The CSS Mississippi

From the April 24, 2017, Emerging Civil War  "Failed ironclads:  CSS Mississippi and CSS Louisiana at New Orleans" by Dwight Hughes.

Despite all the problems listed in the previous posts about the ship, Confederate naval officers considered the Mississippi "the strongest...most formidable war vessel that had ever been built."  It was 250 feet long, 1400 tons and was quite unorthodox, even for an ironclad.

As stated before, the Tift brother, Asa and Nelson, had persuaded Mallory that they could make up for a lack of skilled shipwrights needed to bend and shape frames and planks for the hull by building it like a house with flat sides and square corners except where the pointed ends joined the hull.  Essentially, just a big floating box  with guns.

The ship had four and a half feet of wood an iron with a casemate for twenty guns, powered by eight boilers, three engines and three propellers.

She was hurriedly launched on April 19, the day Farragut passed the forts guarding New Orleans:  Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip.  But, Tredegar  Iron Works in Richmond had not yet delivered the main propeller shafts and herb guns were not mounted.

Five days later, with Farragut's ships approaching the city, the crew fled upriver to Vicksburg.  The executive officer, Lieutenant James Waddell, volunteered to return and set her afire.

(Waddell later commanded the raider CSS Shenandoah at the end of the war.)

--Old B-Runner