Showing results for "Mississippi River Squadron"
Attrition Rates of City-Class Ironclads
Perhaps nothing is more identifiable with the Mississippi River valley’s naval campaigns as the city-class ironclads. With February 2022 marking the 160th anniversary of the Fort Henry/Fort Donelson campaign, where these ironclads were first extensively used, it is worth collectively examining their overall performance and effectiveness. These seven warships, with their sloped casemates, protected paddle […]
Read more...The Submarine in the Little Free Library
Book Review: The Sea Hunters: True Adventures with Famous Shipwrecks By Clive Cussler The Sea Hunters: True Adventures with Famous Shipwrecks Pocket Star Books, 1996 $9.99 paperback I do not profess to know much about Civil War water warfare, blue or brown. Nevertheless, I know a good thing when I find it, and Clive Cussler’s The […]
Read more...Under Fire: First Ironclad Shots at the Head of Passes
In May 1861, New Orleans river captain John Stevenson travelled to Montgomery, Alabama, proposing to “adapt some of our heavy and powerful tow-boats on the Mississippi” by armoring them and “preparing their bow” with a ram “capable of sinking by collision” United States blockaders.[i] Confederate leaders dismissed the proposal, and Stevenson resolved to materialize his […]
Read more...Fallen Leaders: Admiral Andrew H. Foote – Another Farragut?
February 6, 1862, midday: Advance cavalry elements of Brig. Gen. U. S. Grant’s 17,000-man force broke from the woods fronting the Confederate fort they intended to attack and were startled to observe the Stars and Stripes flying from the flagpole. Several Union ironclads and gunboats lay quietly in the Tennessee River below the ramparts. Big […]
Read more...Neil P. Chatelain
Neil P. Chatelain is assistant professor of history at Lone Star College-North Harris who specializes in researching naval activity of the U.S. Civil War Having spent nine years in the US Navy, Neil deployed around the world, earning a surface warfare officer designation. He has also earned a MA in history from the University of […]
Read more...“You can do a great deal in eight days”: Ulysses S. Grant’s Forgotten Turning Point (part two)
Part two of two With an escort of twenty cavalrymen, Ulysses S. Grant rode on the evening of May 3, 1863, into the newly captured town Grand Gulf, Mississippi. He passed the now-abandoned Confederate forts, Cobun and Wade, and made his way to the river where four ironclads—Carondelet, Louisville, Mound City, and Tuscumbia—hunkered on the […]
Read more...“Praise the Lord and Admiral Porter”: Running the Vicksburg Batteries
“We still live,” wrote Lieutenant Elias Smith of the USS Lafayette. “The whole gunboat fleet passed the Vicksburg batteries on Thursday night [April 16, 1863], without receiving material damage. All praise to the Lord and Admiral Porter.” As far as he knew, no Union lives had been lost; about a dozen were wounded, two seriously […]
Read more...A Most Curious Battle: Memphis, June 6, 1862
In the early morning hours, hundreds of Memphis citizens assembled high on the bluffs to observe the battle. But there were no surging ranks of blue and gray in the valley below, just the Big Muddy rolling broad and inexorable toward the sea. This would be a purely naval affair in the heart of the […]
Read more...September-October 2019 Presentations
September: 4th: Bert Dunkerly, Battle of Eutaw Spring, Dr. George Mosse SAR (SC) 4th: Chris Mackowski, “Grant’s Last Battle,” Genessee Community College, Batavia, NY 9th-11th: Chris Kolakowski, “The Kentucky Campaign,” East Tennessee Civil War Round Tables in Knoxville, Kingsport, and Morristown
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