The US Civil War in the Gulf is defined by the Northern strategy of the blockade of Southern ports and the daring attempts by Confederate vessels to run this blockade.
Here, Richard Bluttal looks at this strategy and the maritime disasters during the war.
A 19th century print showing the sinking of USS Hatteras by CSS Alabama, off Galveston, Texas in January 1863.
USS Hatteras
The remains of the Union ironclad Tecumseh, whose sinking by a Confederate mine prompted Farragut’s famous order "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" are well known off Fort Morgan, Alabama. Only one U.S. warship, however, was sunk at sea in the Gulf. This important shipwreck, the USS Hatteras, has been the subject of repeated investigations by BOEM, the Texas Historical Commission, and Texas A&M University at Galveston.
In less than a year, the Hatteras captured seven Confederate blockade runners off Vermilion Bay, Louisiana. Early in 1863, she was ordered to join the squadron under Rear Admiral David Farragut, who was attempting to retake the key Texas port of Galveston, Texas. As the blockading squadron lay off the coast on the afternoon of January 11, 1863, a set of sails was sighted just over the horizon and the Hatteras was ordered to give pursuit. She chased the intruder for four hours, closer and closer into shore, and farther and farther from her supporting fleet. Finally, as dusk was falling, the Hatteras came within hailing distance of the square-rigged, black-hulled vessel. Commander Homer C. Blake demanded to know the identity of the ship. "Her Britannic Majesty’s Ship Vixen," came the reply. Blake ordered one of Hatteras’ boats launched to inspect the "Britisher." Almost as soon as the boat was piped away, a new reply came from the mystery ship, "We are the CSS Alabama!" A broadside from the Alabama’s guns punctuated the reply. Within 13 minutes, the Hatteras, sinking rapidly, surrendered. The Hatteras today rests in 58 feet of water about 20 miles off Galveston. Her 210-foot long iron hull is completely buried under about three feet of sand. Only the remains of her 500-horsepower walking beam steam engine and her two iron paddle wheels remain exposed above the sea floor.
USS Monitor
During the Civil War, the idea of the USS Monitor was born amidst a nation in turmoil. After discovering the Confederate Navy was constructing an impenetrable ironclad in Hampton Roads, Va., President Lincoln called for a naval board to propose construction of an ironclad vessel to lead the Union Navy. John Ericsson, a Swedish-American inventor, introduced a plan, which caught their attention. Complete with a rotating gun turret, low draft, sleek profile and Ericsson's claim as an "Impregnable Battery," the board was convinced to order swift production on what would become the USS Monitor. Construction immediately began at the Continental Ironworks in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, N.Y. Almost 100 days later, on January 30, 1862, the USS Monitor was launched into the East River.
On March 9, 1862, the first time iron met iron ( the ironclad confederate ship CSS Virginia) , the two warships fired upon each other for hours, each side looking for their opponent's weaknesses. Almost four hours into the battle, a shot from the Virginia exploded against the Monitor's pilot house and Captain Worden was temporarily blinded. The Monitor's Executive Officer, Samuel Dana Green, assumed command and ordered the Monitor into shallow water, where the Virginia could not follow, to assess the captain's wounds and damage to the ship. The Virginia's captain, assuming the Monitor was withdrawing from battle, withdrew in supposed victory. When the Monitor returned to resume the engagement and found the Virginia gone, her crew also assumed victory. In reality, the battle was a virtual draw with neither vessel inflicting serious damage to the other. Although the Monitor remained in Hampton Roads throughout the spring and summer of 1862, the two vessels never again met in battle.
Dive 230 feet below the Atlantic Ocean off the North Carolina coast on one of our nation’s most historic shipwrecks, USS Monitor. This Civil War ironclad sank in 1862, and in 1975, it became the first national marine sanctuary – Monitor National Marine Sanctuary. Transformed from a weapon of war to an island of marine life, Monitor continues to serve as habitat for a wealth of marine life. Dive in to see sand tiger sharks, sea turtles, and more!
SS Sultana
A boiler explodes, shattering the silence of the night and throwing the hopeless passengers of the SS Sultana into the Mississippi River. Legally allowed to carry 376 people, the Sultana was carrying over 2,300 passengers, most of whom were Union soldiers recently released from Confederate prisons. The estimated death toll increases steadily to 1,700 or 1,800 in the worst maritime disaster in American history.
The Sultana was a privately owned sidewheel steamboat built in Cincinnati, Ohio, in February 1863. A relatively large boat, the Sultana stood three decks tall and measured 260 feet long and approximately 70 feet wide – a little shorter than a football field and about half as wide. Built for the New Orleans cotton trade, the Sultana spent her first two years carrying troops and supplies up and down the Mississippi River for the Union Army, until Vicksburg, MS, was captured in July 1863. She then carried cotton, manufactured goods and civilian passengers between New Orleans and her home port of St. Louis, MO.
On April 23, 1865, the Sultana limped back into Vicksburg from downriver. She had sprung a leak in one of her four boilers, and it needed to be repaired. While the work was being done to fix the boiler, the recently released soldiers began showing up. Instead of 1,000 soldiers, as Captain Hatch had suggested, the Sultana got almost 2,000 men. They were crowded together in every nook and cranny of the steamboat, as Captains Mason and Hatch knew more men meant more money. Very late in the evening of April 24, 1865, the Sultana finally backed away from the Vicksburg wharf and started upriver on her final journey. She carried on board a total of 2,137 people; 1,960 ex-prisoners, 22 guards, 85 crew members, and 70 paying passengers.
On April 27, after unloading the sugar and taking on a new load of coal, the Sultana finally started on the last leg of the journey towards Cairo, Illinois, where the men were to be transferred to trains and taken to Camp Chase, near Columbus, Ohio for mustering out.
Around 2:00 a.m., when the Sultana was about seven miles north of Memphis, three of the four boilers suddenly exploded. The horrendous explosion came from the upper back part of the boilers and ripped upward through the heart of the Sultana. The blast went up at about a 45-degree angle, ripping apart the center of the main cabin, destroying the middle of the texas cabin (the section of a steamboat that includes the crew's quarters), and shearing off the back two-thirds of the pilothouse. The right smokestack fell into the giant hole in the center of the Sultana while the left stack crashed heavily onto the center of the crowded hurricane deck, smashing it down onto the equally crowded second deck underneath. Dozens and dozens of soldiers were crushed to death between the two decks although some were saved by the support of the heavy railings outlining the openings of the main stairway. Many people had been catapulted into the river by the force of the explosion while hundreds more fought to get away from the spreading flames and to find scraps of lumber to keep them afloat in the water. People trapped in the wreckage cried out for assistance as men women, and children who were lucky enough jumped into the icy cold river.
In the aftermath, it was discovered that at least 1800 soldiers and civilians had died, making it the worst maritime disaster in American history. (The Titanic sinking in 1912 by comparison resulted in approximately 1500 deaths.) Amidst the competing headlines of the South’s elongated surrender, the assassination of Lincoln and the manhunt for John Wilkes Booth, the Sultana catastrophe received surprisingly little news coverage. A halfhearted investigation would place most of the blame on Capt. Mason, who conveniently was not alive to point the finger at others. A war weary public, eager to put the war and all of its tragedies behind them, soon forgot about the Sultana and its victims.
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