Lincoln's Admiral Page 8
While Farragut’s squadron prepared for its passage upriver, Bell took one of the gunboats to reconnoiter the defenses of the two forts. Despite heavy fire, he gathered important information, not only about the forts themselves, but also about the condition of the obstruction the Confederates had stretched across the river to block the Union fleet. Bell made a second trip upriver, this time accompanied by Farragut himself, the flag officer being anxious for a look at the enemy before launching the attack.
Seventy-five miles below the city of New Orleans stood that city’s main defenses against attack from the Gulf, Fort St. Philip and Fort Jackson. Located just below a sharp turn in the river known as Plaquemine Bend, the forts were generally believed to be sufficient defense for the South’s most important city. The first fort an enemy ship sailing up the Mississippi River would encounter was Fort Jackson, standing on the left, or western, bank. Slightly to the north and across the river was Fort St. Philip. Together they formed a strong obstacle to any enemy fleet.
The older of the two was Fort St. Philip. Originally constructed by the Spanish governor of Louisiana, Baron de Carondelet, in 1792 as Fort San Felipe, it was the more formidable in appearance. In 1815, this single fort halted and, after a nine-day battle, drove off a Royal Navy fleet attempting to support a British army attack on New Orleans. The British warships had withdrawn after sending more than 1,000 shells into the fort to no avail and determining its reduction to be a hopeless cause. Farragut was fully aware of how well one fort had kept a large fleet from reaching New Orleans fifty years earlier. That knowledge is probably what convinced him of the folly of his orders to destroy the forts before proceeding upriver to New Orleans. It was no secret among the senior officers of his fleet that he would have preferred to simply run past the forts, isolating them from the support and supplies they received from the city.
Fort St. Philip had been expanded and strengthened since the War of 1812. The brick-and-earth wall facing the river contained no openings through which guns could be fired. Instead, the Confederates relied on guns mounted en barbette that fired over the wall at the enemy. Her ramparts rose seventeen to nineteen feet above the river and were twenty feet thick. As the Union squadron approached, St. Philip boasted some fifty-two guns in the main fort and two water-level batteries on each of her sides.
About 700 yards to the south, on the opposite bank, was Fort Jackson, the newer and more powerful of the two forts. Built between 1822 and 1832 as a defense against Spanish attack, she was named for the man who had first argued for the fort’s construction, General Andrew Jackson. Constructed as a star-shaped pentagon, her brick walls rose twenty-five feet above the river and contained openings for casement guns facing directly toward the river. In the center of the star was a structure built to serve as a bomb shelter that could safely house 500 men during a heavy bombardment. Fort Jackson boasted seventy-five guns.
At the time of Louisiana’s secession from the Union on January 26, 1861, both forts had been long neglected and were manned only by small garrisons commanded by an orderly sergeant, Henry Smith. On January 10, the forts were approached by a steamer arriving from New Orleans with a troop of Louisiana militiamen under the command of Major Paul E. Theard. When Theard demanded the surrender of the forts, Smith had little option but to comply. When the forts were transferred from the control of Louisiana forces to those of the Confederate government, work was begun to strengthen and improve them.
Over half the guns in both forts were twenty-four-pounders, along with a large number of thirty-two-pounders. These were considered small caliber for the job they were assigned, but since most Confederate officials expected New Orleans to be attacked from the north and not from the south, little concern was given to this situation. One other problem remained with the forts: the composition of their garrisons. Many of the men stationed in them were northerners who had been living in or visiting the New Orleans area when the war began. While some had been conscripted into the Confederate service at bayonet point, others had volunteered for service in the forts, expecting them to remain safe from Union attack. Many were foreigners, mostly German and Irish, who for the most part felt they had no part in the quarrel between the Northern and Southern states.
One man who was concerned about the defense of New Orleans was Confederate major general Mansfield Lovell. A former New York City deputy street commissioner, Lovell was born in Washington in 1822, where his father had been surgeon general of the United States Army. A graduate of the West Point class of 1842, Lovell served, as did so many other Civil War generals, in the Mexican War, where he was wounded twice. He had retired from the army as a captain of artillery in 1854, but his experience was put to good use when he was engaged as an artillery instructor in the New York City Guard, training militia troops in the use of the guns of Fort Hamilton. A strong supporter of states’ rights, Lovell’s sympathies were with the South when the secession movement began. He had been offered a commission by Confederate President Jefferson Davis at the urging of Generals P. G. T. Beauregard and Joseph E. Johnston. In October 1861, Davis had appointed him commanding officer of the Confederate troops guarding New Orleans, raising objections from some Southern-born officers who coveted the position for themselves. Once Lovell took command, Beauregard pointed out to him that despite popular opinion about an attack coming from upriver, powerful steamships could run past the river forts on their way to New Orleans. He recommended that the river itself be blocked, forcing any approaching enemy ships to stop while under the guns of the forts.
The responsibility for the defense of New Orleans was not Lovell’s alone. The Confederate and state naval forces operated in the river independent of his command. Believing that a unified command was the best way to defend New Orleans, Lovell attempted to bring these naval forces under his command but was rebuked in this by Davis himself.
Lovell had roughly 3,000 men under his command, excluding the approximately 1,000 troops who made up the garrisons of the two forts under the command of Brigadier General Johnson K. Duncan. Lovell’s command had been stripped of its best soldiers for fighting elsewhere, and he was constantly battling to maintain the troops he had left against conscription by the Richmond government.
Lovell had spent the time since his appointment trying to convince both city officials and the Confederate government that the real threat to New Orleans was from the south. Because his authority did not give him control over civilians, he could not simply order local officials to make appropriate preparations for an attack from downriver. He undermined his own cause when he told the Louisiana governor that he regarded “Butler’s Ship Island expedition as a harmless menace” to New Orleans.
One line of defense Lovell had successfully lobbied for was the construction of an obstruction blocking the river between the forts. Using mooring chains removed from ships tied up at New Orleans, forty-foot-long cypress trees were chained together and strung across the river, and secured with the use of ship anchors. A space was left open that would permit the passage of a single ship at a time. However, the amount of driftwood that flowed downriver was so great and accumulated so quickly that the obstacle was soon wrecked. It was later replaced by an assortment of demasted schooners. Perhaps the greatest impediment to the building and rebuilding of the river obstructions was the difference of opinion between Lovell and Duncan about the ability of the two forts to halt an attack by steam-powered warships. The commanding officer of the forts had what Lovell described as “undue confidence in the ability of the forts” to withstand such an attack and to prevent an enemy fleet from reaching New Orleans.
As Farragut prepared for his attack, a fleet of Confederate war vessels assembled in the river just north of the forts. These included the ironclad Louisiana, with sixteen guns, the notorious ram Manassas, and an assortment of smaller vessels, including six riverboats from the Confederate river navy known optimistically as the River Defense Fleet. The River Defense Fleet was part of the Confederate Army and functioned under a ra
ther vague charter assigning it to the army commander of the military region in which it was operating at any given time. A few of the other vessels belonged to the Confederate Navy while the remainder were part of the Louisiana State Navy. This integrating of army, navy, and state forces was further confused by the absence of a single naval officer with authority to command all these vessels. The River Defense Fleet was commanded by Captain John Stephenson, a Confederate Army officer who disliked naval officers and refused to obey the orders of the senior Confederate naval officer, Commander John K. Mitchell. Although the little fleet boasted almost forty guns, it offered the opportunity for little resistance to the Union warships. This was partly because it lacked unified command, and partly because most of the vessels were small wooden craft, and their crews were not well trained. The only exception was the Louisiana, but she was hampered by faulty engines since her construction had been completed. Unable to move under her own power, she had to be towed downriver from New Orleans and moored about a half mile north of Fort St. Philip.
Also on the river, above the forts, were a large number of fire rafts anchored to the riverbanks. These rafts were loaded with combustible material, usually dry wood covered with tar. The rebel plan was to release these fire boats into the river with their cargos burning, and allow the current to maneuver them among the Union ships, causing not only damage to the ships they were lucky enough to strike, but panic among the sailors on all the Union ships. It was hoped that this would result in the vessels being imprisoned in their own lines and those of the ships near them.
One man missing from the defense of New Orleans, and who might have made a difference in the outcome, was Commodore George Nichols Hollins. The sixty-three-year-old former U.S. naval officer had been responsible for defeating the Union blockade of the Mississippi River in October 1861, and, since December of that year, had been in command of Confederate naval forces in the upper Mississippi.
Hollins’s fame and high regard among New Orleans’s citizens and leaders was a result of a daring exploit that had driven away Union ships blockading the passes at the mouth of the Mississippi. Taking command of an odd assortment of mostly riverboats, he had sailed downriver from the city and, on October 12, 1861, had attacked the Union fleet stationed there. The center point of his fleet was one of the most unusual vessels to ever take part in naval war, the ram Manassas. She was originally a steam-powered seagoing tug built in Medford, Massachusetts, and known as the Enoch Train. Converted for war duty, her hull had been covered with iron plate one and one-half inches thick. Everything above the waterline had been stripped away, and she was covered with more plate. Her new shape resembled a huge cigar, which her builders believed would help deflect enemy shells. Less than three feet of the ram’s rounded hull was above water, making her difficult to see. The Manassas was 143 feet long, drew only eleven feet, weighed 387 tons, and carried a crew of thirty-three. Except for the two smokestacks poking out of her center, the vessel’s appearance, with the rounded top floating only slightly above the water, was of a huge turtle. Armed with only a single thirty-two-pounder that was hidden beneath a trapdoor, her primary weapon was a twenty-foot-long, pole-like ram sticking straight out of her bow.
She had been owned by a group of businessmen who intended to use her as a privateer, and the ram’s conversion had been nearly completed when Hollins and a party of Confederate sailors took her at gunpoint from her civilian crew. Such a choice weapon, Hollins beleived, did not belong in the hands of civilians. He could put her to better use fighting the war.
In the predawn hours of October 12, the Manassas had driven her ram into the steam sloop Richmond, causing little actual damage but so much confusion among the Union ships on the station that they had all gotten under way and fled their blockading post.
Now, six months later, as Farragut’s squadron prepared to steam upriver, Hollins and his fleet were far afield at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, despite efforts by New Orleans and Louisiana officials to get the Confederate government in Richmond to send him south. When Hollins learned of the Union fleet’s presence below New Orleans, he asked the Confederate Navy Department for permission to return to New Orleans. Not waiting for a reply to his request, Hollins sped downriver, where he thought he could do the most good for the Confederate cause. Major General Lovell then wired the Confederate secretary of war, Brigadier General George W. Randolph, requesting Randolph to ask Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory to allow Hollins to remain at New Orleans. He also asked that Hollins be given command over all naval forces assembled for the coming battle. Mallory was livid when he discovered the commodore had steamed south before waiting for his reply. He ordered Hollins to leave immediately for Richmond, where he was to serve on a board reviewing midshipmen for possible promotion. Hollins remained ensnared in Richmond’s bureaucracy and out of action during the rest of the war. It was a costly loss of an energetic and resourceful officer for the Confederate Navy. Richmond officials remained unconvinced that Farragut’s squadron could pass the forts, and were comfortable in their opinion that New Orleans, so vital a city to the South’s existence, was in no danger. Hollins, a potentially important figure in the defense of New Orleans, was removed from the scene and the coming battle at the very moment when he might have made a difference.
Meanwhile, nothing had been done about creating a unified command for the defense of New Orleans. The defense organizations of New Orleans and the river forts remained in a chaotic state as they waited for the arrival of the enemy fleet they knew was gathering above the mouth of the river. They didn’t have long to wait.
Downriver, Flag Officer Farragut assembled his squadron and prepared for battle. The sides of the Union ships were covered with chains suspended a few feet above the waterline and extending to several feet below, to serve as armor against enemy shells. Engine rooms were heaped with sacks of sand to protect the engines, and devices were rigged for the lowering of wounded men down hatchways to the decks below, where the surgeons worked. Netting was rigged above the main decks to protect crews from falling sections of mast. All rigging not required for the coming battle was removed from every ship and stowed at Pilot Town. When Farragut gave the order to steam upriver, the Union fleet was stripped for action.
The fleet was separated into three divisions, exclusive of the mortar boats. The first, commanded by Captain Theodorus Bailey, captain of the Colorado, which had been left at Ship Island, consisted of eight vessels. These were the sloop Pensacola, the side-wheeler Mississippi, the corvettes Oneida and Varuna, and four gunboats, Wissahickon, Kineo, Katahdin, and Cayuga. The last served as his flagship. The second division, commanded by Farragut himself, contained three sloops, Hartford, Brooklyn, and Richmond. The third division, under Fleet Captain Henry H. Bell, was comprised of the corvette Iroquois and five gunboats, Scotia, Kennebec, Pinola, Itasca, and Winona. Following the third division were the gunboats of Porter’s mortar fleet and the sailing sloop Portsmouth.
Farragut instructed Bailey to attempt to get as many of his first-division gunboats past the forts as quickly as possible and to maneuver them into position to support a troop landing above the forts, should that become feasible.
On April 14, 1862, the Union squadron began moving up the river. Several of the larger ships, struggling against the powerful and constant flow of the Mississippi, had to be towed.
On April 15, Porter had three of his mortar schooners towed up the river to a point about 300 yards south of Fort Jackson, to test the range of their guns. During the next hour, they fired a series of mortar shells into the fort until Porter was satisfied that he had selected the most advantageous position for the boats. Return fire from the fort was both slight and ineffectual.
The following day the entire mortar-boat fleet was moved into place just south of the river obstruction, and out of range of the forts’ guns. Weeks earlier, both banks had been infested with rebel snipers, but now that danger had abated. A heavy rain had raised the river level high enough to force the snipe
rs to withdraw farther inland.
A few minutes before ten on the morning of April 18, Good Friday, the mortar boats, locked securely along the west bank of the river, opened fire. They were hidden from view of both forts by a dense stand of large trees. To camouflage them further, tree branches had been tied to their masts. Their primary target was Fort Jackson, at which they fired most of their mortars, lobbing an occasional shell into Fort St. Philip. Throughout the day, the mortar boats fired into the fort, the shells making a spectacular sight as they arced across the sky. Each boat sent a mortar shell racing toward the target at the rate of about one shell every ten minutes. Some exploded prematurely, high above the fort, the result of poor fuses. Others waited until they plunged into the thick mud to explode, causing a muffled roar and little else. But most did find their target and exploded at the appropriate time.
The mortar boats had been provided with extremely precise charts of the forts and surrounding territory, which helps explain their high degree of accuracy - a precision achieved by men who, because of their own invisibility, could not see their target. The charts had been prepared by members of the Coast Survey, who, under heavy fire from the forts and the snipers along the banks, had worked for days in the river, charting every aspect of the locale.
While the mortar boats remained hidden from view of the fort’s gunners, several lucky shots from Fort Jackson found their mark but did little damage to the fragile mortar boats. Several gunboats requested and obtained Farragut’s permission to steam upriver in order to draw enemy fire away from the mortar boats. This proved to be a successful tactic, providing additional safety for the mortar crews.
As mortar shells continued to rain down on them, the men in the fort struggled to fight back. Fortunately for the garrison, the damage was minimal despite the earth-shaking roar of the mortars. Wooden structures inside Fort Jackson, especially the barracks, were set ablaze by shells, and one or two guns were driven off their mounts, but that was the extent of the damage. The guns were remounted, and the fires either extinguished or allowed to burn out if they did not threaten the magazine. Unfortunately, most of the clothing and bedding belonging to the garrison was destroyed. This, coupled with the water constantly seeping into the fort from the risen river, made life inside Fort Jackson difficult.