Confederate Rams Attack the Union Fleet

Captains of Mississippi River steamboats, their commanders held to the full the common American opinion that the profession of arms differs from all others in the fact that it requires no previous training.

Continuing Farragut Captures New Orleans,
our selection from Admiral Farragut by Alfred Thayer Mahan published in 1892. The selection is presented in thirteen easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in Farragut Captures New Orleans.

Time: April 25 to May 1, 1862
Place: Mouth of the Mississippi River

The remainder of the force were river steamboats, whose machinery was protected with cotton, and their stems shod with one-inch iron, clamped in place by straps of the same material extending a few feet aft. Thus strengthened, it was hoped that with the sharpness of their bows and the swiftness of the current they could, notwithstanding the exceeding lightness of their structure, penetrate the hulls of the United States ships. Resolutely and vigorously handled, there can be little doubt that they might have sunk one or two of their assailants; but there is no probability that they could under all the circumstances have done more. The obscurity of the night, the swiftness of the stream, and the number of actors in the confusing drama being played between the two banks of the Mississippi, would have introduced into the always delicate fencing of the ram extraordinary difficulties, with which the inexperience of their commanders was in no degree qualified to deal. The generally steady approach, bows on, of the United States ships, presented the smallest target to their thrust and gave to the threatened vessel the utmost facilities for avoiding the collision or converting it into a glancing blow; while, as for rounding-to, to ram squarely on the beam of a ship stemming the current, the assailant, even if he displayed the remarkable nicety of judgment required, was not likely to find the necessary room.

These difficulties received illustration by the career of the Manassas that night. Her commander, Lieutenant Warley, was a former officer of the United States Navy, and he handled her with judgment and the utmost daring. Rushing nearly bows on upon the Pensacola, the thrust was wholly avoided by the quick moving of the latter’s helm, which Warley characterized as beautiful; while the attempt made immediately afterward upon the Mississippi resulted in a merely glancing blow, which took a deep and long shaving out of the enemy’s quarter, but did no serious damage. Not till a much later period of the action did the Manassas find an opportunity to charge squarely upon the beam of the Brooklyn. She did so across the current, striking therefore only with her own speed of six knots. But little shock was felt on board the rammed ship, and no apprehension of damage was experienced; but it was afterward found that the enemy’s stem had entered between two frames and crushed both the outer and inner planking. A few moments earlier the Brooklyn had been thrown across the current by the chances of the night. Had the ram then struck her in the same place, carrying the four knots additional velocity of the current, it is entirely possible that the mortification of the Confederate defeat would have derived some consolation from the sinking of one of Farragut’s best ships. Such were the results obtained by a man of singular and resolute character, who drove his tiny vessel through the powerful broadsides of the hostile fleet, and dared afterward to follow its triumphant course up the river, in hopes of snatching another chance from the jaws of defeat.

Another example, equally daring and more successful, of the power of the ram, was given that same night by Kennon, also an ex-officer of the United States Navy; but the other ram commanders did not draw from their antecedent training and habits of thought the constancy and pride, which could carry their frail vessels into the midst of ships that had thus victoriously broken their way through the bulwarks of the Mississippi. The River-Defense Fleet, as it was called, was a separate organization, which owned no allegiance and would receive no orders from the navy; and its absurd privileges were jealously guarded by a government whose essential principle was the independence of local rights from all central authority. Captains of Mississippi River steamboats, their commanders held to the full the common American opinion that the profession of arms differs from all others in the fact that it requires no previous training, involves no special habits of thought, is characterized by no moral tone which only early education or years of custom can impart. Rejecting all suggestion and neglecting all preparation, they cherished the most inordinate confidence in the raw native valor which they were persuaded would inspire them at the critical moment; and, incredible as it would seem, some of the men who in the battle could find no other use for their boats but to run them ashore and burn them, ventured to tell Warley the night before that their mission was to show naval officers how to fight. They did not lack courage, but that military habit upon whose influence Farragut had so acutely remarked when a youth, returning in 1820 from the European station. * “Had regular naval officers,” said Kennon bitterly, “instead of being kept in the mud forts on the creeks in Virginia, and in the woods of Carolina cutting timbers to build ironclads, been sent to command these vessels, even at the eleventh hour, they would have proved very formidable.”

[* See page 62.]

Steaming into the midst of such as these, the peril of the Cayuga, real enough, was less than it seemed; but she had to do at once with Warley’s Manassas and with the Governor Moore, the vessel that Kennon commanded, and which afterward sunk the Varuna. “Three made a dash to board us,” records Lieutenant Perkins, agreeing therein with the official reports of Captain Bailey and of his own commander, Lieutenant Harrison; “but a heavy charge from our eleven-inch gun settled the Governor Moore, which was one of them. A ram, the Manassas, in attempting to butt us just missed our stern, and we soon settled the third fellow’s ‘hash.’ Just then some of our gunboats which had passed the forts came up, and then all sorts of things happened.” This last expression is probably as terse and graphic a summary of a mêlée, which to so many is the ideal of a naval conflict, as ever was penned.

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