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| The sinking of the Keokuk as illustrated in Harper's Weekly |
Charleston Stands
It
seemed to the Federals that the Confederates were unfazed. This was almost
true, and the Charleston defenders had reason to be elated. Losses at Fort
Moultrie were paltry. When he took a boat over there, General Ripley learned
that the most considerable damage was done to the flagstaff. It had been cut by
enemy shot, the top part falling down and crushing a Private Lusby. Lusby soon
died from his injury. The Confederates defiantly set their regimental flag on
the traverse to replace the one that had fallen. The other casualty at this
spot was a gunner, Private Harrison, who accidentally lost a finger while
helping push his gun into place.[1]
Indeed, Confederate losses were light, especially in terms of men. An ammunition chest exploded in Battery Wagner, killing 4 men and wounding 4 others. Fort Sumter, which was hit about 55 times, can be said to have had the worst of it. One Columbiad exploded and flew back into the parade grounds, and a rifled 42-pound piece was put out of action not by enemy fire, but by a defective gun carriage that was crushed by the recoil of the gun. Six men, one of them a slave or free black, were hit by debris from shattered brick and wood. Major Echols, one of the engineers, added, “Nearly all the window panes and some of the sashes in the fort were broken by concussion.”[2] Total Confederate losses in manpower mounted to 4 dead and 10 wounded.[3]
An example of a Columbiad (https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=30675)
The
site where the Columbiad fell out of place provided a humorous anecdote for the
1st South Carolina Artillery’s history.
After the fire had been put out and all
the combustibles removed or saturated with water, the writer, who was Officer
of the Day, returned to the parapet by way of the turret stairs at the
northeast angle. As he stepped from the turret to the terreplein, the gunner of
the first gun saluted him and gravely said: “Mr. Officer of the Day, have you
seen an eight-inch Columbiad running around anywhere that you have been?” In
reply to the question, “Are you crazy or drunk my man; what do you mean?” he
pointed to his gun carriage, which was empty, and said, “We fired our gun just
now, but when we started to sponge her for a new load we saw that she had
gone!”[4]
While
he was not present for the battle, Beauregard deserves special credit for the
defense. His and his engineers’ extensive work in turning Charleston into a
fortress had paid off splendidly. Major Harris of the Engineers celebrated,
“The manner in which the fort withstood the bombardment, and encourages us to
believe that the repairs that have been made, and the measures now in progress
to strengthen and protects its walls, will enable the fort to withstand a much
more formidable bombardment with like good results.”[5]
Charleston’s
mostly secessionist citizenry were likewise elated. One wrote, “It was a most
signal defeat for them. We did not use on half of our guns and had no recourse
to rams, torpedoes, etc.” The same civilian wished the Federals had tried
harder, because an extended battle would have surely been catastrophic for
them.[6]
The mood was certainly high in Confederate Charleston, but not so much in the
Union Navy.
Du Pont Was
Right
The
following post-battle meeting on the New
Ironsides between the officers was “as solemn as a scene of death.” Commander
Donald Fairfax of the Nantucket perhaps
summarized the captains’ feeling when he said, “I am disappointed beyond
measure at this experiment of monitors overcoming strong forts. It was a fair
trial.” The captains described the condition of their ships. Part of the Weehawken’s hull was so battered that
the iron plating turned into “splintered fragments,” capable of being “picked
off by hand.” Water was pouring into the Passaic’s
turret. The New Ironsides had been
hit plenty of times, but Commodore Turner had the foresight to pile on sandbags
for extra protection. As a result the flagship had got out of the battle with
light damage. The Nantucket was
littered with dislodged bolts and nuts, and the smokestack was riddled with
holes. In many places the iron exterior was cracked, and as with several other
ships in the assault the turret was now jammed. Despite all this, the bulk of
machinery and boilers remained working. And of course the Nahant and Keokuk had
it the worst.[7] Du
Pont “determined not to renew the attack, for, in my judgment, it would have
converted a failure into a disaster.”[8]
On
April 8 he told his chief of staff, C.R.P. Rodgers, “I have given careful
thought during the night to all the bearings of this matter, and have come to
the positive determination from which I shall not swerve…I have decided not to
renew the attack.” In a letter he predicted, successfully, that “the monitor
people will be my worst enemies,” referring to the enthusiastic Welles and
Fox’s misplaced faith in the new sea engines.[9]
Du
Pont pointed out in his report that in just a short time, 5 of the ironclads
“were wholly or partially disabled.” A “persistence in the attack would only
result in the loss of the greater portion of the ironclad fleet and in leaving
many of them inside the harbor to fall into the hands of the enemy.”[10]
Commander Fairfax of the Nantucket
identified another problem. He wrote in his report that the ironclads’ armor
made them hard to take down, but they didn’t have enough guns to actually take
down the “formidable earthworks and forts” in Charleston Harbor, reconfirming
what had already been learned at the bombardment of Fort McAllister two months
previously.[11]
Beauregard
agreed with his enemy. He reported: “The heaviest batteries had not been
employed; therefore it may be accepted, as shown, that these vaunted monitor
batteries, though formidable engines of war, after all are not invulnerable or
invincible and may be destroyed or defeated by heavy ordnance, properly placed
and skillfully handled. In reality they have not materially altered the
military relations of forts and ship.”[12]
Sinking of the
Keokuk
The
Keokuk had the worst of the ironclads,
thanks to all the leaks it had acquired. Commander Rhind wrote “So large and
ragged were the apertures that it was impossible to keep anything our means
supplied in the holes.” Another officer observed it was “riddled like a
colander.” The crew tried to pump out the water, but to no effect. The Keokuk signaled distress and Dandelion came to tow the ship away.
However, this only caused more water to spill in and the crew had to abandon
ship. They made it safely aboard the Dandelion. The Keokuk sank at 8:20, only the top of its smokestack and turret
towers remaining above water. It was lost to the Union, but close to
Confederate-held Morris Island.[13]
The
Union wrote off the wreck, thinking it too “full of sand” and drowned to either
rescue or explode. The Confederates, on the other hand, really wanted the
Dahlgren guns. The Confederacy was light on proper coastal defense guns, and
having the latest in artillery design would be a major boon. This recovery
expedition was headed by civilian engineer Adolphus W. La Coste. Fearing the
large Federal fleet still nearby, La Coste’s team only worked at night, with
boats full of garrison troops from Fort Sumter and the ironclad rams Chicora and Palmetto State standing by in case protective measures were needed.
The process took the rest of April. The iron exterior of the ship had to be
taken off, then sand had to be collected in bags and hoisted up and away.
The
excavation of the first gun became a harrowing and nerve-wracking experience.
The Dahlgren got stuck (its muzzle was having trouble getting out of the
turret) as it was being lifted out of the water. Metal scraped and banged, able
to be heard for a good distance. Just as the laborers hit this snag, the light
of dawn was rising in the East. Soon they would be visible to the blockade
ships. They were desperate, but still they could not get the gun loose, even
though all the extra weight of sand had been taken care of. The unappealing
prospect of dropping the gun and having to hoist it up again came to mind.
Captain John Johnson, who was lending his engineering talents to the
expedition, captured the uncertainty and despair of the moment. “Not a moment
was to be lost. Who would give the order to cut loose the prize? Every one
shrank from it. Yet what else remained to do?”[14]
Good
fortune came at the last minute. A heavy wind knocked the Dahlgren loose from
where it was struck. Hurriedly, it was tied to the deck of a ship and pulled
away to safety. The second gun was recovered three days later. The entire
operation had been conducted without any notice from the blockade fleet.
Sponges, rammers, and lanterns were transferred to the Confederate ship Chicora, and the Confederates also
accrued a few Federal flags and pennants as trophies. One of the Dahlgrens
would be placed in Fort Sullivan and the other in Fort Sumter. They would lend
great assistance in the coming battles that summer.[15]
 |
| One of the Keokuk's Dahlgrens ended up in this battery. |
With the addition of new guns, The Confederates worked on repairing their fortifications. Men from the 46th Georgia arrived at Fort Sumter to help with repairs and reinforce the garrison. General Ripley sent out instructions for a possible attack the next day. One was to target the decks of the ironclads, particularly where they met the turrets. The Confederate commanders had noted how damage to the turret and its rotating machinery had reduced the efficiency of their crafts.[16]
Overall,
throughout the attack the Confederates fired 2,209 shots, with at least 520
hitting their targets. These shots were divided between 76 active artillery pieces, Beauregard grandly stated in his report, “the
state of South Carolina, bay well be proud of the men who first met and
vanquished the iron-mailed, terribly armed armada, so confidently prepared and
sent forth by the enemy to certain and easy victory.”[17]
By contrast, the 9 Union ships only got off 151 shots in return.[18]
End of an
Admiral
General
David Hunter tried to lift Admiral Du Pont’s spirits. “That you are uninjured,
and so many vessels of your command still fit for service, is a cause of deep
gratitude to Almighty God.”[19]
Du Pont concluded, or rather restated, that a purely naval assault would not
succeed. Any further operations would need to involve cooperation between the
Navy and the Army.[20]
Back
north, Welles and Fox initially refused to accept the news that the attack had
failed. Then they insisted it was merely a “reconnaissance” or demonstration,
and that the real attack would come. As the news finally settled in, however,
the north was filled with shock. The monitors had been talked up as invincible
war machines. Now they had been handily repulsed. One newspaper jokingly
stated, “the monitors were not walking about on land in the rear of
Charleston.” A New York Herald article
noted that casualties were light, but it was “one of our most discouraging
disasters.” Then the time came for a scapegoat, with the Chicago Times claiming Du Pont was “incompetent and almost a
coward.”[21]
Gustavus Fox
Gustavus
Fox, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, was very uncharitable, feeling that
the length of the battle was awfully short and that the ironclads could simply
steam in and out, building up damage against Fort Sumter.[22]
The secretaries of the navy still believed the ironclad plan could work, and
worked to make sure that the collection of reports from the monitor captains
did not make it into the press for fear of turning off the public.[23]
Welles
noted that neither of the two ships that got it worst was a monitor. A couple
days later he declared in his diary, “The monitor vessels have proved their
resisting power, and, but for the submarine obstructions, would have passed the
forts and gone to the wharves of Charleston. This in itself is a great
achievement.” He later added to his diary, “…The monitors were formidable. In
this great fight the accounts speak of but a single man killed and some ten or
twelve wounded. After trumpeting the ironclads in his diary, he added, “The
Ironsides, the flagship, was suspiciously remote from the fight, yet
sufficiently near to convince the Admiral. He had better leave the harbor.”[24]
One man who had helped Ericsson with the monitors’ creation, however, revealed
that the ships were never intended to go up against forts, a fact he somehow
neglected to mention until literally after the attack’s failure (they were going
up against forts since January).[25]
Because
of his doubts before the battle and his refusal to continue after April 7, Du
Pont was seen as a naval McClellan. Certainly his private correspondence fueled
this belief. In a letter to his wife he wrote “We have failed, as I felt sure
we would.” Nevertheless, he was outraged when the press and politicians made
claims that he had given up too quickly. One newspaper claimed that three more
hours would have procured victory, even though Du Pont’s subordinate ship
commanders had likewise expressed the belief that continued action would have
seen more damage to the fleet, if not its complete destruction.[26]
While
Du Pont’s view of the ironclad strategy was true, he did himself no favors when
he started to wallow in his defeat. Welles pressured him for some kind of plan,
and General Hunter suggested a navy-supported amphibious assault on Morris
Island (the actual strategy that Du Pont had called for before and which would
be implemented three months after the ironclad attack). Welles ultimately felt
he had no choice but to remove Du Pont from command.[27]
Thus
Admiral Samuel Francis Du Pont, who had been in the Navy since he 1815, spent
the rest of the war in Washington performing desk duties and reviewing
promotions. He had spent months expressing doubts about the ironclad assault.
As he had direfully predicted, the new warships could not force the harbor
themselves against the formidable network of forts and batteries in Charleston
Harbor. Despite the backing of his ship commanders in their reports, he was
blamed for not being aggressive enough and removed. In what may have been a
bitter irony, John Dahlgren, who had insulted him by trying to take command,
would get his chance in the very same Army-Navy combined operation that Du Pont
had suggested to no avail. The Confederates, emboldened, knew that the Union
would not give up on capturing the birthplace of their fledgling nation. They
were prepared.
Sources
Bostick, Douglas
W. Charleston Under Siege: The Impregnable City. Charleston: History Press,
2010.
Burton, E.
Milby. The Siege of Charleston 1861-1865.
University of South Carolina Press, 1970.
Chatelain, Neil P.
“Deconstructing Common Misconceptions of the April 1863Fort Sumter Ironclad Assault.”
https://emergingcivilwar.com/2023/04/07/deconstructing-common-misconceptions-of-the-april-1863-fort-sumter-ironclad-assault/,
Dougherty,
Kevin. Strangling the Confederacy:
Coastal Operations in the American Civil War. Philadelphia: Casemate, 2010.
Du Pont, Samuel
Francis. Samuel Francis Du Pont: a
Selection from His Civil War Letters. Cornell University Press, 1969.
Editors of
Time-Life Books. Voices of the Civil War:
Charleston. Time-Life Books. 1997.
Gibbons, Tony. Warships and Naval Battles of the Civil War.
New York: Gallery Books, 1989.
Hogg, Ivan V. Weapons of the Civil War. Brompton Books
Corp., 1995.
Inglesby, Charles. “Historical Sketch of the First Regiment of South Carolina Artillery (Regulars), 1896.” Grenville County Library.
https://greenvillelibrary.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/cwp/id/1269/rec/1.
Lineberry, Cate.
Be Free or Die: The Amazing Story of
Robert Smalls’ Escape from Slavery to Union Hero. St. Martin’s Press, 2017.
McPherson,
James. War on the Waters: The Union &
Confederate Navies, 1861-1865.University of North Carolina Press, 2012.
Merrill, James
M. Du Pont, the Making of an Admiral: A
Biography of Samuel Francis Du Pont. New York: Dodd & Mead, 1986.
Musicant, Ivan. Divided Waters: The Naval History of the
Civil War. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.
Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies
XIV.
Washington: Government Printing Office, 1892.
Poore,
Devin. “Raiding the Keokuk” New York Times May 24, 2013.
Welles, Gideon. Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the
Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson Vol. 1. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911.
[1] ORN XIV, 80, 100.
[2] ORN XIV, 80, 87-88.
[3] Bostick, Charleston Under Siege, 65.
[4] Inglesby, “Historical Sketch,”
9.
[5] ORN XIV, 84.
[6] McPherson, War on the Waters, 146-147.
[7] ORN XIV, 11-12, 19-21, 26.
[8] Merrill, Du Pont, 292; Musicant, Divided
Waters, 390; ORN XIV, 3.
[9] Merrill, Du Pont, 292, 294.
[10] ORN XIV, 6-7.
[11] ORN XIV, 18.
[12] ORN XIV, 77.
[13] ORN XIV, 24-25 Bostick, Charleston
Under Siege, 65; Lineberry, Be Free
or Die, 143.
[14] Devin Poore,
“Raiding the Keokuk” New York Times May 24, 2013.
[15] Poore, “Raiding
the Keokuk”; ORN XIV, 76, 110
Bostick, Charleston Under Siege, 66.
[16] ORN XIV, 80, 103.
[17] ORN XIV, 77, 83-84.
[18] McPherson, War on the Waters, 146.
[19] ORN XIV, 32.
[20] ORN XIV, 3.
[21] Merrill, Du Pont, 294-295; Burton, The
Siege of Charleston, 142.
[22] ORN XIV, 38.
[23] Merrill, Du Pont, 296.
[24] Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, 265, 267-269.
[25] Tony Gibbons, Warships and Naval Battles, 31.
[26] McPherson, War on the Waters, 147-148.
[27] Merrill, Du Pont, 296-298.
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