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Overview
Blue&Gray at Sea looks at the naval warriors who took the Civil War out to sea, featuring accounts of their actions in their own words.
Excerpted memoirs included:
- Incidents and Anecdotes of the Cival War by Admiral Porter, including sections dealing with the political schism of the navy at the war's outbreak, as well as accounts of various naval campaigns around the gulf.
- Recollections of a Rebel Reefer by James Morris Morgan , the memoir of a midshipman's coming of age in the Confederate navy including his part in the retreat further south of CSA President Jefferson Davis and his family.
- Autobiography of George Dewey, Admiral of the Navy by Admiral George Dewey who, while a wet-behind-the-ears lieutenant, served under the legendary naval master and Lincoln's Admiral David Farragut.
- Two years on the Alabama by Arthur Sinclair
- CSS Shenandoah: The Memoirs of LT. Commanding James I. Waddell
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780765391759 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Tor Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 03/01/2016 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 448 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Brian M. Thomsen is the editor of Shadows of Blue and Gray-the Civil War Writings of Ambrose Pierce, Alternate Gettysburgs, The American Fantasy Tradition, and The Man in the Arena: Selected Writings of Theodore Roosevelt. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Read an Excerpt
Blue & Gray at Sea
Naval Memoirs of the Civil War
By Brian M. Thomsen
Tom Doherty Associates
Copyright © 2003 Brian M. ThomsenAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7653-9175-9
CHAPTER 1
Excerpt from The Autobiography of George Dewey, Admiral of the Navy
BY ADMIRAL GEORGE DEWEY
Chapter IV.
BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR.
After the Napoleonic wars an exhausted world knew a long period of peace, which, until the beginning of the Civil War, had been broken only by our war with Mexico in 1846, the Crimean War in 1854, and the Franco-Austrian War in 1859. This period had seen the development of steam. It had ushered in the great age of inventive genius and industrial organization in which we now live.
As Mexico had no navy our war with her had given us no naval experience of value except that of the mobility of the steam-vessels on a blockade and in co-operation with the landing of troops. In place of sails, dependent on the variability of the winds, had come a motive power equally dependable in a ten-knot breeze or a calm. Our older officers had to admit that for expeditiousness in carrying messages, in getting in and out of harbors and landing troops, steam did have the advantage over sail, and that it was a valuable auxiliary, but they still maintained that the talk about iron-clads as fighting-ships belonged to the realm of theorists and dreamers.
Later came the action at Sinope in the Crimea, of which I have already spoken, when the progressives saw their prophecies fulfilled by the success of the French floating batteries which led to the construction of the first ironclads in Europe. The naval lessons of the Franco-Austrian War were as insignificant as those of the Mexican; but at the decisive land battle of Solferino rifles in place of smooth-bore cannon were used for the first time in battle. This innovation, as vital in arms as that of iron ship-building, was the first step toward the enormous range of modern guns. It remained for the Civil War to test ironclads in action, as well as the rifled gun, and also the ram. In the case of the ram the innovation was only the renewal of a form of attack of the days of the Roman galleys when the mobility of the vessel had been dependent upon the sweat of slaves. But the ram was soon to become again obsolete. It is inconceivable that with the long-range guns of later days opposing ships can ever survive long enough to come to close quarters, except when one or the other has already surrendered.
There was a saying in the sixties that the men of 1840 in our navy would have been more at home in the ships of Drake's fleet or in those of Spain's Invincible Armada than in the ironclads of the Civil War; and I think that it is also safe to say that the men brought up to service in such a vessel as the Mississippi, in which I saw my first service in the Civil War, would be more at home in the Armada than in a ship of the Dreadnought class. The inauguration of steam made naval science one of continual change and development, which it still remains.
It was borne home to the students of Annapolis in my day, as I have already indicated, that the officers of the navy, in its senior grades, should be men of progressive minds and of energetic and rapid action. Otherwise they would be quite unequal to the prompt adaptation of everything which the progress of science and industry offered for their use. At the outbreak of the Civil War our navy had no staff, and nothing like an adequate organization.
Mr. Lincoln had chosen Mr. Gideon Welles as his secretary of the navy. We are familiar with Mr. Welles's character through his very voluminous diary, which has lately been published. It has always been amazing to me how Mr. Welles was able to do so much writing and conduct the Navy Department in the midst of a great war.
He was certainly a man of prodigious industry. His lack of technical knowledge would have been a great handicap, if it had not been for the selection of an assistant secretary of the navy whose training made him an excellent substitute for a chief of staff. Gustavus V. Fox had served in the navy, but had resigned and become a most successful man of business. We cannot overestimate the value of his intelligent service to the country on meagre pay in sacrifice of private interests, for which he received hardly his fair due of honor. To him we owe the conception of the New Orleans campaign and, in part, the building of the Monitor, which took the mastery of Hampton Roads away from the Merrimac.
Upon taking up the reins of office he found a naval personnel with no retiring age limit; and a state of demoralization. Under President Buchanan, the most ordinary preparations had been neglected in face of an inevitable conflict. Our ships were scattered over the seas. Some were on the coast of Africa, some in the Far East, and some in South American waters. The excuse for this was the prevailing naval custom of the time which made the navy a disseminated force to protect our citizens in case of trouble in distant lands, and also to protect our foreign commerce, which then was wide-spread and now, unfortunately, has become almost obsolete. Now the battle-ship fleets of all nations are concentrated in home waters, and the cable keeps governments in touch with any danger-spots, which may be reached promptly with fast cruisers.
At the head of the officers' list at the beginning of 1861, were seventy-eight captains. A few of them, including Farragut, then quite unknown to the public, were men of energy who were in touch with the tendency of their time. But the great majority were unfitted for active service afloat. According to the existing law there was no supplanting them with younger men. The commanders, who were next in rank to the captains, were themselves fifty-eight or sixty years of age. Upper lieutenants were usually past forty, some being as old as fifty. David D. Porter, who was later to become an admiral, was only a lieutenant. Thornton, the executive officer of the Hartford, the flag-ship of the East India Squadron at that time, later to become the famous flag-ship of Farragut in the Gulf, had been in the service thirty-four years.
Such a system was killing to ambition and enterprise. It made mere routine men to face a crisis in which energy and initiative were needed. No subordinate was expected to undertake any responsibility on his own account. So used were the junior officers — these "boys" of forty and fifty to the old captains — to being subordinate machines that their one care was to escape official censure by any action on their own account. Promotion had become so clogged that, as the secretary of the navy had already put it in 1855, the system was "neither more nor less than elevating the incompetent and then ordering the unpromoted competent to do their work."
If the men of forty and fifty were boys to those fine old veterans of the War of 1812, who had been rendered by age incapable of active command, then we young men out of Annapolis ranked as children. The first requirement, as Mr. Fox so well knew, was a complete and drastic reorganization of personnel, but not until December, 1861, was a law passed retiring all officers at the age of sixty-two, or after forty-five years of service. By this law, disregarding seniority, the President might put any captain or commander he chose in charge of a squadron with the rank of flag-officer.
The next year the grades of rear-admiral and commodore were established and the President had his authority for selection of the fit further strengthened. In this way the younger men, by virtue of their progressive training and ideas and the inevitable initiative, which youth develops in time of war, came to accept readily responsibilities which would have frightened men of fifty a few years previously. With many new ships going into commission, we were very short-handed, which accounts for the fact that I was to become executive of the Mississippi at the age of twenty-four.
Aside from the loss in numbers by retirement at the very beginning of the struggle, there was the loss due to the resignations of the officers who saw fit to follow the flags of their States and enter the Confederate service. One can only say that the latter responded to the call of duty in a period when the constitutional right to secession was sincerely held; and that many brilliant men, who must have risen to high place had they remained loyal, knew defeat and the deprivation of honor and pleasure of service in their profession in after years. They took the risk and they lost.
But not all Southern officers held the secession view. Loyalty was stronger relatively in the navy than in the army, for the reason that the naval officer felt an affection for the flag born of the sentiment of our splendid record in the War of 1812, and a realization born of his foreign cruises, that our strength before the other nations of the world, who selfishly wished to see our growing power divided, was in unity. Besides, naval life separates one from State and political associations.
It was inevitable, however, that Southern officers should feel that they would be held under suspicion by the National Government at a period when feeling ran so high. This was a contributing factor in the decision of many who hesitated long before they went over to the Confederacy. Flag-Officer Stribling, commander of the East India Squadron, was relieved simply because he was a South Carolina man, though he did not enter the service of the Confederacy after he returned home. Farragut, born in Tennessee, was one of the Southern officers who not only remained loyal, but of whose loyalty from the first there was never any question by the authorities. In his outright fashion in speaking to his Southern comrades, he left no doubt of his position, and he also warned them that they were going to have a "devil of a time" of it before they were through with their secession enterprise. It is only fair to add that they also gave us a "devil of a time."
Quite different factors entered into the war afloat and the war on shore. The South had soldiers, and it could find rifles for them. But it had few ships, and it lacked the resources with which to build more. Such a thing as offensive tactics at sea, except by the commerce-destroyers of the Alabama class, and in its harbors, except by river iron-clads, was out of the question. The offensive must be entirely on our side; the defensive was the enemy's, and splendidly and desperately he conducted it.
Our first duty was the blockade of all that immense coast-line from Hampton Roads southward to Key West and westward to the boundaries of Mexico. As the South was not a manufacturing country, it was dependent for funds on the export of cotton and on Europe for manufactured material. We had to close its ports and we had to prevent the running of the blockade wherever possible. Moreover, a blockade which was not effective did not hold in international law. Never before had any navy, and never since has any navy, attempted anything like such an immense task. That of the Japanese off Port Arthur was comparatively insignificant in the extent of coast-line which had to be guarded. At the close of the war the United States, in carrying on the war and blockade, had six hundred ships in commission.
In the strategy of the campaign on land the navy played an important offensive part which is unique in naval history. President Lincoln wished the Mississippi to flow "unvexed" to the sea. Once the great river was in the possession of the federal Government, we had cut the Confederacy in two and separated its armies from the rich sources of supplies to the westward. In order to accomplish this feat, which was not finished until Vicksburg and Port Hudson were taken, a number of gunboats built for the purpose were to work their way down the river, while we of the main fighting force of the Gulf Squadron were to begin our part in working up the river, running Forts Jackson and St. Philip and laying New Orleans under our guns. After my pleasant midshipman cruise, seeing the sights of the Mediterranean, I was to witness a style of warfare as picturesque as it was hazardous and exacting in its hardships.
Cruising in the open sea on the lookout for an enemy whom you are to meet in a decisive battle is simple, indeed, compared to the experience that was to try our nerves on the Mississippi. Here was a sufficient outlet for the abundant spirits of any young lieutenant or midshipman. It was war for us for four years, a war which brought us so frequently under fire, and required such constant vigilance, that war appeared to be almost a normal state of affairs to us.
The leaders on the other side were men bred to the same traditions as we were. Officers fought officers with whom they had gone to school, and with whom they had served and had messed. The recollection of old comradeship, while softening the amenities of a civil conflict, also touched us the more deeply with the sense of its horrors and waste, and brought to its conduct something of the spirit of professional rivalry. Unlike the officers of volunteer infantry who marched South to meet strangers against whom a strong sectional feeling had been aroused, we knew our adversaries well. We were very fond of them personally. To us they had neither horns nor tails. We felt that they were fine fellows who were in the wrong, and we knew that they entertained the same feeling toward us. We did not mean that they should beat us. They did not mean that we should beat them. This accounted for the fearful stubbornness with which we fought; and future generations, who may wish that all the energy spent had not been against brothers but in a common cause against a foreign foe, can at least rejoice in the heritage of the skill and courage displayed in a struggle which has no equal in magnitude or determination, unless in the Napoleonic wars.
On May 10, 1861, I reported for duty on board the old side-wheeler Mississippi (known as a steam-frigate), on which I served until she was set on fire by the batteries of Port Hudson in March, 1863, when she perished on the river for which she was christened. It was the wonder of her funnels, spouting smoke to make her wheels move, and the sight of her guns that so impressed the Japanese, when Commodore Perry appeared off Tokio with her as his flag-ship, that they concluded the treaty which opened up Japan to Western progress. From her, Mississippi Bay, in the neighborhood of Yokohama, takes its name.
She was now assigned to the blockade of the Gulf, and her captain was T. O. Selfridge, who was in command of a steam man-of-war for the first time. As yet the blockade was hardly maintained in a rigid fashion. The old captains were so fearful of the loss of their ships that they were inclined to take few risks. A quasi-engagement near the mouths of the Mississippi took place, which was hardly more gratifying to the navy than Bull Run was to the army. The steam sloop Richmond, two sailing sloops, and a small side-wheel steamer, having entered the river, were surprised at anchor at the head of the passage just before daybreak by a ram, later known as the Manassas, which had been originally a Boston tug-boat. She rammed the Richmond and drove the Federal ships into retreat. This incident, known as "Pope's Run," from the name of the Federal commander, was pretty exasperating to the pride of service of the more energetic-minded officers of the navy.
The Mississippi saw only the dreary monotony of blockading without any fighting until Flag-Officer David G. Farragut arrived off Ship Island in February, 1862, to begin the campaign which was to lay New Orleans under our guns. From the day that he took command the atmosphere in the neighborhood of Ship Island, which was our important naval base for the Gulf, seemed to be surcharged with his energy. When Mr. Fox had proposed the attack on New Orleans, the most wealthy and populous city of the Confederacy, Mr. Lincoln had said: "Go ahead, but avoid a disaster"; by which he meant, no doubt, that in case of failure he did not want to see a loss which would be a serious blow to Northern prestige.
After a canvass of all the captains in the navy, Farragut, on the recommendation of Mr. Fox and of Porter, had been chosen for this enterprise, which was to make his reputation. Though there is truth in the saying, "Young men for war, and old men for counsel," it does not always hold. Farragut was not one of the captains whose initiative had been weakened by age. The only criticism ever offered of him was that possibly he had too much of it. But that proved a very winning fault for him. He was sixty; which I, at least, ought not to consider too old, as I myself was sixty, or within two years of statutory retiring age, at the outbreak of the Spanish War.
In the late seventies, when there seemed no hope of our ever having a modern navy, and many officers were talking of voluntary retirement, I always answered:
"Not until the law makes me. While you are on the active list there is a chance for action."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Blue & Gray at Sea by Brian M. Thomsen. Copyright © 2003 Brian M. Thomsen. Excerpted by permission of Tom Doherty Associates.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Editor's Note,
Memoirs,
"The Beginning of the Civil War to the Battle of Port Hudson" from The Autobiography of George Dewey, Admiral of the Navy by Admiral George Dewey (retired),
"Incidents from the Life of a Blockade Runner" from Recollections of a Rebel Reefer by James Morris Morgan,
"The Secession of South Carolina" and "The Siege of Vicksburg" from Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War by Admiral David Dixon Porter,
"The Campaign in the Gulf of Mexico and Southward" from Two Years on the Alabama by Arthur Sinclair,
"The Port Hudson Campaign" from Forty-five Years Under the Flag by Winfield Scott Schley,
Journals, Logs, Letters, Reports, and Articles,
"Documents of CSS Shenandoah" by James Waddell,
Journal Excerpts and Letters from The Life of David Glasgow Farragut by Loyall Farragut,
The Monitor,
"Captain Eggleston's Narrative of the Battle of the Merrimac" by John R. Eggleston,
"Notes on the Monitor-Merrimac Fight" by Dinwiddie B. Phillips, surgeon of the Merrimac,
"In the Monitor Turret" by Commander S. D. Greene,
The Hunley,
"Official Documents Relating to the Sinking of the USS Housatonic by the CSS Hunley",
Published Source Materials,
Also Edited by Brian M. Thomsen,
About the Editor,
Copyright,