Civil War Sailors Under Fire in Vietnam

ECW welcomes back guest author Aaron Stoyack.

On a sweltering summer day in the first year of the war, a U.S. Navy ship patrolled the coastal waters of Vietnam. Searching for surviving countrymen, the vessel drifted past an entrenched artillery battery that opened fire upon the lone gunboat. Its crew responded with surgical shot placement, the first round erupting in an airburst directly over the hostile position with evident effect as the opposing cannonade ceased. Nevertheless, the Americans continued their intermittent fire for half an hour in an escapade that helped relieve growing tensions onboard, which stemmed from questioning their very involvement in the conflict.^[1] In a vacuum, most readers would place the above passage as an occurrence of the Vietnam War. Yet this exchange dates over one hundred years prior to another conflict that divided a nation, its soldiers, and foreign actors.

USS Saginaw was the first American naval ship built on the Pacific coast, a realization of a nationalistic ideal. With an inland empire stretching from sea to shining sea, the United States recognized the need for a squadron to guard the West Coast and trans-Pacific trade. Previous ships built in the eastern states traveled along South America’s Cape Horn to reach the west. Constructed in 1859, Saginaw’s design was more an experiment in economics and infrastructure than an attempt to make a formidable warship. Navy Department officials ordered Saginaw’s construction at the new Mare Island Navy Yard as a trial of shipbuilding far removed from existing maritime facilities.^[2]

Saginaw was 155 feet long and lightly armed with a 32-pounder pivot gun and two 24-pounder rifles. The side-wheel steamer joined the East India Squadron in May 1860 to guard American mercantile interests in the Far East.^[3]

China harbored vast untapped markets and luxury goods, with Westerners eager to trade with the alluring nation. The First Opium War (1839-1842) ended with the Treaty of Nanking, wherein Britain compelled China to open additional ports to Western trade and turn Hong Kong over to British rule. The rush to acquire valuable goods brought traders from nearly every seafaring country, making the waters off the Chinese coast a frequent target of pirates.^[4]

France found itself falling behind in the late 1850s as other Western nations established colonial holdings in Southeast Asia. Eager to gain a foothold in oceangoing trade and a land route to China, the French entered into a war of conquest in 1858 in what was then Cochin China, now Vietnam.^[5] In 1861, they fought alongside Spanish forces as a protest to the murder of European missionaries, creating a hair-trigger mentality for the Vietnamese defenders.^[6]

Saginaw arrived on June 30, 1861, off the coast of Qui Nohn, under orders to locate survivors of a merchant vessel that sank the year prior. A fort overlooked the small fishing village, and the vessel steamed toward the harbor with a white flag beside the national colors. Wary of hostilities, the crew was not outright fearful due to the French presence, although a strong Vietnamese resistance movement pervaded.

When Saginaw anchored inside Cochin territorial waters, where the United States did not have neutrality agreements, the fort saw cause to engage. Firing thrice, all its shots were near misses, and before getting off a fourth, Saginaw weighed anchor and began its bombardment. After the last shot fell silent, Cmdr. James F. Schenck elected not to land with his small crew, instead charting course for Hong Kong.^[7]

Hearing of the concurrent calamity engulfing their homeland, many of the crew grumbled over their lack of freedom to return home, as well as conditions onboard. Many pondered their loyalties, yet experiences in combat and the oath of enlistment seemed to bind the begrudging crew to the cause.^[8]

Little came of the incident, with no response from Vietnamese forces or their Chinese allies, and no mention of it in the Official Records. In November, Schenck reported visiting six Chinese and two Japanese ports after the engagement, finding “at all the different ports I found the flag of the United States was treated with that respect and deference it has always commanded.”^[9] Wear on the ship compelled its return to Mare Island for repairs in mid-1862.^[10] Despite the respite, Saginaw became well-traveled throughout the war. It returned to the South China Sea before its homecoming to San Francisco, patrolling the west coast of the U.S., Mexico, and Canada to combat Confederate privateers.^[11]

The brief skirmish left little impression upon the historical record and those involved. In 1871, Saginaw crashed onto Kure Atoll on its way from Midway to San Francisco. Five men set off in a small gig to find help, but only one, Coxswain William Halford, survived to reach Kauai, over 1,400 miles away. The remainder of the crew were rescued, and Halford received the Medal of Honor for his efforts.^[xii] Saginaw received its baptism in combat while searching for a shipwrecked crew and ended its service with a wreck of its own. The West Coast construction of this underwhelming warship, and its skirmish in Southeast Asia, reflected the United States’ burgeoning ability to project power across the globe.

Aaron Stoyack is a public historian, museum specialist and writer employed as a Park Ranger at Pamplin Historical Park. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from West Chester University with a B.A. in History and a Minor in Museum Studies. Aaron has served on local commissions and presented at regional and national public history and education conferences. He enjoys researching and interpreting all aspects of history, from local to global in scale.

Endnotes:

[1] Hans Konrad Van Tilburg, A Civil War Gunboat in Pacific Waters: Life on Board USS Saginaw Book (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010), 63-65.

[2] Ibid, 9-18.

[3] James L. Mooney, Saginaw I (Side-wheel Steamer) in Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. (Washington: Naval History Division. 1959). Accessed through https://www.navsource.org/archives/09/86/86476.htm

[4] Ben Wilson, Heyday: The 1850s and the Dawn of the Global Age. (New York: Basic Books, 2016), 242-246.

[5] Han Derks, History of the Opium Problem: An Assault on the East, ca. 1600-1950. (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 397-400. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctv4cbhdf.28.

[6] “H-057-3: The Saga of the Saginaw Gig.” Naval History and Heritage Command, 2021. https://www.history.navy.mil/about-us/leadership/director/directors-corner/h-grams/h-gram-057/h-057-3.html.

[7] Commander Schenck’s younger brother was General Robert C. Schenck. Van Tilburg, 63-65

[8] Ibid

[9] Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series 1, Vol. 1, 218.

[10] Mooney.

[11] ORN, Series 1, Vol. 2, 141, 165.

[12] “H-057-3: The Saga of the Saginaw Gig.”