shown newspapers by the whaling ship captains that reported the fall of Richmond and the surrender of General Robert E. Lee, but Waddell believed that Davis would continue the war, at least as a guerrilla struggle, and kept on raiding.  It was not until August 2 that Waddell, en route to San Francisco to bombard the city, learned from an English ship that the war was truly over.  That same day, August 2, as Jo Shelby entered Mexico City to a offer his sword to the Emperor Maximillian, Waddel shipped his guns and set a course that would take the CSS Shenandoah to Liverpool, where he would surrender the last Confederate command in November.


The last two Confederate warships to surrender, the CSS Stonewall and the CSS Shenandoah, appear as counters and cards in GMT's strategic naval game of the Civil War, Rebel Raiders on the High Seas.

150 Years Ago: Union Warships Play Tag With Rebel Armored Raider CSS Stonewall

150 Years Ago:  Union Warships Play Tag With Rebel Armored Raider CSS Stonewall

On March 21, 1865 the Confederate armored raider CSS Stonewall and two wooden Union warships played a potentially deadly game of "tag" off the Spanish port of Ferrol.    The USS Niagara and USS Sacramento had been shadowing the powerful Confederate vessel since she had left France for the Azores.  Their orders, however, were not to engage - and with good reason. With her armored casemates and massive ship-breaking guns the CSS Stonewall was the most powerful and most modern warship in the world.  She was built with the hope of smashing through the Union blockade and reopening one or more ports to Confederate blockade runners.

A storm cut short this deadly dance, and the CSS Stonewall went into Ferrol to seek shelter and take on supplies.  She came out a few days later, and once again USS Niagara and USS Sacramento were waiting, and shadowed her as she steamed across the Atlantic toward her beleaguered homeland.  Among those ordered to make ready to confront her was Lt. Cdr. William B. Cushing, the man who in a daring naval commando raid had sunk the ironclad CSS Ablemarle. Admiral Porter instructed Cushing to mount a spar torpedo on the USS Monticello and make ready to charge the CSS Stonewall should she appear off Norfolk or Wilmington.


The CSS Stonewall is both a card and a counter in GMT's strategic naval game of the Civil War, and if she appears can pose a powerful challenge to the Union player.


For more on the story of how, where and why the CSS Stonewall was built, and what eventually became of her, see my earlier blog entry at:

http://markgmclaughlin.blogspot.com/2015/01/150-years-ago-css-stonewall-rides-waves.html

150 Years Ago: Rebel Raider Captain Makes Admiral (and General)

150 Years Ago:  Rebel Raider Captain Makes Admiral (& General)

February 10, 1865 -    Perhaps no Confederate naval officer did more to hurt the North and give hope to the South than Raphael Semmes, and in February 1865 President Jefferson Davis turned to Semmes once more for salvation - promoting him to rear admiral and giving the former raider captain command of the rebel ironclad fleet on the James River.

As captain of the rebel commerce raider CSS Alabama,  Raphael Semmes had taken or destroyed more than 60 Yankee merchant ships. He had also had twice fought Union warships - one of which (USS Hatteras) he sank.  Although defeated in his engagement with the USS Kearsarge in June 1864, Semmes was rescued by an English yachtsman and managed to make his way back home to the Confederacy.  After Commodore James Mitchell failed in an attempt in late January to fight his way down the James River to attack the Union base at City Point, President Davis called in Semmes, promoted him to admiral and gave him  command of Mitchell's fleet.   Semmes flew his flag from the ironclad CSS Virginia II, oversaw repairs to flotilla and made preparations to launch another attack down the river.

Semmes never got to lead the squadron into the epic battle he sought.  When General Robert E. Lee was forced to give up Richmond on April 2,  Semmes gave the order to scuttle and burn his squadron, then formed his men into the "Naval Brigade."  Cut off from Lee, Semmes put his men on a train and headed south to joined General Joseph E. Johnston.  As effectively there was no longer  a Confederate Navy to be an admiral of, Davis commissioned Semmes a brigadier general - making Semmes the only Confederate officer to hold the rank of both admiral in the navy and general in the army.

Semmes and his men surrendered along with Johnston's army to General William Tecumseh Sherman at Durham, N.C.  Initially held as a prisoner of war, he was charged with treason and expected to also be charged with piracy - but all charges were dropped the following April and he was released from custody.   Semmes became a professor of literature and philosophy at what is now Louisiana State University and served as a judge.  He died of food poisoning in 1877 - the victim of a batch of bad shrimp.

The CSS Alabama is one of the Confederate warships represented in GMT's strategic naval game of the Civil War, Rebel Raiders on the High Seas,   Semmes' famous ship appears as a card and a counter and also graces the cover of the game.  Generals Lee, Johnston, Grant and Sherman are also present as cards in the game, which although focused on the naval side of the conflict also allows players to fight the entire war on land and at sea.

  

150 Years Ago Today: Rebel Ironclads Make One Last Sortie

150 Years Ago Today: Rebel Ironclads Make One Last Sortie

On January 23, 1865 the last and most powerful fleet the Confederacy ever assembled made a gallant attempt to break through the Union blockade and destroy General Grant's supply base at City Point. From the mighty ironclad CSS Fredericksburg, Commodore John K. Mitchell led his James River Squadron of 11 ships into battle first against Union batteries at Fort Brady and then into action against a smaller but smartly led flotilla of four Yankee warships.  The engagement, which lasted for three days, would become known as the Battle of Trent's Reach.

For once the Confederates had not only the numbers but also the quality of ships in a naval action. In addition to his flagship, Mitchell had two other ironclads, CSS Virginia II and CSS Richmond, with five gunboats and three torpedo boats in support.  Among them they mounted more than 20 guns,  The Union James River Flotilla under Captain William Parker boasted 18 guns among its four vessels, which included the monitor USS Onondaga, two gunboats and a torpedo boat.  To reach the Yankee ships, however, Mitchell had to first navigate through the maze of sunken wrecks, nets, naval mines and other obstructions, most of the time under the fire of the 30 guns of Fort Brady and four lesser shore batteries manned by Colonel Henry Pierce and his 1st Connecticut Artillery.

Despite the odds and what one Rebel officer described as "a perfect rain of missiles," the Confederates bulled their way down the James - with a little help from two Confederate batteries which bombarded the Union positions.   As the Rebel fleet came on, Parker retreated - much to the anger and surprise of General Ulysses Grant.  The Rebels anchored for the night, ready to move on toward the big supply base at City Point with the morning tide.  Grant and Rear Admiral David Porter, however, ordered Parker to go back and engage and sink the Confederates.  

When dawn came on January 24, four of Mitchell's 11 ships were stuck in the mud.  They were easy targets for the Union batteries, which wreaked havoc on the wooden gunboats.  When Parker's flotilla arrived, the Union ships were able to maneuver and bring fire upon the Rebels, most of whom were still stuck and could not bring their guns to bear. As the tide rose, however, CSS Virginia II managed to work herself free - enough to fire a single round at the Union monitor.  The Confederate warship scored a hit - but took 70 in return from the Union army and navy gunners.  The flagship was hit 150 times or more.  The ironclads were battered and leaking but fight on they did.  One gunboat and a torpedo boat were sunk and Mitchell, realizing he could not break through, turned about and fought his way back past the Union batteries to bring his fleet home.

It was the last ride for the Rebel fleet - and for Mitchell, who  in mid-February was relieved of command and replaced by Admiral Raphael Semmes, who had led the raider CSS Alabama.  

Confederate ironclads are powerful weapons in the arsenal of the Southern player in GMT's strategic naval game of the Civil War, Rebel Raiders on the High Seas.   Although more frequently used to defend ports than to attack, they can sortie out to attempt to break the Union inshore blockade and clear the way for those blockade runners fortunate enough to sneak past the screw sloops that patrol farther out off the coast.

 

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.

150 Years Ago: CSS Stonewall Rides the Waves

150 Years Ago: Monster Ironclad Ram CSS Stonewall Rides The Waves

On January 6, 1865 new life was breathed into the monster ocean-going ironclad ram CSS Stonewall, and the North trembled.  Better armored and more powerful than any Union warship afloat, the ironclad was dubbed by the press the "Yankee Nightmare."  That Washington had thought the nightmare put to rest a year earlier only made things worse - and more urgent - in January 1865.

The Confederacy's chief naval officer in Europe, James Bulloch, and Richmond's commissioner to France, John Slidell, had through middlemen arranged for the CSS Stonewall and her sister ship to be built in Bordeaux at the yards of Lucien Arman.  Union agents and diplomats were not fooled by Arman's claims that they were being built for the Khedive of Egypt.   In February 1864, bowing to diplomatic pressure from Washington, the Emperor Napoleon III intervened and forbid Arman to turn the ships over to the Confederacy.  Arman sold the CSS Stonewall, then being built under the cover name Sphynx, to Denmark, where she was armed and christened as Staerkodder.  

After their loss to Prussia in the brief Second Schleswig war the Danes decided they could not afford to keep the big expensive warship.(Ironically, the Sphynx's sister ship, Cheops, which was also being built for the Confederates in the same yards in France, had been sold to Berlin). Acting in secret on behalf of the Confederacy, Arman purchased the vessel, helped smuggle a group of Confederate naval officers on board and on January 6 the warship left Copenhagen for Quiberon, France. 

Confederate Captain T. J. Page commissioned her at sea as CSS Stonewall and and set out for the Azores to hunt Federal merchantmen.  The primary goal - or at least hope - was to cross the Atlantic to Havana, and from there steam west, attack the Union naval supply base at Port Royal and if possible then go on to break the  blockade at Wilmington.

Unfortunately for the Confederates, a storm and some serious leaks forced the CSS Stonewall back into port at Ferrol, Spain, where she was watched by two powerful - yet wooden - Union warships:  USS Niagara and USS Sacramento.  In late March the CSS Stonewall left port, daring the Union captains to try to stop her.  Their orders, however, were to merely shadow the monster ironclad - whose thick hull even their most powerful guns could not hope to penetrate.   They followed the ironclad to Lisbon and then across the seas to Cuba - which she reached in May without ever having fired a shot in anger.  Upon learning of the surrender of Confederate armies and the capture of Jefferson Davis, Page surrendered his vessel to Spanish authorities.

That, however, was not the end for the mighty ocean-going ironclad ram.   

The Spanish government turned the CSS Stonewall over to the U.S. Navy. She sat in the Washington Navy Yard for the next few years and was then sold to the Shogun in 1868.  Christened the Kotetsu, she set sail for Japan.   She arrived just as civil war broke out.  The United States minister in Japan ordered the U.S. Navy to intervene and seize the ship, which was then turned over to the emperor.  Kotetsu fought for the imperial forces at Hakidote.  After the war the ironclad was renamed Azuma, and remained in active service until 1888.

The powerful "Yankee Nightmare" appears in my strategic Civil War naval game, GMT's Rebel Raiders on the High Seas.  With the luck of the draw the mighty warship might serve as intended, giving hope to the Confederate player and putting further strain on the already overstretched naval forces of the North.

Rebel Raiders Featured in the newest C3i !

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Porter Unleashes Hell on Ft. Fisher, Xmas Eve 1864

Porter Unleashes Hell on Ft. Fisher, Xmas Eve 1864

The largest U.S. naval force yet assembled unleashed hell on Ft. Fisher on Christmas Eve, 1864.  Admiral David Dixon Porter's fleet of over 60 warships, including five ironclads, mounted 624 guns - and Porter intended to use every one of them to bury the Rebel fort under a torrent of iron.

Porter's ships fired over 8,100 rounds - with a combined weight of more than half a million tons - into the sandy bastions guarding the approaches to Wilmington, N.C.   Colonel William Lamb had only 44 guns inside the fort, and Porter hoped to so batter the defenses that General Benjamin Butler's troops could just walk into Fort Fisher unopposed.

Porter's massive bombardment was the greatest the Western Hemisphere had ever seen, yet it had minimal effect on the brilliantly designed fort.  Three guns were dismounted, and four defenders were killed and another 19 wounded.  Porter's fleet sustained heavier losses, with three ships forced to retire due to accurate fire from the fort.  Most of the 91 sailors killed or wounded in the action were victims of their own guns, a number of which exploded.

The Navy landed a portion of Butler's troops, but the assault never went in.   Reports from the advanced guard that the defenses were nearly intact convinced Butler, still offshore, to call off the attack. Much to Porter's fury, Butler re-embarked most of his men, except for about 700 who were forced to spend Christmas Day huddled on the beach, without food or water, due to a sudden storm.  Despite pleas to General Braxton Bragg for permission to attack and capture the remnants of the landing force, Bragg refused to give the order.  The last of Butler's men were pulled off by the Navy on the 26th, and the fleet retired to Beaufort.   

Less than a month later, Porter would return - and with troops commanded by the much more aggressive and competent General Terry.  Porter's fleet bested its own record, firing over 180 rounds a minute in a sustained and much more accurate bombardment that began on January 13 and continued through the day and night of the 14th and into the early hours of the 15th.  Porter's guns fired close support right up until Terry launched his assault - with ironclads and gunboats coming close in shore to rake the defenders when they came out of their bombproofs to battle Terry's infantry and a column of 2,000 sailors and marines that Porter had landed to support the assault.   Although the naval landing force was handily repulsed and with heavy losses, the infantry carried the fort - with help from the Navy's guns.

In GMT's strategic naval game of the Civil War, Rebel Raiders on the High Seas, the Union player can build powerful fleets of screw sloops, ironclads and gunboats and recruit key admirals, Porter among them, to wear down the Confederate player's coastal defenses, which, through card play and careful planning, can be every bit as resilient as those constructed by Col. Lamb at Ft. Fisher.

150 Years Ago Today: Savannah, Sherman's Christmas Gift to Lincoln

150 Years Ago Today:  Savannah, Sherman's Christmas Gift to Lincoln

On December 22, 1864  President Abraham Lincoln received an early Christmas present from General William Tecumseh Sherman - the city of Savannah.  He announced this in a now famous telegram which stated:

"I beg to present you, as a Christmas Gift, the city of Savannah, with one-hundred and fifty guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton."

Sherman's army reached the outskirts of the city on December 20.  Confederate General William Hardee could not hope to hold Savannah, as his small force of 10,000 was outnumbered six to one.  Hardee managed to save his army and their field artillery, but was forced to abandon the many guns in the harbor forts.  One of his final orders was to scuttle and burn the CSS Savannah, a powerful casemate ironclad that had been built to help defend the city and harbor. Union forces entered Savannah on December 21, just as the ironclad was blown up by her crew.  Sherman officially took possession of the city on the following day.

Confederate ironclads play a vital role in the defense of ports in GMT's strategic naval game of the Civil War - Rebel Raiders on the High Seas - at least when those ports are attacked from the sea by the Union Navy.  When city's such as Savannah are taken from the land side, as Sherman did, they are lost.  Although Rebel Raiders is primarily a game of naval strategy, the land war is represented, and the Union player has many cards at his disposal, including Sherman himself, to help replicate that general's famous March to Sea.

150 Years Ago Today: Death of a Rebel Army at Nashville

Oh, my heart is feeling weary
And my head is hanging low
I'm goin' back to Georgy
To find my Uncle Joe.
You may talk about your Beauregard
And sing of Bobby Lee
But the Gallant Hood of Texas
He raised Hell in Tennessee

-These lyrics from the third stanza of Yellow Rose of Texas tell only part of the story of General John Bell Hood and the disasters that befell his ill-fated Army of Tennessee.  When President Jefferson Davis replaced General Joseph Johnston (the "Uncle Joe" referred to in the tune) in mid-July 1864,  General Robert E. Lee warned in a telegram that although "Hood is a bold fighter.  I am doubtful as to other qualities necessary." Prophetically, Lee added that  "We may lose Atlanta and the army too. "  On December 16, 1864, the second part of that warning came true outside of Nashville.

Two months after Hood took command, Atlanta did fall as Lee predicted. Hood evacuated the city in September after four bloody, pointless and disastrous attempts to break General William Tecumseh Sherman's ever-tightening ring around that vital urban center.   Rather than fight a delaying action, as Joe Johnston had done earlier in the year, in mid-October Hood struck north and "raised Hell in Tennessee."  Although he won a victory of sorts at Franklin on November 30, it was a hollow and Pyrrhic one.  Sherman, rather than follow Hood whom he said could "twist like a fox," left General George Thomas to deal with the situation in Tennessee while he the struck out for his infamous March to the Sea.  Thomas gathered Union forces at Nashville, and Hood obligingly followed.

For two weeks Hood laid an ineffectual siege around Nashville.  Despite a flood of telegrams from President Lincoln and General Ulysses Grant urging him to attack or be replaced by someone who would, Thomas waited until he was ready, and on December 15 launched his first major attack.  Although bloodied, bested and outnumbered nearly two to one, Hood does not use the cover of night to retreat.  He stubbornly holds his ground.  In the morning Thomas renews his attack, and the Confederate Army of Tennessee disintegrates.   

Hood lost 6,000 men at Franklin, and another 6,000 at Nashville (including 4,500 taken prisoner).  The remaining 25,000 fell back over the barren winter landscape,  abandoning over 150 cannon to the victorious Yankees.  Although elements of it would fight again,  on December 16 Hood's army ceased to be an effective military force.

Ironically, December 16, 1864 would have been the one-year anniversary of the date when Joseph E. Johnston took command of the Army of Tennessee.

Hood's invasion of Tennessee can be recreated by the Southern player in Rebel Raiders on the High Seas.  Although primarily a naval strategy game of the Civil War, the land campaigns are replicated on an abstract scale through the use of cards, dice and point-to-point movement.   Hood, Johnston, Sherman and other generals and events relevant to the Western theater are represented by cards  (the one-armed, one-legged Hood is CSN Card 89,  and Sherman is USN Card 50).

150 Years Ago Today: US Marines Fight Citadel Cadets Outside of Savannah

150 Years Ago Today: U.S. Marines Fight Citadel Cadets Outside of Savannah: Battle of Tulifinny

On December 6, 1864 warships of the mighty South Atlantic Blockading Squadron demonstrated against the Confederate batteries defending Charleston and Savannah.  These actions were meant to distract the Rebels from two other major operations being undertaken by the Navy.  The first was the assembly in Hampton Roads of a massive fleet for the amphibious attack on Ft. Fisher, the main defense work protecting the big blockade running port of Wilmington, N.C.  The second was the landing of United States Marines in support of General William Tecumseh Sherman's March to the Sea.  That landing resulted in the Battle of Tulifinny, and one of the very few occasions in which U.S. Marines fought in a land battle with Confederate infantry.

By late 1863 both Charleston and Savannah had effectively been shut down as blockade running ports by the Navy.  After the loss of Mobile Bay in August, Wilmington remained the last major haven for the runners, upon whose cargoes the Confederacy and especially General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia depended for munitions and other staples.  Charleston and Savannah, however, remained key political objectives, and if taken would give the Navy a port to supply Sherman's army.   To help open the path for Sherman, the Navy landed 5,000 troops and a detachment of Marines on the banks of the Tulifinny River, not far from the town of Yemassee, about 45 miles from Savannah.  A dozen Union gunboats supported the landing on the swampy peninsula.  As the Yankees advanced they were met by 900 Confederate troops, among whom were the entire corps of cadets of the South Carolina Military Academy (now known as The Citadel).

The Cadets made up about a third of the defending force, and were deployed to defend the key railroad bridge over the river. Told that Union forces were encamped nearby, the Cadets moved out in the pre-dawn darkness of December 7 to participate in a surprise attack on the Yankee lines.  The attack succeeded in driving the Union infantry from their camps, and the Cadets and the men of the 5th and 47th Georgia infantry and a militia unit dug in to await the inevitable counterattack.  That came on the morning of December 9th. The right flank of that attack was spearheaded by Lieutenant  George G. Stoddard and his Marines - who ran right into the positions held by the Cadets.  The Marine attack stalled, and when the Union forces on the left flank fell back, so did the Marines.  The Union forces then retired to the fleet, which evacuated them.

The success of the Cadets and other Rebel forces was short lived, and although it bought time for the Confederates to evacuate war materials by rail, Savannah fell to Sherman on Christmas Day.

As for the Navy's assault on Ft. Fisher...that is a story for later.

Blockade Runners and the ports they dart in and out of are vital to the Southern player's hopes for victory in my strategic naval game of the Civil War, GMT's Rebel Raiders on the High Seas.

150 Years Ago Today: Lincoln Re-elected!

This day in history in 1864: Lincoln Re-elected!

150 years ago today voters in the North overcame their war-weariness to re-elect Abraham Lincoln.  Whatever hope the South had of a negotiated settlement died its final death that day.   Even had Lincoln lost to Little Mac (George McClellan), however, the Union would still have had nearly five months to finish the job.

Just prior to the election, Lincoln met with Generals Grant and Sherman and told them that no matter how the vote went, they were to continue to press the South - and press hard.  Moreover, if he lost, they were to redouble their efforts and do all in their power to bring the war to an end before the new president could be inaugurated on March 4, 1865.

The election plays a big part in my strategic naval game of the Civil War,  Rebel Raiders on the High Seas.  Each turn is four months, and the last turn of the game begins in December, 1864.  There is, however, a card which if drawn by the North gives the Union player a chance for an extra, 13th turn - one that begins in April 1865.  The card, however, like the election of November 1864, is not a sure thing:  a die is rolled and modified in the Union's favor based on which key cities the North controls.  If the North is doing well, the Yankee will get that extra turn to drive old Dixie down....but if not, the pressure is on, just as if Lincoln had indeed lost the election.

Happy Navy Day from Rebel Raiders on the High Seas!

October 27th is NAVY DAY!

In 1922 October 27th was designated "Navy Day" by the United States Government.  The date was chosen because October 27th was also the anniversary of Theodore Roosevelt's birthday.  As assistant secretary of the Navy in the last years of the 19th century, Teddy Roosevelt pushed for the modernization of the fleet and as such is considered by many to be the father of the modern Navy.

In 1949 the Department of Defense decided that it would no longer officially celebrate Navy Day, and that instead of having its own unique day, that the Navy would instead join with the other services to mark Armed Forces Day each May.   Navy Day, however, is still marked by the Navy League and many veterans groups, with parties, dances and other celebrations.

A hearty "Happy Navy Day"  from the designer of GMT's strategic naval game of the Civil War, Rebel Raiders on the High Seas.....

150 Years Ago: Rebel Raider CSS Florida Taken in Brazilian Port

150 Years Ago: Rebel Raider CSS Florida Taken in Brazilian Port 

Historical Event: In an illegal action that nearly sparked a shooting war with Brazil, in the early hours of October 7, 1864 a Union warship opened fire upon and then rammed a Confederate raider in a neutral port. With Capt. Charles Morris and most of his crew ashore, the CSS Florida was defenseless when Commander Napoleon Collins of the USS Wachusett defied international law and attacked the raider.

Collins had chased CSS Florida for many months. He caught up and berthed next to her in the Brazilian port of Bahia on October 4. Although U.S. Consul Thomas F. Wilson assured the president of Bahia Province, Joaquim da Silva Gomes, that the Union would respect his nation's neutrality, the president took no chances; he placed the raider under his personal protection – and that of a squadron of sloops, corvettes and other warships under Commander Gervasio Macebo. The governor granted the CSS Florida time to take on coal and provisions and make emergency repairs, but also demanded her guns be unloaded while in port.

Wilson and Collins had no intention of respecting Brazilian neutrality.  Together they planned a “cutting-out” expedition to capture the raider – knowing full well that if the CSS Florida left port the slower Union warship would be unlikely to catch her. Even worse, if the USS Wachusett did, she might lose the fight – as most of her guns were short range smoothbores, while the CSS Florida had a battery of long-range rifles. Those would have enabled Capt. Morris to stand off and pound away at the Yankee vessel while keeping out of the range of Collin's heavier but shorter-ranged guns. Wilson and Collins decided to damn international law and go after the raider, in port, while she slept.

Shortly before dawn on October 7, Collins built up steam and bulled his way past a sleeping line of Brazilian warships.  As he entered the harbor he opened fire upon, rammed and with pistols blazing, boarded the Rebel raider. The skeleton crew of Confederates aboard were surprised, outnumbered and overwhelmed. Collins put a prize crew aboard, tossed over a hawser and began towing the raider out to sea.

The Brazilians were enraged at this breach of international law – especially after having been assured   that Brazilian neutrality would be respected. The harbor fort opened fire.  Commander  Macebo raised sails and steam and ordered his squadron to fire upon the Union warship as it sped by. Macebo gave chase, but Collins even with his prize in tow, was able to outdistance the Brazilians.

Collins and Wilson were hailed by the press for their boldness, and were privately praised by Lincoln, Secretary of State Seward and Secretary of the Navy Welles. Unfortunately, to ameliorate the Brazilians they had to be made an example of. Wilson was dismissed from the foreign service and Collins was court-martialed, found guilty of violating the territory of a neutral government and similarly dismissed from the Navy.

Collins remained unrepentant, saying he would do it all again “for the public good.” None disputed that he had acted so, for in her two-year career the CSS Florida had sunk 46 ships and captured 14 others, inflicting damages that her victim's owners claimed had cost them over $4 million – ten times the cost of the Rebel raider.

Confederate commerce cruisers like CSS Florida play a key role in GMT's strategic naval game of the Civil War, as one would expect from a game entitled Rebel Raiders on the High Seas.

150 Years Ago: CSS Florida Makes Her Last Capture At Sea

150 Years Ago: CSS Florida Makes Her Last Capture At Sea

On September 26, 1864, the Confederate raider CSS Florida, then under the command of her second captain, Charles M. Morris, made her 37^th and final capture: the bark Mandamis. She was a commercial vessel out of Baltimore that was returning “in ballast” because of the difficulty in finding shippers who wanted to risk their cargo on American flag vessels – vessels which, like Mandamis, were the prey for CSS Florida and other Rebel Raiders on the High Seas.

After setting the bark afire, Morris made for Bahia to take on coal and provisions. He did not know that no fewer than 24 Union warships were after him – one of which, the USS Ticonderoga, was assited in that hunt by one of the CSS Florida's own men: A. L. Drayton. The sailor had been captured when the fishing schooner Archer, which when captured by the CSS Florida had been pressed into service to do some raiding of her own off the New England coast.  Rather than suffer imprisonment, Drayton piloted the Union warship throughout the chase, but always arrived at foreign ports of call just a week or so after the raider. Another of the hunters, however, USS Wachusett, was more timely in her search – catching up with and capturing the CSS Florida on October 7...but that is another story....

The Confederate commerce raiders play a key role in GMT's strategic naval game of the Civil War, Rebel Raiders on the High Seas. For more on the game visit the GMT website on the game at:

http://www.gmtgames.com/p-238-rebel-raiders-on-the-high-seas.aspx

or read a review of the game inissue #27 of Rodger MacGowan's C3i magazine: http://www.gmtgames.com/p-462-c3i-magazine-issue-27.aspx

150 Years Ago: A Rebel Blockade Runner's Last Run

150 Years Ago: A Rebel Blockade Runner's Last Run

Few Confederate ships ran the blockade more often than the Advance.  The fast, Scottish-built 900-ton sidewheeler made more than 20 voyages - paying back her owners many times over as she brought in not only badly needed war supplies but also highly sought after luxuries.  Named in honor of North Carolina Governor Zebulon Vance, the sleek double-stack vessel originally designer as a fast passenger liner eluded capture over 40 times as she zipped in and out of Wilmington and other ports in the Tar Heel State.  Unfortunately, the 41st Union warship she encountered was one of the fastest ships in the Union navy: the USS Santiago de Cuba - which ended the blockade runner's storied 15-month career on the night of September 10, 1864.

The Advance, however, was not sunk by the USS Santiago de Cuba when the Yankee vessel caught up with her in Cape Fear Inlet; she was instead taken as a prize to New York  and then selected for service by the Navy.  Even with a 20-pounder rifled gun and four 24-pound howitzers aboard the now rechristened USS Advance could still make 12 knots, which made her suitable for service in tightening the blockade around the very ports she had been running in and out of under the Rebel flag.   Her capture, however, was a severe blow to Confederate captains, fewer and fewer of whom risked going out where even the Advance had been unable to escape.  

Although she never chased down any of her fellow blockade runners, as USS Advance the vessel did see action in the battle for Fort Fisher at the mouth of the Cape Fear River that Christmas.  Under the command of  Lt. Cmdr. John Upshur  she exchanged fire with the fort's Half-Moon Battery, reportedly silencing its 8-inch gun, then came closer inshore to help rescue and tow away the gunboat USS Osceola,   Upshur's vessel finished out the war as a dispatch and supply ship, and after war's end was renamed USS Frolic and, with Upshur still in command, was sent to the European Squadron.  The vessel was finally decomissioned in 1877 and sold to a private owner in Virginia in 1883.

As CSN Card 67, CSS Advance is one of the many blockade runners that appear in the strategic Civil War naval game, Rebel Raiders on the High Seas.  Successfully running the blockade is vital for Confederate victory in the game, as it was in the war.  Stopping such ships is equally vital for the North, which in attempting to do so makes use of such ships as the gunboat USS Osceola, which also appears in the game as USN Card 9 and which, ironically, as noted above, was saved by Advance when that former blockade runner was in Union service.

150 Years Ago: Guns Blazing, Rebel Raider Returns Home

150 years ago today, August 25, 1864 – CSS Tallahassee battles its way back home.

Historical Event:  On the night of August 25, 1864 CSS Tallahassee became one of the few Confederate raiders to exchange fire with Union warships – and one of the fewer to live to tell the tale.  Running the blockade back to Wilmington, she ran afoul of a pair of Yankee gunboats.   The raider easily outdistanced them – for the sleek, iron-hulled, two-stacker could make 14 knots, even weighed down by her three heavy guns.  Unfortunately, the gunboats were but the hounds, herding the raider to the hunter: USS Monticello.  As Captain John Taylor Wood heaved his ship about to avoid that mighty man of war, another pair of gunboats appeared – and opened fire, expecting that what they believed to be an unarmed blockade runner would heave to and strike her colors. 

Wood’s ship may have begun her career as a blockade runner, having made four highly profitable runs from Wilmington to Bermuda and back under the name Atlanta, but as the raider CSS Tallahassee she carried a potent battery:  a Parrott Rifle aft, a 32-pounder forward and a massive 100-pounder amidships.  Wood ordered his gunners to return fire – and then to reload and fire again.  The battle attracted the attention of Fort Fisher, whose guns added their booming voices to Wood’s own battery, which convinced the Yankee squadron to break off the chase. 

Returning to port after a three-week raid that captured or burned over 30 Union ships, many in sight of the coastal towns of New Jersey, New York and New England, the  CSS Tallahassee, and her captain and crew, were given a heroes’ welcome – and a 21-gun salute from Fort Fisher, an honor which the raider returned.  Those were the last shots she fired as CSS Tallahassee.

The rest of the story:  Wood was ordered to Richmond, and North Carolina Governor Zebulon Vance and his local officers agitated to have the coal-gobbling iron warship disarmed and her guns distributed to local forts.  They argued that while still active, the raider was only drawing more and more Yankee ships to Wilmington – making it even harder for other vessels to run the blockade. (The week after CSS Tallahassee battled her way back into port, seven blockade runners were intercepted by the now reinforced blockading squadron).   President Jefferson Davis and Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory intervened. They saved the ship, had her rechristened CSS Olustee, and sent her back out to sea for a brief raid in November, where the raider burned, bonded or scuttled six merchant ships.  Governor Vance, however, finally won out – as by 1865 the Confederacy needed food more than it needed to wreck Union commerce.  Disarmed and renamed (again) as the Chameleon, she ran out to Bermuda – but upon her return found that Wilmington and even Charleston had fallen.  Her captain, John Wilkinson, set course for Liverpool – arriving there the day Lee surrendered at Appomattox.

Game Connection:  Confederate raiders and blockade runners are vital to the Southern cause in GMT’s strategic naval game of the Civil War: Rebel Raiders on the High Seas.  Many of the more famous raiders appear by name on counters and cards, while others, like the CSS Tallahassee (in her many incarnations) are represented by generic ship counters of that type.