{"id":31620,"date":"2020-01-30T16:30:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-30T16:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/uncategorized\/2020\/01\/30\/the-mississippis-metal-monsters\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T19:17:36","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T19:17:36","slug":"the-mississippis-metal-monsters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/news\/your-navy\/2020\/01\/30\/the-mississippis-metal-monsters\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mississippi\u2019s metal monsters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

During the American Civil War, huge metal monsters roamed the Mississippi River.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Called ironclads, these boats were about 50 yards long, carried 75 tons of armor on their hulls and decks, sported up to 13 guns, and had crews numbering up to 250 men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The seven city-class ironclads<\/a>, sometimes called the turtles, were the most recognizable boats in the fleet, but northern laborers also converted a few existing steamboats into armored vessels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Union used this cutting-edge naval technology to attack Confederate forts at places like Tennessee\u2019s Fort Henry<\/a> and Island No. 10<\/a>, and Vicksburg, Mississippi<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But these conventional battles are only one part of the larger story of the Union\u2019s Mississippi River Squadron.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
“Bombardment and Capture of Island Number Ten on the Mississippi River, April 7, 1862,” a Currier & Ives lithograph, circa 1862. It depicts the bombardment of the Confederate fortifications on Island Number Ten by Federal gunboats and mortar boats. Ships seen include (from left to right): Mound City, Louisville, Pittsburg, Carondelet, Flagship Benton, Cincinnati, Saint Louis and Conestoga. Mortar boats are firing from along the river bank. (U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Piecing together fragments<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a Civil War historian<\/a> who has been researching the Union\u2019s river navy for seven years, I have learned that the fleet was important in ways beyond its attacks on southern forts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It protected Union transports and supply boats from Confederate ambushes. In the process, the Union navy waged a nasty war against southerners who supported the insurgents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The evidence for this unconventional war is hidden in the shadows of the archives. Bits and pieces of information are littered throughout the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies<\/a>, materials in the National Archives, collections of sailors\u2019 letters and diaries<\/a>, and post-war accounts<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Piecing together this fragmentary material, I created a database of 559 separate episodes where gunboats attacked a target, southerners shot at a federal boat, or there was a mutual fight. I then worked with my university\u2019s mapping experts<\/a> to analyze the data using computers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the resulting map makes clear, combat between Union gunboats and southerners occurred across the Civil War\u2019s western theater but was also clustered in a few important areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My research also reframes our understanding of the Civil War away from well-known battles to a constant, grinding war that sucked in thousands of civilians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
“Admiral Porter’s Fleet Running the Rebel Blockade of the Mississippi at Vicksburg, April 16th 1863.” (Currier and Ives, now in the collections of the Library of Congress)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Confederates seek loot and supplies<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This irregular guerrilla war was an improvisation that began in earnest in the summer of 1862.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By that point, Union ironclads and speedy rams had squashed the measly Confederate River Defense Fleet<\/a> at Memphis. As northern armies began to march overland toward Vicksburg and elsewhere, they depended on steamboats for supplies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Confederates created mobile ambush squads that were conglomerations of artillery and cavalry and sent them to the shores of the Mississippi River and its tributaries to attack Union supply boats and the ironclad gunboats that protected them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of these ambush groups was a mixture of about 250 men from the Third Maryland Artillery<\/a> and a squadron of Texas cavalry. They had four cannons, including one christened \u201cBlack Bess.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On May 3, 1863, they captured the Minnesota, a steamer carrying $40,000 worth of Union supplies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hungry Confederates swarmed aboard to find \u201cflour, bacon, potatoes, pickles of all sorts<\/a>, sugar, coffee, rice, ginger, syrup, cheese, butter, oranges, lemons, preserves, canned oysters, whiskey, wines, musquito [sic] nets, clothing, stationery, tobacco, etc. etc.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After wolfing down \u201ca luxurious dinner,\u201d a member of the artillery remembered how the rebels shared their extra food with sympathetic civilians in the area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The gunboat Cricket (1863-1865, “Tinclad” # 6), tied up at a Western Rivers city, during the last years of the Civil War, with a barge astern and a boat alongside. Note the decorative star suspended between its smokestacks. (Acting Assistant Surgeon George Holmes Bixby, MD, Chief Medical Officer, steamer Red Rover, now in the collections of U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Union fights back<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Union commanders realized that their ironclads clustered their men into a few boats, so they improvised and created a fleet of tinclads<\/a>, also known as \u201cmosquitoes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These boats were lightly armored, had a crew of about 70 men, carried six to eight light cannons and could go just about anywhere because they had a draft of 30 inches of water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the end of 1862, the Union put 17 tinclads into action and fitted out 74 by the time Robert E. Lee surrendered in 1865.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The crews of the tinclads and the other gunboats waged a deadly game of whack-a-mole along the western rivers. Whenever rebels popped up and attacked a boat, the fleet tried to smite it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This reactive strategy failed because rebels could quickly retreat into the southern countryside, so Adm. David Dixon Porter<\/a> devised a new strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He gave Union commanders the authority to confiscate or destroy civilian property, including food, animals, cotton, buildings and personal property.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Porter intended to starve rebels by depriving the men and their horses of food. He also hoped to inflict enough punishment on civilians that they would withdraw their support from the insurgents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Rear Adm. David Dixon Porter (8 Jun 1813 – – 13 Feb 1891), photographed by Alexander Gardner in 1865. (National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Punishment turns to plunder<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Union sailors were quick to carry out Porter\u2019s orders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, when Confederate-aligned guerrillas near Helena, Arkansas, killed one sailor from the Union river gunboat Cairo<\/a> and nearly captured another, revenge was swift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Union sailor George Yost<\/a>, who was a 14-year-old cabin boy, reported that 40 sailors from the boat landed at a nearby plantation and burned \u201cup all the houses barns and everything combustible near the scene of the assassination.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But such punitive attacks often became plundering sprees. When the ironclad Cincinnati stopped at a plantation on the Mississippi River in March 1863, sailors went ashore and, after chasing away the owner, took 150 chickens, 600 pounds of bacon, a bull, some geese and a couple of guinea hens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to a sailor whose letters are in the Buffalo History Museum<\/a>, they also helped themselves to bed clothes, pictures, crockery, \u201c&c. &c. &c. &c. &c. &c.\u201d \u2013 a clear implication that they took all kinds of personal possessions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This strategy of exhaustion produced indifferent results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Mississippi River Squadron was not able to quash resistance. Many civilians stayed loyal to the Confederacy and supported guerrillas until the war ended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And since the boats only patrolled the water, they could not occupy the land and drive out the rebels. But the river navy provided enough protection to Union supply lines to ensure victory over the Confederate army.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Union\u2019s Mississippi River Squadron didn\u2019t have to win its war; it merely had to prevent the rebels from winning theirs.<\/p>\n\n\n\t