150 Years Ago: Rebel Raiders Off New York!

150 Years Ago: Rebel Raiders Off New York!

150 Years Ago this week New York merchants were in a panic, as a Confederate raider was sinking their ships almost within sight of the city!   Between August 11 and August 20, the CSS Tallahassee sunk, burned, scuttled or bonded over 30 Union merchant ships - most of them off the coasts of New Jersey, New York and New England.

In late July, Commander John Taylor Wood and 120 volunteers, most drawn from the Confederate James River Squadron, arrived in Wilmington, N.C. and took charge of a the blockade runner Atlanta.  They strengthened her hull and decks and fitted her with three massive guns: a 100-pound rifle, a 32-pound rifle and a Parrot gun.  Wood not only had a ship that could fight most Union gunboat; he also had what he boasted was "the fastest warship afloat" - one that could run down or out run any vessel flying Yankee colors.

Wood, who had been on the CSS Virginia in its epic battle with the USS Monitor, had no illusions about battling his way through the blockade.  He steamed out quietly and stealthily under cover of night (and the guns of Fort Fisher) and ran for the open sea.  Eleven Union warships chased him for 50 miles, even firing shells that flew between the raider's twin stacks, but CSS Tallahassee sped on, eventually outdistancing his pursuers.  Instead of heading for the broad Atlantic, Wood set a course for the Yankee coast: his goal, to bring the war to the North.

On August 11 off the coast of Sandy Hook, New Jersey, Wood did just that, capturing seven ships in a single day.  On the 12th, Wood captured another six..  On August 13 he took a pair of vessels - the bark Glenavon and the schooner L. Du Pont.  He scuttled the first and burned the second - the smoke from which reportedly was seen from Long Island.   The New York Board of Underwriters shot up their insurance rates and telegraphed Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, demanding he send all available ships to hunt down the raider.  Welles complied, but while his fleet gathered, Wood went on up the coast to New England, capturing another 17 vessels before reaching Halifax to take on coal on August 18.   The CSS Tallahassee left the harbor only hours before a mighty Union warship (USS Pontoosuc) arrived.  Knowing that Welles had sent dozens of ships out to look for him, Wood made a beeline for Wilmington, taking one last prize before dashing through the blockading squadrons, guns blazing, at 14 knots, to triumphantly return to port on August 26.

The strategic Civil War naval game Rebel Raiders on the High Seas captures the drama of such daring captains as John Taylor Wood.  Confederate blockade runners and raiders must elude the net the Union player casts for them, hoping their efforts will keep the Southern economy going long enough to frustrate the march of Yankee armies south.  

The Ships of Rebel Raiders - The Ironclads

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 Ironclads :   USS Roanoke  The “Acme” Ironclad – A great idea that worked – in theory

“Great ideas that work – in theory” is the motto emblazed on the crates of the Acme Company from which Wile E Coyote of Looney Tunes orders strange devices in his never-ending efforts to catch The Roadrunner.  If Acme made an ironclad, it would have been the USS Roanoke (USN Card 20 in Rebel Raiders on the High Seas).

Originally built as a steam frigate in 1855 and successful in catching blockade runners early in the war, she was chosen for a pilot conversion program and rebuilt not just as an ironclad but as a massive triple-turreted ocean-going ironclad.  The decision to do so was made by Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles (USN Card 29), whom Chief of Steam Engineering Benjamin F. Isherwood convinced 10 days after the Monitor vs Virginia (USN Card 19 vs CSN Card 70) clash that reconstructing USS Roanoke into a seagoing ironclad would be faster and cheaper than designing a new vessel from the keel up.

USS Roanoke was the first ship to ever have a third turret.  Each had a pair of matching guns (Dahlgren 15 and 11 inch guns and 150-pounder Parrot rifles (Yankee Guns - USN Card 3 and John Dahlgren, USN Card 31). Each turret had 11 inches of armor.  She had belt armor as thick as 4.5 inches in some parts, plus 1.5 inches of deck armor.  This added so much weight, however, that she displaced about 6,400 tons – half again what she had displaced as steam frigate (and she was a big, modern frigate to begin with – and when initially launched sank and had to be refloated).

As the Brooklyn Navy Yard neared completion of the project, the Navy decided to add a ram – making it not only an ocean-going ironclad monitor, but one that could also ram its prey.   Unfortunately, all of this weight made her too slow to do so – and while she could briefly push ahead in good conditions at 8.5 knots, her best sustainable speed was only 7 knots – slower than she had been as a steam frigate.

In addition, the weight made the ship so unsteady that as her captain lamented in order to fire the guns he had to “secure them with pieces of timber to prevent them fetching away.” (Three of the six guns dismounted because of the recoil the first time they were fired). When the guns fired, moreover, the ship would roll so dangerously as to “preclude the possibility of firing her guns at sea.”

The turrets were also so heavy that, even with additional boilers added just to power them, they took five minutes to make a full rotation.

Having built a massive monster that was slow, unsteady, unsafe and useless in combat, the Navy sent her to Hampton Roads to defend the harbor, where she sat out the remainder of the war.

The Ships of Rebel Raiders - The Ironclads

 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 Ironclads : USS Monitor – Pulling Its Punches vs. CSS Virginia

The ironclad USS Monitor is of course represented in Rebel Raiders  (by USN Card 19) as is its opponent in the classic duel at Hampton Roads, CSS Virginia (CSN Card 70).

So much has been written on those ships and their epic if inconclusive battle, but what is often lacking from accounts is WHY that duel was so inconclusive.  The answer, as historian James McPherson points out in his recent book, War Upon the Waters, is that neither ship was properly prepared to fight the other.

The Union Navy distrusted John Ericsson, who designed and built the USS Monitor, because in 1844 a gun he had invented exploded during a trial on the USS Princeton – killing the secretaries of BOTH the Army and the Navy.  When Ericsson told them the pair of 11-inch Dahlgrens aboard his new warship could handle a powder charge of 45 pounds they balked – and issued an order that no more than 15 pounds of powder be used.   As a result, the 170-pound projectiles fired by the USS Monitor’s guns hit with far less force – merely cracking the armor on the CSS Virginia, rather than punching through it  (as later tests with a full charge demonstrated).

The CSS Virginia, however, was equally unprepared for the fight – instead of iron bolts or solid shot, she loaded up with only explosive shell – the perfect weapon to blow apart and set afire the wooden warships of the type she had encountered the previous day.   When these shells struck the Union ironclad, they did only superficial damage (except for fragments that entered through viewing slits and other openings (one such fragment temporarily blinded  USS Monitor’s commander, Lt.  John Worden who was peering through the slit in the pilothouse when it hit).

The Ships of Rebel Raiders - The Ironclads

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 III – The  Rebel Ironclads: CSS Virginia

…and why the iconic duel with the USS Monitor was such a “dud”

“The CSS Virginia was not the first ironclad warship in history, nor in the Civil War, nor even in the Confederacy,” notes historian James McPherson in his new book War Upon the Waters, but she is the most famous.  CSS Virginia, which is represented in Rebel Raiders by its own counter and card (CSN Card 70) is best known for being the Confederate side in the first duel of ironclad warships (her opponent being the USS Monitor – also represented in Rebel Raiders by a counter and card (USN Card 19).

Built up from the captured bones of the USS Merrimack in Norfolk, the CSS Virginia mounted six 9-inch Dahlgren smoothbores (three per side) and four Brooke rifles (a pair of 7-inchers forward, a pair of 6.4-inchers aft).  The iron casemate, which was rolled out in a single piece at Tredegar Iron Works (represented in Rebel Raiders by the production rules and CSN Card 95) was bolted onto the hull and then pierced to allow the placement of the guns. She also mounted a seven-foot iron ram (which nearly proved her undoing when it got stuck into the USS Cumberland whom she rammed in the Battle of Hampton Roads in March 1862).

“A novelty in naval construction,” as Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen R. Mallory called her (Mallory is also in Rebel Raiders as CSN Card 78) she took on the Union blockading fleet in Hampton Roads, sinking the USS Cumberland, compelling the USS Congress to strike her colors and forcing the USS Minnesota to run aground.  It was upon returning the next day to finish off the last of those when she met the USS Monitor. 

Unfortunately (or, rather, fortunately for the crews) neither ship was at her best in that fight.  The Union shells were charged with only 15 pounds of powder out of fear they would blow up in the guns (later tests showed they could handle three times that amount) and the Confederates brought only explosive shell, not solid shot or iron bolts, as they expected to face only wooden warships.  As a result although they battered away at each other, scoring hit after hit, neither could inflict any serious damage on the other.

Although technically a draw, CSS Virginia did retire to port – never to fight again.  She was burned by the Rebels to prevent her capture by Union forces advancing on Norfolk.