USS Passaic-- Part 6: A Busy Ship in 1863

In a report to Admiral Dahlgren, who had replaced Du Pont,  Commander Simpson related that the Passaic went into action eleven times between  July 29 and September 8th.  During that time,  she fire two hundred and twenty-six shells against the enemy and took in return one hundred and thirty-five hits from Confederate guns.

Typical of her work was the September 8th engagement.  During the attack on Sullivan's Island, she was ordered to go well in front of the rest of the fleet to engage Battery Bee at close range.

The Confederates concentrated all their guns on the Passaic and she was hit fifty-one times.  She managed to fire off  forty-nine of her own shells.

Her last action in 1863, took place on November 16th, when Admiral Dahlgren used her as his flagship during an attack on Fort Moultrie.  In this engagement, the USS Lehigh ran aground and was rescued by the Passaic while both vessels were under heavy fire.

--Old B-Runner

USS Passaic-- Part 5: Took a Pounding at Charleston

In addition to the fortifications protecting Charleston Harbor, the channel had been heavily mined and filled with cables and obstructions to prevent passage of enemy ships.

In all, the Confederates had massed more than 300 guns.

It was into this inferno of fire that the Union fleet advanced to attack on April 7, 1863.  In the 45 minutes in which the action lasted, the Confederates fired 3,500 shots and shells and repelled the attack.

The ironclad USS Keokuk was sunk and all the others hit several times.  The object of the attack, Fort Sumter was only slightly damaged.

During the short battle, the Passaic had fired  thirteen shots and hit thirty-four times.  As a result, she was sent to New York for repairs and recommissioned  on July 19, 1863.  Lt. Commander Edward Simpson replaced Captain Drayton in command.

Arriving back in the blockade off Charleston, the Passaic took part in every engagement against the city and its defenses until the end of the war.

--Old B-Runner

USS Passaic-- Part 4: Heavily Fortified Charleston

At this stage of the Civil War, Charleston had become  a comparatively  unimportant  point in the overall strategy of the war.  However, the Federal  government felt  that the reduction of Fort Sumter, where the war started, and the capture of Charleston would be a great moral victory in a struggle that wasn't going so well for the North at this juncture.

Du Pont was ordered to attack the Charleston defenses with a fleet of nine ironclads and five wooden ships.  After the Confederate guns were silenced, an army of 4,000 troops commanded by General Truman Seymour would proceed to attack the city itself.

However, during the two years after the attack on Fort Sumter, the Confederates had turned Charleston into one of the most protected Southern ports.  Forts Moultrie and Sumter had been rebuilt, a strong position named Fort Wagner had been constructed on Morris Island, directly opposite of Sumter.

Battery Bee had been erected on Sullivan's Island and numerous other fortifications had been built along the banks of Charleston's two rivers.

--Old B-Runner

Alban C. Simers, USN-- Part 2: Action with the Monitor and Passaic-Class Monitors

Though not a formal member of the USS Monitor's crew Stimers took part in her difficult trip from New York  to Hampton Roads, Virginia, and served on board during her historic battle with the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia on 9 March 1862, known as the Battle of Hampton Roads.

Much of the success  that happened in these two events was due to his inspired work, and Chief Engineer Stimers continued an intimate associate with the Navy's ironclad building program for much of the rest of the Civil War.

In 1862-1863, Stimers again worked with John Ericsson during the building of the next class of monitor-type ironclads, the Passaic-class.  

He accompanied these ships during their early operations against the Confederacy, most notably the 7 April bombardment of Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, and helped repair them after the action.

--Old B-Runner

Robert Smalls & the Planter-- Part 7: The Plan

Robert Smalls put his plan onto action on May 12, 1862.  That afternoon, the Planter had returned from two weeks of setting up artillery on James Island.   Smalls correctly predicted that the officers would be tired and leave the ship that evening.

As the officers went ashore from the ship's berth at the Southern Wharf, the crew banked the fires in the Planter's boiler and remained aboard.  Smalls' plan was to depart quietly in the pre-dawn hours and pick up the crew's families at the North Atlantic Wharf on the Cooper River.

Their departure  was tricky:  leaving the city just before dawn would put them near the forts at first light, but Smalls knew that of they were moving in the harbor in the darkness they would come under suspicion.  They had one piece of luck:  Smalls had learned that then guard boat, usually outside the harbor entrance, was under repaor and would not be on station that evening.

--Old B-Runner

Robert Smalls & the Planter-- Part 6: Reasons to Make the Attempt

Sometime in early May 1862, Smalls  considered a bold plan to seize the Planter.  

First, any attempt to escape would have to include the families of the crew.    Smalls could not contemplate being separated from  Hannah and his children if he was captured and the other men were risking just as much as he was.

Second, although the Union Army was in Beaufort, just fifty miles away,  Union Navy warships were just off the coast and Smalls knew the harbor defense very well.  Third, the white officers of the Planter trusted the black crew to operate the boat and were in the habit of leaving them aboard  overnight in order to be with their families ashore.  (This was in direct violation of orders from the Confederate Army.)

Fourth, Smalls had learned the signals the ships used to  communicate with harbor sentries standing guard in the forts.  Lastly, the Planter frequently made trips to other ports, so her use of  the outgoing ship channel was not uncommon.

Smalls believed at night, with a little  bit of luck, he and the other black crewmen could make their escape.

--Old B-Runner

Robert Smalls & the Planter-- Part 4: The Crew of the Planter and the Beginning of a Plan

Smalls was just one member, albeit very important, of the Planter's crew.  The ship was captained by  Charles J. Relyea.  The other white officers were first mate Samuel Hancock and engineer Samuel Pitcher.  None of the three were from the South, nor were the Confederate Navy officers.  They were merchant sailors hired on as  contractors and reported to Ferguson, the ship's owner.

Six other enslaved  black men, two engineers and four deckhands made up the rest of the Planter's crew.  Three of the six were owned by Ferguson, while the other three and Smalls were emplyed by their owners.

For defense, the Planter was armed with a 32-pounder pivot gun on the bow and a 24-pounder howitzer astern.  Smalls and the other black crewmembers would have been trained  to use those guns if needed.

As Smalls watched the Confederates closely, events would convince him to make a bold move.  

On November 7, 1861, the Union Navy captured Beaufort and the sea islands around the harbor of Port Royal.  Although the town was damaged and most of its white residents fled, Smalls was thankful to learn that his mother was safe among the now ownerless 10,000 former slaves.

--Old B-Runner

Robert Smalls & the Planter-- Part 3: Supplying Charleston Defenses

Keeping the men scattered around the harbor fed and equipped was a constant requirement, so military commanders relied on boat traffic nearly continuously.  That year (1861) Smalls was hired on board the Planter, a new 147-foot long sidewheel steamship owned by John Ferguson, a wealthy Charleston shipowner and businessman.

Ferguson leased the Planter to the Confederates to use around the harbor.  By 1862, Robert Smalls had worked in and around Charleston Harbor for ten years and his skills were evident to the new white officers of the Planter and he was relied upon to move the ship safely around the harbor.

As the military fortifications grew, Smalls and the Planter ferried men, dispatches,  supplies and guns from the city to the forts and back again.  Smalls watched carefully at how the Confedrates maintained their network of harbor defenses.

He also took note of the increasing number of Union blockading vessels offshore.

--Old B-Runner

Robert Smalls and the Planter-- Part 1

 From the American Battlefield Trust.

Robert Smalls eased the vessel away from the pier and backed into the harbor.  The night air was still, and Smalls could smell the sea life as his ship churned up the brackish water and turned southeast.  As Smalls passed the Confederate batteries, he took note of the soldiers standing their watches as he had a hundred times before.

When the ship entered the main channel, Smalls looked around and was comforted to see his family and many of his friends on board with him.  Moving faster toward the open sea in the first light of dawn, Smalls must have felt the freedom and exhilaration that only the master of a ship at sea can truly feel.

Except that this was not Smalls' ship; and he was not quite a free man.

Robert Smalls was born into slavery in 1839 in Beaufort, South Carolina,.  As a boy, he worked with his mother in the relative comfort of their owner's home on the plantation.  His mother had worked hard in the fields, so she made sure that Robert witnessed the horrors that other slaves endured.

When Smalls turned 12, at his mother's request, the owner sent Robert to nearby Charleston to be hired as a worker.  Smalls worked at odd jobs around thecity as a lamplighter, a stevedore and in a hotel, where he met Hannah Jones  Robert and Hannah were married in 1856 and they had two children.

--Old B-Runner

S.C. Preserves Part of Charleston's Fort Johnson-- Part 4

That spring and summer of 1865,  seven companies of the 21st USCT regiment, formed the garrison at Fort Johnson.  On July 31, , the men of the 54th Massachusetts dismounted the fort's guns and the fort was abandoned.

In 1872 a quarantine station was established there.  Thus began its association with public health.  In 1948, the station was closed and the 90 acre site was transferred to the state.  Six years later, the College of Charleston devised a plan to establish a marine biology research  center there, and the Medical  College set up an animal research facility.

The old quarantine officer's residence was occupied by the president  of the Medical College.

In 1970, much of the Fort Johnson  tract was transferred to the DNR's forerunner, the South Carolina Department of Wildlife and Marine Resources.  

In the years since,  the condition of the MUSC buildings has  deteriorated, posing safety hazards.

--Old B-Runner

S.C. Preserves Fort Johnson Site in Charleston Harbor-- Part 2

The Medical University of South Carolina(MUSC) board of trustees has agreed to sell its Fort Johnson holdings at the northeastern tip of Windmill Point on James Island to the South Carolina Battleground Preservation Trust, which will place a conservation easement on the property to prevent  any commercial or residential development, then donate the land to the DNR.

State Senator  Chip Campsen was instrumental in securing both the Fort Johnson and May Forest properties.  (May Forest from the Sisters of Charity of Our Lady of Mercy).  In the spring of 2021, he got fellow legislators to make an offer on the convent tract and the state purchased the 23 acres for $23.25 million.

At that time, they started looking at the adjacent Fort Johnson plot which had 1.58 acres.  They bought it for a huge price, $3.5 million.

The sprawling yaupon (an evergreen shrub in case you're wondering like me) will be thinned out or cleared and  eventually trails will be built with picnic tables, signage and water access.

Good News.  --Old B-Runner

S.C. Preserves Part of Fort Johnson Site in Charleston Harbor-- Part 1

From the February 22, 2022, Charleston (SC) Post and Courier "SC Battleground Preservation Trust secures a piece of Fort Johnson on James Island" by Adam Parker.

Going back to April 1861, in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, and the first shot was fired from shore at Union-held Fort Sumter in the middle of the harbor, sparking the long smoldering Civil War.  Most folks think those shots were fired from Fort Moultrie on Sullivan's Island.  But they weren't.

They were fired from Confederate Fort Johnson on James Island.

In the early morning of April 12, 1861, Col. James Chesnut  Jr. (yes, diarist Mary Chesnut's husband) ordered Captain George S. James to fire a signal shot over Fort Sumter.  Lt. Henry S.  Farley, commander of the  beach battery at Fort Johnson prepared the mortar and then fired it exactly at 4:30 am.

The shell arched in the air and exploded directly over Fort Sumter.  A second shot was soon fired by Lt. W.H. Gibbes and the war was on.

Fort Johnson is no more, at least the fortifications aren't.  Since 1970, the S.C. Department of Natural resources has been the primary  resident of Windmill Point.  The College of Charleston maintains its Grice Marine Laboratory there.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Marine Fisheries Division is housed in a building on the point.  The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) has its May Lab for environmental  microbiology research, and has owned a large structure in the northwestern corner of the site that has been unused for many years.

--Old B-Runner

Confederate Submarine Attraction in South Carolina Reopens-- Part 2

The Hunley sank a Union blockading ship, the USS Housatonic by ramming it with a torpedo attached to a spar at the front of the ship.  A half-century would pass before another submarine would sink and enemy warship during World War I.

Unfortunately for the Hunley, it sank to the bottom itself while returning from the attack on the Housatonic.  All eight men aboard died.

Many theories have been advance over the years as to what happened to cause the Hunley to sink.  Some think perhaps it was too close to the explosion and that they were knocked unconscious or perhaps miscalculated how long their oxygen will hold while submerged.

Scientists hope to determine the cause of the ship's sinking when the entire vessel's exterior and interior is cleaned of the sea buildup in the next several years.

The Hunley was raised from the sea floor in 2000.  Scientists have spent seventeen years collecting human remains (all aboard were found) and restoring the vessel.

--Old B-R'er

The Second Battle of Fort Sumter, Union Attack September 7, 1863-- Part 1

From "The Longest Night:  A Military History of the Civil War" by David J. Eicher.

The USS Nantucket was involved in this battle.

On September 8, 1863, a squadron of nine Union ships including the monitors Catskill, Nahant, Montauk, Nantucket, Passaic, Patapsco and Weehawken, as well as the  ironclad gunboats USS New Ironsides and USS Keokuk.

It was iron against masonry.

By noon, Admiral Du Pont signaled to attack, but it wasn't until 3 p.m. that the ships opened on Fort Sumter.  The Weehawken took the lead, followed by the other monitors and became heavily engaged when a torpedo explodes under her and lifted her momentarily.

Artillery fire from Forts Sumter and Moultrie splashed about the ships and struck them, doing considerable damage throughout the afternoon.

--Old B-Runner

USS Nantucket, Monitor-- Part 2: A Long Career After the War

On September  15, 1863, the Nantucket captured the  British steamer Jupiter at sea.  (Monitors were fairly slow.  I'd sure like to know how that happened.)

The Nantucket again fought the Charleston forts on May  14, 1864 and remained on blockade duty until the end of the war.

Decommissioned at the Philadelphia Navy Yard on June 24, 1865, she remained in ordinary for a decade.  Renamed the Medusa  15 June 1869, she took back the name Nantucket 10 August 1869.  (A lot of U.S. ships changed their names during that period.  Again, I wonder why?)

Transferred to the Portsmouth Navy Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, in 1875, the Nantucket was twice briefly recommissioned 29 July to 12 December 1882 and 16 June to 6 October 1884, and operated along the northern east coast of the U.S..

Sher again lay in ordinary in New York until turned over to the North Carolina Naval Militia in 1895.  During the Spanish-American War the ship was stationed at Port Royal, South Carolina.

After being condemned as no longer fit for service, the Nantucket was sold at auction in Washington, D.C., on 14 November 1900.  A total of five bids were received for the vessel, with the winning bid of $13,111 made by Thomas Butler & Co. of Boston.  

The auction was said to have drawn a lot of interest because of the historic nature of the vessel.

--Old B-Runner

USS Nantucket (1862) Ironclad Monitor-- Part 1

From Wikipedia.

The first ship to bear the name Nantucket in the U.S. Navy was a Passaic-class coastal monitor launched 6 December 1862 by Atlantic Iron Works, Boston, Massachusetts.  It was commissioned  26 February 1863, Commander Donald McNeil Fairfax in command.

Assigned to the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron,  the Nantucket participated  in the attack on the Confederate forts in Charleston Harbor 7 April 1863.  Struck 51 times during the valiant but unsuccessful assault, the ship was repaired at Port Royal and returned to  Charleston to support the Union Army on Morris Island.

She engaged Fort Wagner on 16, 17, 18 and 24 July.  The famed attack of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry regiment took place on July 18.  That would be the black regiment made famous in the movie "Glory."

--Old B-Runner

The U.S. Navy's Newest Ship, the USS Nantucket (LCS-27) Christened Saturday. The First USS Nantucket Was a Monitor.

From the August 11, 2021, Boston Globe "USS Nantucket ready for action, carrying out naval legacy which began in Civil War" by Travis Anderson.

It was formally christened  Saturday at a ceremony  on the Menominee River  in Marinette, Wisconsin.  It is a Freedom class Littoral Combat  Ship (LCS).  The new ship is very fast, automated and lethal, equipped with rolling airframe missiles and a Mark 110 gun, capable of firing 220 rounds per minute.

It is the third U.S. Navy ship named Nantucket.

The first one was a Passaic-class coastal monitor commissioned on February 26, 1863.  It was assigned to the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron and participated in the attacks on the Confederate forts, including Fort Sumter, defending Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.

During that mission, the Nantucket was struck 51 times.  Battered, but no irreparably damaged, the ship was repaired and returned to duty.  It returned to Charleston and took part in operations against Norris Island.

The second USS Nantucket was a wooden lightship built in 1907 for the Lighthouse Service and transferred to the Navy in 1917.  During World War I, it continued its duty warning ships of the dangerous Nantucket Shoals and aided in guarding the nearby waters against U-boat attacks.

I Have to Admit to Have Never Heard of This Monitor Before.  --Old B-R'er

August 8, 2000: Wreckage of Hunley Recovered

From the August 8, 2021, Chicago Tribune.

AUGUST 8, 2020

The wreckage of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley, which sank in 1864 after attacking and sinking the Union ship USS Housatonic, was recovered of the South Carolina coast and returned to port.

--Old B-R'er

B. W. Guthrie. Was He Another Son of John J. Guthrie?

There was also a B.W. Guthrie listed in the Confederate Naval Officer book.

Born in North Carolina.

Appointed from North Carolina

Master, not in line for promotion, February 24, 1862.

Master, not in line for promotion, Provisional Navy,  June 2, 1864.

Served on floating battery 1862-1863.

Receiving ship Arctic 1863-1864.  The Arctic was in the Wilmington Squadron.

Charleston Squadron 1864.

Could this be another son of John Junius Guthrie?

Extremely Promising.  --Old B-Runner

USS Marblehead-- Part 3: Action in the Stono River and Bombardment of Charleston Defenses

The Marblehead survived its battle with the horse cavalry artillery and was then transferred to the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron.  Primarily she patrolled the coast looking for blockade runners, but in early February 1863, she reconnoitered the Wilmington River  with the monitor USS Passaic trying to locate the ironclad CSS Atlanta (ex-blockade-runner Fingal).

Later in the month, on the 23rd, she took possession of  the prize Glide and her cargo of cotton which had been captured by  the Coast Guard schooners Caswell and Arago at the entrance to Tybee Creek in Georgia.  The Glide had been in route to Nassau.

During her coastal patrols, the Marblehead on occasion engaged in operations on the Stono River, South Carolina,  in support of Union forces on James Island by Charleston.  On 16 July 1863, during an assault by Confederate forces on that position, she came under fire by Confederate artillery at Grimball's Landing.

Forced further downriver, she still provided fire support and prevented Confederate reinforcements from reaching  the main body of their attack force.

Afterwards, the Marblehead joined with the rest of the Union fleet outside of Charleston Harbor in bombarding the forts there before  heading north for repairs.

--Old B-Runner