USS New Ironsides: U.S. Navy’s First Armored Steam Frigate

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.

USS New Ironsides:  U.S. Navy’s First Armored Steam Frigate

The first of a new breed of modern warships, the USS New Ironsides (USN Card 26) was an ocean-going, wooden-hulled, armored man-o-war; a true battleship, with plenty of big guns, powerful steam engines – and even a ram, just in case.

Protected by 4.5 inches of belt armor, the USS New Ironsides would be hit many, many times by the Confederate guns she dueled with at Charleston and Fort Fisher – but like her namesake, the original “Old Ironsides” (USS Constitution) most shots seemed to bounce off; she was never seriously damaged by enemy fire.  USS New Ironsides, however, did have the dubious distinction of being the first victim of a submarine (technically a “semi-submersible torpedo boat”)– when the CSS David (CSN Card 65) set off a spar torpedo on October 5, 1863.  Damage, however, was minor – USS New Ironsides remained on station.

 (In Rebel Raiders, if the Confederate player declared an attack with the CSS David card on a Union warship, say the USS New Ironsides, each side would roll one die, with the Confederate player adding one to his die if his target is the only warship in the port or blockade space.  If the Confederate die roll is higher, the Union ship is sunk.)

USS New Ironsides was the flagship for Rear Admiral Samuel Francis DuPont (USN Card 54) during the April 1863 naval attack on Fort Sumter and the other defenses of Charleston harbor, and went back into the harbor for the second attack on Charleston.  She also supported the abortive assault by the gallant 54^th Massachusetts (as depicted in the movie, Glory) on Fort Wagner, and took part in the two bombardments of Fort Fisher, the second of which resulted in a Union victory in January 1865.  

Decommissioned and laid up in Philadelphia after the war, she was the victim of an accidental fire, allegedly caused by a watchman’s unattended stove, and burned and sank in December 1866.

This day 150 years ago in Rebel Raiders’ History

-Dedicated to Civil War episodes, battles, people and ships that also appear in my game, GMT’s Rebel Raiders on the High Seas,  

July 18, 1863 – Glory: Admiral Dahlgren & the 54^th Mass. at Battery Wagner

            Historical Event:  The gallant charge of the 54^th Massachusetts, so poignantly portrayed in the movie Glory, took part on this day in 1863.  Rear Admiral John Dahlgren sent his ironclads and gunboats of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron close in to support the attack on Battery Wagner on Morris Island in Charleston Harbor.  His ships  at times came as he notes in his memoirs within 300 yards of the fort.   

            To support the attack Dahlgren sent in ten ships:  six ironclads (USS Montauk, USS Ironsides, USS Kaatskill, USS Nantucket, USS Weehawken and USS Patapsco) and four gunboats (USS Paul Jones, USS Ottawa, USS Wissahickon and USS Seneca).

            Here, from his Memoirs, is Admiral Dahlgren’s account of what he witnessed that day:

            “The ironclads battered Wanger almost out of shape, and in the afternoon of that day the flag monitor ‘Montauk’ lay only three hundred yards from the sea-face of the work; not a gun was fired from it; not a head visible to my glass as I stood with other officers outside, watching the first symptom of renewed resistance.

            “Our column came up, but it was too dark to discern objects from the vessels, and after a fierce and resolute effort the column fell back with a loss of 1,500 men.

            “The assault could derive no aid from the fire of our guns, because it was impossible to distinguish our troops from the enemy.”   (Italics are Dahlgren’s).

            Game Connection:    John Dahlgren, one of the first admirals ever created for the U.S. Navy, has his own card (USN Card 31) in Rebel Raiders on the High Seas, and the revolutionary weapons he created (among them the Dahlgren gun) are also represented (USN Card 3 – Yankee Guns).  Both are important cards for a Union player who will need to send his fleets of ironclads and gunboats to destroy the batteries at Charleston to help clear the way for an assault – hopefully one that will end more fortuitously than the gallant but doomed charge made by the 54^th on this day, 150 years ago.