Having been ordered to accomplish that feat, Lynch proposed to stage his ships immediately to Craney Island at the mouth of the Elizabeth River. There they would load five companies of militia, split among the vessels to serve as marines, then steam to engage the enemy on the morning of April 12. The meeting ended, and one by one ships began to leave the yard. Last in line was the Hart, its crew dangerously shifting barrels of powder from a hoy towing alongside while the noise of saws and hammers still echoed from its quarterdeck. By 6.00 the next morning, workers had completed a makeshift bulwark of 4-inch wooden beams chest-high around the vulnerable wheel and three-quarters plated it with poorly fastened 1-inch wrought iron. Most of them then tumbled into boats as Hart eased from its anchorage, though several sought and gained Semmes’s permission to remain aboard as crewmen.26
Union Commodore Louis M. Goldsborough, Flag Officer of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron and personally commanding the fleet off Hampton Roads from the deck of Minnesota, possessed an excellent defensive position for his ironclads. The channel between Fortress Monroe and Confederate-held Willoughby’s Point stretched for less than four miles, flowing around an island known as the Rip Raps on which he had mounted heavy batteries of artillery. Shoals further reduced the space for maneuver. Rather than risk his vulnerable wooden vessels in the channel, Goldsborough had placed only his strongest hulls—Monitor, Galena, and Naugatuck—there, keeping the bulk of his fleet two miles to the east. If hard pressed, his first line could withdraw for a battle of maneuver; if it managed to hold the Rebel ironclads, he could run down in support.
Second Battle of Hampton Roads
At 8.00 a.m., the Galena’s lookouts spotted the approaching Confederate ironclads, Alabama and Virginia abreast and Hart of the Confederacy lingering astern. The vulnerable Rebel gunboats followed, wary of closing the range too swiftly, though at six knots (the best that Virginia’s struggling engine could do against a making tide), the range seemed to close slowly indeed. At 9.00 a.m., Monitor’s big Dahlgrens opened the ball. A few minutes later, Galena scored first blood, its opening broadside shattering Alabama’s starboard quarterboat, splinters wounding a Confederate sharpshooter crouched by the ship’s funnel. By 9.30, the firing was general as shells glanced from the armor of both sides. Closer and closer crept the casemated leviathans, obviously intent on ramming the Union vessels. But all three were nimble, and maneuvered to escape collision while they themselves ineffectually pounded the enemy. Then, seeming to leap from between the larger Confederate ships, Semmes’s Hart, black smoke streaming from its stack and the very deck vibrating with the revolutions of its single shaft, arrowed towards Monitor at the amazing speed of 17 knots.
Semmes intended to combine his untried spar torpedo with a ramming attack. As conceived, the spar torpedo was a simple weapon. Mounted on a pole held upright above the ship’s bow until released seconds before impact, the pole would fall forward into a slot on the bulwark. Projecting downward to or immediately below the waterline of the enemy ship, contact would ignite a percussion cap, thus triggering the barrel of powder and, ideally, opening a hole in the side of the enemy ship. The weapon’s operators had been trained to wait until the last minute to drop the infernal device, as the force of the waves could snap the spar or even trigger the torpedo early. Once fired, it would be the crew’s job to mount another torpedo as Hart maneuvered for the next attack.
An untested weapon often produces surprising results. Sixteen-year old Ensign Mercutio Albert Palmer, having never dropped the torpedo while underway and distracted to the edge of paralysis by shot whizzing over and into his vessel, closed his eyes and misjudged the release.27 Rather than striking Monitor at its waterline, as intended, the late release of the torpedo caused it to strike the turret at the point where one of its Dahlgrens exited the gunport. The resulting explosion funneled directly into the turret through that gap, instantly killing every man inside with concussion as well as igniting a powder charge being inserted into the cannon. Popping rivets actually killed two men on Hart. Its way partially checked by the force of the torpedo, Semmes’s ship still stuck Monitor hard enough to knock the Union warship’s engine shaft out of alignment, though the vessel’s overhanging armor prevented a rupture of its hull. Semmes, thrown from his feet by the collision, ordered his engine put astern as flames poured from the shattered turret of the now drifting Monitor. Within ten minutes, he had ascertained that four men had been killed and two were missing (all from the bow of the ship), while six men had suffered various injuries below deck. More importantly, his Hart’s heavily reinforced bow had withstood the explosion and the ramming without major damage. Ordering a replacement crew to ready a new spar torpedo, he steamed for the Galena, now engaging the slower Alabama within range of the Rip Raps battery. Closer to Fortress Monroe, Naugatuck’s iron hull was proving no match for Virginia’s rifled cannon. With its single gun dismounted and the hull shattered and leaking in several places, Naugatuck turned towards the open waters of the Chesapeake at best speed.
Lieutenant Carter and the inexperienced crew of the Confederate flagship were having a tough time of things. In a running battle with the nimbler Galena, Carter had inadvertently allowed his vessel to close with the heavy Union battery on the Rip Raps. At close range, the solid shot could, if not penetrate, then severely buckle or loosen casemate armor. Worse, such hits caused great splinters to fly from the oak backing of the plates, killing or injuring a number of men in Alabama’s casemate. But disaster, when it struck, came from a light pivot gun on Galena. Commodore Lynch had just ordered Carter to close Virginia when a shell struck the observation slit in Alabama’s pilothouse. Jagged metal splinters decapitated the Commodore, disemboweled the helmsman, and ripped away Carter’s left arm. At full speed and rudder locked amidships by the now unconscious hand of its captain, the flagship headed directly into the Chesapeake—a beeline for the remainder of Goldsborough’s squadron.
Galena turned to follow, but its first officer noticed Hart, coming ahead at full steam. He ordered his guns turned on it a mere minute before a parting shot from Alabama smashed into the quarterdeck, sending that brave man to his eternal reward. Columns of water rose around Hart, a difficult target due to its approaching aspect and its great speed. One round hit its angled bow, and glanced away. Another whistled low over the deck before penetrating the funnel. Then just as its spar torpedo dropped into contact low on Galena’s stern quarter, a shot ripped completely through Hart’s unfinished wheelhouse. Blasted by the force of the exploding torpedo, its wheel splintered and its rudder swinging freely, Hart clipped the stern of the Union ironclad, then began an uncontrolled, full speed turn back into the waters of Hampton Roads. Galena, shipping water through its ruptured stern, quickly lost power and grounded on a sandbar near the Rip Raps, out of the battle.
Though he had observed Semmes incapacitate Monitor, Jones remained unaware of the tragedies playing out on Hart and Alabama, both of which appeared to be moving under their own power and direction. His vessel had suffered minimal damage thus far in the engagement, and since the commodore was obviously taking his flagship directly for the remaining Union ships, how could Jones not do likewise? Ordering full speed ahead, Jones was pleased to see that both Virginia and Alabama would hit the Union line at about the same time. Meanwhile, the wooden gunboats lagging behind the Confederate ironclads increased their speed, except for Teaser, which slowed to pluck a battered Ensign Palmer from the water, then closed to accept the surrender of the smashed Monitor. The premier Union ironclad would eventually reach Gosport under tow—a visible sign of Confederate naval might.
Goldsborough, having watched his strongest vessels shattered by the Confederate ironclads, formed his 11 available ships into a line of battle and waited for the oncoming enemy. Anchored by the 50-gun screw frigates Minnesota and Roanoke, as well as the 44-gun sailing frigate St Lawrence (towed by the steam tug Dragon), eight additional lightly armed screw and sidewheel steamers prepared to greet the upstart Rebel
navy with a storm of shot. As the range closed, Virginia’s grizzled quartermaster whispered, “Looks like Hell’s a comin’,” as the heavy Yankee ships disappeared behind a wall of flame-riven smoke.28 A moment later, shot from the Union line rang like hail from the casemate as it stripped away virtually every outside fitting and reduced Virginia’s stack to an ill-drawing nub. Then thunder cracked as Confederate gunners returned fire.
As Virginia approached the strong center of the Union line, Alabama closed the more vulnerable side-wheelers forming its vanguard at the oblique. Only as the flagship’s guns had fallen silent after engaging Galena had executive officer Donald Clarence Collins, stationed on the gundeck, discovered the carnage in the pilothouse. By the time the fallen men had been carried below and control of the vessel regained, shot was again striking the ironclad’s hull. Collins ordered fire returned, then a hard turn to port that he hoped would bring the ungainly Alabama parallel to the Union line at close range.
By the time Jones’s ship reached the enemy line, funnel damage had reduced its best speed to less than four knots, allowing Roanoke to dodge its dangerous ram with ease. Though three of Virginia’s guns were out of action (one with its muzzle blown away, two more with shutters jammed closed), those that remained raked Roanoke’s stern and Minnesota’s bow with devastating accuracy. Two shot bounced the length of Roanoke’s gundeck, temporarily disabling fully a third of its guns and puncturing its funnel between decks. As thick black smoke filled the gundeck and poured from the vessel’s gunports, panic seized some of the warship’s crew. They leaped into the chill waters of the Chesapeake to escape a ship they thought aflame.
Though only one round stuck Minnesota, the gun captain firing it had the presence of mind to load two bags of grape atop the solid shot. The 1-inch balls scythed through the Union crews laboring at their heavy bow chasers, and snapped lines and stays that whipped in their own dance of death. The heavy shot smashed into the foremast of the steam-frigate. Its stays cut away by grape, the mast toppled, crashing into Minnesota’s funnel as it fell. Furled sails caught on the ragged edge of the stack, then ignited as embers from the ship’s boilers spewed from below. Some guns fell silent as the Union flagship’s captain ordered his men to deal with the more immediate danger posed by fire and tangled wreckage. Those gunners remaining at their posts redoubled their efforts as Virginia cleared the Union line and again crossed their sights. To their amazement, the Confederate ironclad appeared to have lost all headway, and was now drifting stern first less than 20 yards from the Minnesota’s heavy artillery.
Alabama’s turn to port had placed it less than 50 yards from the Union van, four wooden sidewheelers equipped with one or two medium caliber guns each. To Lieutenant Collins, gazing from the battered vision slit of the abattoir that was Alabama’s pilothouse, this seemed an unequal contest as his heavier guns shattered the sidewheel of the leading vessel. A roar accompanied the explosion of its boiler, taking the now sinking vessel out of the contest. He changed his mind when the fourth ship in line turned towards his ironclad, the reinforced ram at its bow looming larger by the second. With one of Alabama’s bow pivot guns engaged to starboard and unaware of the menace fast approaching, the other had time for only one round before the ram would strike—and it missed. The bow-to-bow collision tossed the men of both ships like rag dolls. Had the Yankee ram struck Alabama at a right angle, it may well have penetrated its thinner hull armor. As it was, the Union steamer’s reinforced bow glanced off the even heavier prow of the ironclad, then scraped the length of its port side. The scraping did little damage to the ironwork of Alabama, but the starboard paddlewheel of the Union steamer smashed itself against the Confederate ship’s hardened bow. Then, pressed firmly against the enemy hull by its rapidly spinning port paddlewheel, the steamer’s frail wooden sides encountered the projecting eaves of Alabama’s casemate. The iron eaves gouged several planks from the Union vessel’s side. Ten minutes later, the damage so severe that its crew could not stem the inrushing sea, the plucky steamer sank. By that time, the two remaining steamers had turned out of line, hoping that rapid maneuver would serve where armor was lacking. Collins left them for his wooden consorts now joining the battle, and shaped a course for a cloud of smoke less than a half mile away. The stab of flames within it marked the location of an uneven battle between Virginia and the remainder of the Union fleet.29
The Virginia drifted, boxed by the three Union frigates and the four smaller vessels that had trailed them. In some sense a victim of its own success, its single screw had fouled a length of hawser lost by Roanoke early in the engagement. Over a dozen shells a minute, some fired ranges of less than 30 yards, struck Virginia as it lay helpless. Even an ironclad had its limits, and sheared bolts and oaken splinters screamed inside its hellishly hot, smoke-filled casemate. One enemy shell exploded as it struck an aft gunport, shutters already jammed open by an earlier blow. Upending a Brookes Rifle and killing every man of its crew, the carnage from that single shot added a little more depth to the inch of blood already seeking drainage from the casemate’s deck.
Deafened by the cannonade, Jones felt rather than heard the cessation of Union shot ringing on battered armor as he staggered from the pilothouse across the shambles of his gundeck to check his remaining two guns. Had the squadron finally arrived? He glanced through a shattered gunport in time to see the reinforced bow of a Union gunboat block his view. Deaf or not, he heard the crushing blow delivered to the mid-section of his command. Flung to the deck, Jones’s world turned red as the blood of his dead filled his mouth and eyes while pain coursed through his newly broken left arm. Consciousness briefly fled, its restoration matched the return of a hail of enemy shot. Below deck, his crew fought to staunch seams sprung by the enemy ram. Virginia’s three inches of good Tredegar iron backed by 24 inches of solid oak had held—barely. Wiping blood from his eyes, Jones looked again through the shattered port. The Union gunboat, disabled by a fortunate shot from one of his remaining guns, limped slowly away, but a brief rift in the smoke showed a second ram, scarcely 300 yards distant, bearing down on the helpless Virginia. The smoke dropped again, and Jones braced himself for the blow to come, and for the death to follow. Finally the steamer, a vee of water streaming from its bow, surged from the manmade mist—on a course that would miss Virginia completely! Jones did not trust his eyes as a ragged fellow, blood dripping from numerous wounds and one hand on the remaining spokes of a splintered wheel, saluted his command. Thirty seconds later, Raphael Semmes slammed Hart of the Confederacy into the side of Roanoke.
Of the five men crowded around Hart’s poorly shielded wheel when Galena’s shot had struck home, only Semmes survived. Dazed and bleeding from numerous lacerations (upon his eventual death at age 79, an autopsy would recover seven metal splinters lodged in his body from this day’s action), it had taken long minutes for his crew to extract him from the wreckage and to regain control of their ship. Having broken immediate contact with the enemy, Semmes paused to take stock of his vessel. Though the attack on Galena had destroyed the spar torpedo fittings and wrecked the quarterdeck of his command, neither speed nor maneuverability had been impaired. His guns had fired only one or two rounds each so far (at high speed—Semmes’s preferred speed—fire was inaccurate and water tended to enter through their gunports). Most importantly, the ram-bow showed no sign of weakness or leakage.
Then Semmes ordered full steam for the distant cloud of smoke surrounding the engagement between Goldsborough and the Confederate squadron. Circling the rear of the Union line, Hart rammed a surprised gunboat, shearing completely through its foredeck, then slowed to let his guns engage a second steamer before aligning his warship on the center of the smoke covered fracas. Gathering speed, he saluted Virginia (which from visible damage, he expected to sink anytime), then rammed one of its three large tormentors. Roanoke, already battered by shots from Virginia and now engaged on its starboard side by Alabama, immediately began to sink. Locked into his prey by the inrush of sea
water, Semmes backed engines to no avail. The weight of the sinking vessel pulled Hart’s bow so far down that the tips of its rapidly spinning screw actually emerged from the sea. Then Hart popped free, though not without cost as its abused engine coughed and died. Cursing, Semmes ordered his guns to open fire on Minnesota and his engineers to get the engine working. Caught in a crossfire between the remaining guns of the Confederate ironclads, the bulk of his squadron sunk or dispersed beyond his control and his own ship heavily damaged, Goldsborough ordered his flag hauled down. At 2.58 p.m. on April 12, St Lawrence, unable to escape in the light onshore breezes, followed suit. Only the tug Dragon and the damaged Naugatuck escaped the debacle to take word of the defeat to Washington.30
To Victory
Rumor spread, and with it panic: the strong Rebel squadron was steaming up the Chesapeake; it would bombard Washington and bring Maryland forcibly into the Confederacy; it had been sighted in Delaware Bay, heading for the shipyards of Philadelphia or the teeming docks of New York. While governors and mayors sent telegram after telegram to the White House begging for soldiers and guns, Union Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, ordered ships scuttled to block the Potomac, and Lincoln sent the few regiments that he could spare to Baltimore, intent on holding Maryland in the Union. More than aware of the vulnerable position of the slow-moving McClellan’s Army of the Potomac on the James Peninsula, Lincoln ordered him to capture Richmond now or to begin shifting his army back to northern Virginia. Convinced by Confederate deception and the incompetence of his personal intelligence operatives that any advance on Richmond would meet defeat at the hands of superior numbers, Little Mac called for transports and hunkered in his entrenchments opposite Yorktown. The besieger had become the besieged.
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