Warships and their story

by R. A. Fletcher

In the subsequent monitors the conning tower was placed above the turret as in the case of the Passaic. Monitors were built later with two turrets, and a flying deck connected them. They were of much greater dimensions than the single turret ships, and carried twice the number of guns, and being considerably heavier and faster and more extensively armoured, were exceedingly capable fighting machines.

But the wooden warships were not destined to pass away without making a gallant struggle well worthy of the traditions of centuries. The last great battles in which they engaged were at New Orleans and Mobile, and well they acquitted themselves. Stranded, rammed, and almost set on fire, as they were time after time, they yet carried on an unequal contest until they achieved splendid victories at these places. Not even torpedoes, as mines were then called, daunted Admiral Farragut, who, at Mobile, when a ship that was leading hesitated and nearly threw the whole line into disorder, inquired, “What is the matter?”

“Torpedoes,” was the answer.

“Damn the torpedoes,” roared Farragut from his usual place in the rigging, to which he was accustomed to mount in order to see over the smoke. Whereupon his ship, the Hartford, assumed the lead.

On the Atlantic coast the South endeavoured to maintain its unequal contest by means of blockade runners and privateers. Foremost among these were the Shenandoah, which has the distinction of being the only ship to carry the Confederate flag round the world; the Sumter, a small commerce destroyer, commanded by Captain Raphael Semmes, who afterwards had the Alabama; and the last-named herself. The Sumter was described by Captain Semmes as a “stone which had been rejected of the builders,” and he says that he endeavoured to work it into the building which the Confederates were then rearing. “The vessel was reported to him as a small propeller steamer of 500 tons burden, sea-going, with a low-pressure engine, sound, and capable of being so strengthened as to be enabled to carry an ordinary battery of four or five guns. Her speed was reported to be between nine and ten knots, but unfortunately, said the Board, she carried but five days’ fuel, and has no accommodation for the crew of a ship of war. She was, accordingly, condemned. When I finished reading the report, I turned to the Secretary and said, ‘Give me that ship; I think I can make her answer the purpose.’ My request was at once acceded to; the Secretary telegraphed to the Board to receive the ship, and the clerks of the Department were set at work to hunt up the necessary officers to accompany me, and make out the proper orders. And this is the way in which the Confederate States’ steamer Sumter, which was to have the honour of being the first ship of war to throw the new Confederate flag to the breeze, was commissioned.”

He got her into shape somehow, and she began her adventurous career by running the blockade in a most daring fashion at Pass a l’Outre, in spite of the presence of the Brooklyn, which was faster and more heavily armed. She beat the northern ship simply because she could sail nearer to the wind. After six months’ experience of this ship, he says that “in her best days the Sumter had been very inefficient, being always anchored, as it were, in the deep sea, by her propeller whenever she was out of coal. A fast ship propelled entirely by sail power would have been better.” She captured seventeen ships, consistently dodged five or six northern ships, and at last had to be laid up at Gibraltar. She afterwards sailed as the Gibraltar under the English flag as a merchant vessel, and made one successful voyage as a blockade runner to Charleston, South Carolina, and went to the bottom of the North Sea soon afterwards.

The Sumter’s battery consisted of an 8-inch shell gun pivoted amidships and four 32-pounders of 13 cwt. each for broadside firing. The slide and circle for the pivot gun were constructed of railway iron. She captured seven prizes in two days, and escorted six of them into the harbour of Cienfuegos at once.

The Alabama was built at Birkenhead under a contract with the Confederate States, and was paid for out of the Confederate treasury. “The Alabama had been built in perfect good faith by the Lairds. When she was contracted for, no question had been raised as to the right of a neutral to build and sell to a belligerent such a ship.”[40] Be that as it may, the settlement of the Alabama claims proved an expensive item for Great Britain. She was responsible for the destruction of no fewer than sixty-seven American ships, and such was the terror she inspired that the armed frigate Kearsarge was sent to hunt her down and exterminate her. Soon after embarking on her privateering, the Alabama fought and sank the Hatteras in the only engagement she was concerned in until she met her fate at the guns of the Kearsarge. There was not much to choose between the ships in size, but in all other respects the advantage lay with the northern ship, which had further strengthened her sides with a concealed belt of chain cables.

“As for the ships,” writes Captain Semmes in “Service Afloat,” “though the enemy was superior to me, both in size, staunchness of construction, and armament, they were of force so nearly equal, that I cannot be charged with rashness in having offered battle. The Kearsarge mounted seven guns—two 11-inch Dahlgrens, four 32-pounders, and a rifled 28-pounder. The Alabama mounted eight—one 8-inch, one rifled 100-pounder, and six 32-pounders. Though the Alabama carried one gun more than her antagonist, it is seen that the battery of the latter enabled her to throw more metal at a broadside, there being a difference of three inches in the bore of the shell-guns of the two ships. Still the disparity was not so great but that I might hope to beat my enemy in a fair fight. But he did not show me a fair fight, for, as it afterwards turned out, his ship was iron-clad. It was the same thing as if two men were to go out to fight a duel and one of them, unknown to the other, were to put a shirt of mail under his outer garment.... By Captain Winslow’s own account, the Kearsarge was struck twenty-eight times; but his ship being armoured, of course, my shot and shell, except in so far as fragments of the latter may have damaged his spars and rigging, fell harmless into the sea. The Alabama was not mortally wounded until after the Kearsarge had been firing at her an hour and ten minutes. In the meantime, in spite of the armour of the Kearsarge, I had mortally wounded that ship in the first thirty minutes of the engagement. I say ‘mortally wounded her,’ because the wound would have proved fatal but for the defect of my ammunition. I lodged a rifled percussion shell near her sternpost—where there were no chains—which failed to explode because of the defect of the cap. If the cap had performed its duty and exploded the shell, I should have been called upon to save Captain Winslow’s crew from drowning, instead of him being called upon to save mine. On so slight an incident—the defect of a percussion cap—did the battle hinge. The enemy was proud of this shell. It was the only trophy they had ever got from the Alabama. We fought her until she would no longer swim, and then we gave her to the waves.”