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.

Ironclad CSS Albemarle: One Ship vs. a Union Blockading Squadron

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.

May 5, 1864 –  Ironclad CSS Albemarle:  One Ship vs. a Union Blockading Squadron

Historical Event:   The Battle of Albemarle Sound was a rare event in the Civil War, as it was one of the few times a Rebel fleet initiated combat, let alone sortied to break the Union blockade in an amphibious operation, no less.  On May 5, 1864, however,  the Confederate Navy did just that, sending its newest and most feared ironclad ram, CSS Albemarle, into the body of water for which it was named.

 The Albemarle came down the Roanoke River with the gunboat CSS Bombshell and the troopship CSS Cotton Planter.  The goal of the operation was to recapture the key port of New Bern and thus break the Union blockade on North Carolina.  As Commander J.W. Cooke brought the ironclad out into the Sound, he found Captain Melancton Smith and his fleet of eight Union warships waiting for him.   Although heavily outnumbered as well as out-gunned, Cooke plowed ahead, confidant that Union shells would bounce off the thickly-armored, sloping casemate of the CSS Albemarle. 

Cooke’s faith in his warship was well placed, for the Yankee guns (even those firing 100-pound shot ) did little harm.  CSS Albemarle carried only two guns, 6.4-inch Brooke Rifles, but Cooke used them to good effect, gingerly moving them on their pivots to fire out of the six gun-port positions.  The captain of the USS Sassacus, frustrated and declaring that he might as well have been “firing blanks,” poured on the coal, built up to a speed of nearly a dozen knots and rammed the Confederate ram, knocking her so hard as she nearly foundered.  Cooke, however, righted his ship and poured fire at point-blank range into the Union vessel, causing many casualties and inflicting heavy damage.

Three other Union double-ender side-wheel gunboats circled about, adding their fire but each taking more damage than they gave.  USS Wyalusing and USS Mattabesett gave covering fire as USS Miami, armed with a spar torpedo, moved in for the attack, but Cooke evaded successfully.  Unfortunately, his consort, CSS Bombshell, being a mere gunboat, was so badly pounded that she was forced to strike her colors.  At that the troopship turned about and Cooke retired, his reason for fighting the Union fleet now moot.  

 Game Connection:  CSS Albemarle is one of the many named ships in Rebel Raiders on the High Seas.  Represented by a counter and card (CSN Card 75) she is one of the most powerful warships in the small but plucky Confederate Navy.  While the gunboat that accompanied her and the types of Union warships they fought on May 5, 1864 are represented by generic counters of their type, many another individual Yankee man-o-war is present with its own card and counter, as are the big Dahlgrens and other “Yankee Guns” they carried (USN Card 3).  New Bern is a key port in the game, as it was in the war, and holding on to or recapturing it is of great importance in Rebel Raiders on the High Seas.