August 17, 1863 – “Swamp Angel” In Place To Shell Charleston

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,  

August 17, 1863 – “Swamp Angel” In Place To Shell Charleston

            Historical Event:   On this day in 1863 Union forces completed one of the most amazing engineering feats of the war.  They unveiled a massive siege gun, which would earn the nickname “Swamp Angel,” as they readied a new bombardment of Charleston and its defenses.  The huge 8-inch 200-pounder Parrot Rifle was installed in secret by soldiers who worked nights in 30-man teams to create a road and gun platform in a swamp by vertically driving huge logs 20 feet through the soft mud into the sandy substratum below, then adding a layer of pine logs, earth and sand bags on top.  It took 450 men to drag the 12-ton gun into position (which they did in two parts, the heavier carriage first, then the barrel) – and then to ferry powder and shot and shell – including incendiary rounds filled with a combustible fluid of gun-designer William Parrot’s own invention -  “Solidified Greek Fire.”    Firing would commence on August 21, with devastating and demoralizing if not decisive effect - and would conclude two days later when a the breech exploded, dismounting the gun.  That final shot, however, the 36th launched by the mighty weapon, hit its target.  The "Swamp Angel" never fired again - her position being taken over by a pair of giant siege mortars.

            Game Connection:    Attacking Confederate ports is a tough job for the Union, especially if they are as heavily fortified as was Charleston.  Massive mortars and huge guns like the “Swamp Angel” were often used to aid the Army and the Navy in its attacks, and are represented by USN Card 48 – Siege Train.  As the card (see below) notes, when used successfully, it is returned to the player's hand for use on another turn.

USS Kearsarge “Semme’s Bane”

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 Kearsarge  “Semme’s Bane”

Named after a mountain in New Hampshire, USS Kearsarge (USN Card 14 in Rebel Raiders)) is best known for its epic duel with the CSS Alabama (CSN Card 63), in the Battle of Cherbourg, fought off the coast of France in June 1864.   That was not the first day the Union warship plagued the Raider’s captain, Raphael Semmes, as it had been part of the force that blockaded him and his previous ship, CSS Sumter (the Raider counter that starts the Rebel Raiders’ game in New Orleans) when the Union caught up with Semmes at Gibraltar in 1862.  When Semmes took over the CSS Alabama a few months later, it was USS Kearsarge which was tasked with hunting him down.

That hunt took 20 months, during which Semmes sank or captured 65 U.S. merchant ships.  When Semmes, ailing and, like his ship, worn out, went to Cherbourg for a rest and refit, USS Kearsarge followed.  Piqued into action by allegations that he was a mere “pirate,” the Confederate Navy officer accepted the challenge from his Union counterpart, Captain John Winslow, and steamed out to fight.  While CSS Alabama did mount a more powerful 100-pound Blakely pivot rifle, she was otherwise outgunned by the Union sloop-of-war, which carried a pair of 11 inch Dahlgrens, four 32-pounders and a 30-pound Parrot rifle.  USS Kearsarge had another advantage: an armored belt of single-link iron chaincladding  and chain cables protected her most vital areas.

The duel lasted about an hour, at which point Semmes struck his colors and asked Winslow for help in saving his crew – although Semmes along with 41 other sailors were picked up by a nearby yacht which spirited them to safety in England.   The action was recreated by   Edouard Manet in his famous painting (see illustration below).

USS Kearsarge earned a battle star on her Civil War campaign streamer, and 17 members of the crew received the Medal of Honor for this action.  After repairs, she was sent to hunt down the Confederate ocean-going ironclad ram/raider CSS Stonewall (CSN Card 74), but the war was over before they met.

In the Game….recreating the epic duel

In Rebel Raiders on the High Seas, when a Yankee Sloop meets a Confederate Raider, the Union player has to win a speed roll; the odds are in the Rebel’s favor, as the Confederate ship adds a +3 to its die and wins ties.  CSS Alabama is even harder to catch, as it gets an additional +1 …but so does the USS Kearsarge, making it one of the few sloops that can catch her.

In The Battle of Cherbourg, however, it was the Rebel who initiated the combat, which a Confederate player may do if he wishes in Rebel Raiders.

When a Sloop and a Raider do fight, the Union ship gets two dice, and the Rebel one.  A “5” or “6” on any one die will sink the other.  Both CSS Alabama and USS Kearsarge each get a plus to their die/dice respectively, and if the Yankee Guns (USN Card 3) is in play, the Union ship also gets to re-roll one die in one round of the combat.   Should the Union player miss, the Confederate can escape...and live to raid another day.

 

A "Rebel Raiders" Homage Admiral David Glasgow “Damn the Torpedoes” Farragut!

A "Rebel Raiders" Homage to Admiral David Glasgow “Damn the Torpedoes” Farragut!

On this day in 1870 David Glasgow Farragut passed away.   The admiral appears in Rebel Raiders on the High Seas not only as a Leader counter but on TWO Union cards (USN Card 1 – “Damn the Torpedoes…Full Speed Ahead!” and USN Card 33 – The Grand Fleet).  The first card gives Union ships extra dice when firing on Rebel batteries – but only after they take a round of fire from the Confederates, thus mimicking the Navy tactic of directing fire at Rebel gun positions that have exposed themselves, and the second allows the Union to amass a larger stack of ships (10 vice the normal 6 allowed in the rules) when making an attack – which represents Farragut’s accumulation of a massive force to hit Mobile Bay.

Farragut was one of the first admirals in the U.S. Navy – attaining the rank of rear admiral as a reward for taking New Orleans in 1862.  Nine such rear admirals were authorized by act of Congress in 1862  (among these were Samuel Francis DuPont – USN Card 54,  John Dahlgren – USN Card 31, David Dixon Porter – USN Card 2 and Andrew Hull Foote, who appears as a Leader in the game).  Farragut later became the nation’s first vice admiral – promoted by Lincoln for his storming of Mobile Bay, and its first full admiral (four star rank), an honor he was given a year after the war in July 1866.

Farragut, though born in Tennessee and married to a Southern belle, stayed loyal to the Union – so much so that he told his wife that he was going North even if she and the family stayed South.  He and Confederate Admiral Franklin “Old Buck” Buchanan (a Confederate leader in the game) were among the senior officers in the Navy, and just as Buchanan felt Farragut had betrayed the South by coming North, so did Farragut believe “Buck” had betrayed his oath to the Union by going South.   The two men quite literally fought eye-to-eye at Mobile Bay,  Farragut supposedly uttering his famous “damn” not so much because of the torpedoes, but because from his perch on the rigging of the USS Hartford (USN Card 37) he could see Buchanan looking up at him from the pilot house of the ram CSS Tennessee (CSN Card 86), as depicted in the famous painting of that action by William Heysham Overrend (see below).

“American Civil War games are very popular in Japan”

Rebel Raiders – In Japanese?

“American Civil War games are very popular in Japan” 

My old friend, the renowned artist Rodger MacGowan made that comment when he sent me the photos (see below) of the Japanese language edition of Rebel Raiders on the High Seas.

“Based on my contacts in Japan and the photos I have seen on the web from Japan,” Rodger told me, “the American Civil War is a very popular subject among wargamers in Japan today.”

Rodger should know, he has been doing covers of my games for 30 years – including all of my Civil War titles, from the early 1980s Army of the Potomac, Army of the Tennessee pairing that combined make Mr. Lincoln’s War right up to, of course, Rebel Raiders on the High Seas.

Look for more Rebel Raiders images on his website, and for major coverage of Rebel Raiders in an upcoming issuing of his C3i magazine.

“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.

USS Iroquois: Ship of War, Ship of Mercy - 50 Years of Service

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: USS Iroquois: Ship of War, Ship of Mercy - 50 Years of Service

Few ships serve their country for 50 years – and fewer still serve as both men o’ war and ships of mercy.  Such, however, is the legacy of USS Iroquois  (USN Card 12 -  “Sloop of War ” in Rebel Raiders on the High Seas).

USS Iroquois was commissioned in 1859 and sent the Mediterranean – where it hosted no less a figure than the renowned Italian freedom-fighter Giuseppe Garibaldi.  Recalled home as war loomed, she was sent to the Caribbean to seek out commerce raiders  (those very ships for whom Rebel Raiders on the High Seas is named).  She found the first of those, the CSS Sumter (the Raider counter that starts the game in New Orleans) but its wily captain, Raphael Semmes (who would later command the CSS Alabama – CSN Card 63 – and which also appears on the game box cover) gave the mighty Union warship the slip. 

USS Iroquois also later intercepted a British sloop, aboard which were the Confederate ministers James M. Mason and John Slidell (of the Trent Affair – CSN Card 83 fame).  Commander James S. Palmer, however, wisely and diplomatically let them proceed.

USS Iroquois finally got into the shooting war as part of Farragut’s (USN Card 1) squadron during the attacks on Forts Jackson and St. Philip (which appear in the game as well).  She also took part in the shelling of Vicksburg before being recalled downriver for service hunting blockade runners in the Gulf of Mexico (a key role for Union sloops in the game).  USS Iroquois performed that same task in 1863 as part of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, catching several blockade runners, notably the Kate and the Merrimac.  After repairs, she was dispatched to the Pacific to hunt the raider CSS Shenandoah (CSN Card 64).

After the war, she became part of the Asiatic Squadron and later the Pacific Squadron, landing her Marines to protect U.S. interests in Panama in 1885.  In 1892 this antique man of war became a hospital ship, a role she performed until finally retired and struck from the Navy List in 1910.