CHAPTER XIII. APPOINTMENT TO COMMAND OF NAVAL OPERATIONS AT THE WEST. -THE WESTERN FLOTILLA. THE official account of Captain Foote's appointment to the command of naval operations on the Western waters is thus briefly given in Secretary Welles's Report of December 1, 1862: “Besides these large squadrons on our maritime frontier, it became a necessity at an early period of the insurrection to have an organized naval force on the Mississippi and its tributaries. On May 16, 1861, Commander John Rodgers was directed to report to the War Department, which in the preliminary stages assumed the chief expense, for the purpose of initiating an armed flotilla on the Western waters, and immediately entered upon his duties. Proceeding to the West, he purchased steamers which, under his supervision, were fitted, armed, and armored as gun-boats, and thus was commenced the organization of the Mississippi flotilla, which a few months later made itself felt in a succession of achievements that electrified the country. But before Commander Rodgers had an opportunity of completing his arrangements and taking his vessels into action, he was succeeded by Captain A. H. Foote, whose energies and talents were exerted in creating and preparing that Navy on the Western waters which he soon made so serviceable to the country. Painfully wounded at Fort Donelson, he was relieved the 9th of May by Captain Charles H. Davis, who was soon after appointed Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, and in October relinquished the command. By order of Congress the gun-boat fleet was transferred to the Navy, and now constitutes an important squadron, under the command of Acting RearAdmiral D. D. Porter, who entered upon his duties the 15th of October. "When Flag-Officer Foote arrived at St. Louis, and on the 6th of September, 1861, assumed command of the Western flotilla, the forces consisted of three wooden vessels in commission, which had been purchased, equipped, and armed as gun-boats by Commander John Rod Naval Preparations. 155 gers; and there were nine iron-clad gun-boats and thirty-eight mortarboats in course of construction. "The service was anomalous in its character, and there was with many great incredulity as to the utility and practicability of gun-boats in carrying on hostilities on the rivers, where it was believed batteries on the banks could prevent their passage. There were also embarrassments for want of funds and of material for naval purposes, there being no Navy Yard or naval dépôt on the Western waters. All these difficulties were met and surmounted by the energetic and efficient officer to whom the duty was intrusted, whose perseverance and courage in overcoming the obstacles that impeded and retarded his operations in creating a river Navy were scarcely surpassed by the heroic qualities displayed in subsequent well-fought actions on the decks of the gun-boats he had, under so many discouragements, prepared." The disasters with which the beginnings of the war were signalized aroused the government to a sense of the vastness of the work which was before them; and preparations both for the increase of the Army and Navy were begun on a scale of commensurate magnitude. Additions were made to all the squadrons, the outlying ships were called in, a fleet of steam gun-boats was built, armed steamers, constructed for speed,* were added to the blockade service, and the recruiting for the Navy was carried forward with an enthusiasm and a success that never before were witnessed in the history of the American Navy. But the marked feature in the history of our Navy in the * In reference to swift steamers of light draught, the following order was sent to the commanding officer of the New York Navy Yard: "NAVY DEPARTMENT, April 21, 1861. "COMMODORE SAMUEL L. BREESE, Navy Yard, New York: "SIR,-By order of the President of the United States, you will forthwith procure ten steamers capable of mounting a 9-inch pivot gun, with light draught, about nine or twelve feet, having particular reference to strength and speed. You will consult with Commodore Foote, the naval constructor, and such other persons as are capable of giving information and advice. Charter on the best possible terms for three months, with the option of the government purchasing them within that time at a year 1861 was the introduction of iron-plated steam-ships, armed with a few guns of the very heaviest calibre-the genuinely American idea of uniting the smallest vulnerable surface with the greatest destructive power. On the 3d of August, 1861, Congress passed an act authorizing the Secretary of the Navy "to appoint a board of three skillful naval officers to investigate the plans and specifications that may be submitted for the construction and completion of iron-clad steam-ships or steam-batteries, and on their report, should it be favorable, the Secretary of the Navy will cause one or more armored, or iron or steel clad steam-ships or floating steam-batteries to be built; and there is hereby appropriated, out of any money in the treasury not otherwise appropriated, the sum of $1,500,000." Commodores Joseph Smith and H. Paulding, with Captain C. II. Davis, were appointed to this board, and their report was presented of the date of September 15. The result of this was the construction of those armored vessels and monitors contracted for by Ericsson, Merrick & Sons, and S. C. Bushnell & Co., whose services were so wonderfully timely. It is altogether possible that iron-plated vessels and batteries will be superseded, since already projectiles have been invented under whose impact solid 43-inch armor splits like glass, and nothing in the shape of iron or stipulated price; these vessels to be immediately removed to the Navy or private yards, with the necessary alterations and equipments to render them efficient for the service required. "I am your obedient servant, "GIDEON WELLES, Secretary of the Navy." Similar letters were sent to Boston and Philadelphia. When it is considered that, comparatively speaking, with no Navy, or material for one to begin with, the immense number of six hundred vessels-most of them steamers-required to close up three thousand five hundred miles of blockade, and the fleets for outlying service and upon the Western waters, were, in a space of time to be reckoned by months, made ready for efficient service, we are justly amazed at the energy exhibited by the Naval Department during the war. Naval Preparations at the West. 157 steel can resist them; but for the emergency of our war, the original genius that adapted iron to the system of naval attack and defense can not be too gratefully remembered. Upon the little turreted monitor of Ericsson on the 9th of March, 1862—an untried craft, at which old sailors looked askant, and about which the most hopeful had serious doubts -the fate of the Navy, the safety of the national capital, and the existence of the republic, seemed to be suspended; but after that four-hours' fight with the Merrimack, the question was settled, and a total revolution was wrought in the defensive capacity and relative strength of nations. The vast crop of monitors and their huge contemporaries, such as the New Ironsides, Weehawken, Dictator, Monadnock, and Miantonomah, clad with invulnerable scales, and pointed with destructive rams, swarmed our Atlantic waters, and made the threat of foreign invasion an empty breath. They literally "warned off" all intermeddlers. But the same principle was also applied to operations on our Western rivers and waters. Soon after taking charge of the Western Department, Major-General Fremont became convinced of the necessity of preparing a fleet of gun-boats for the purpose of acting with the Army, and of commanding the Mississippi and its tributaries. The fleet, when finally completed, under the successive commands of Rodgers and Foote, especially the last, who brought it to perfection and carried it into operation, consisted of twelve gun-boats, seven of them iron-clad, and able to resist all except the heaviest solid shot, and costing on an average $89,000 each. The boats were built very wide in proportion to their length, so that on the smooth river waters they might have almost the steadiness of stationary land batteries when discharging their heavy guns. This flotilla, carrying one hundred and forty-three guns, was as follows: *Lossing's "Civil War in America," vol. ii., p. 198. Some of these guns were 64-pounders, some were 42-pounders,* and none were less than 32-pounders. Each boat also carried a Dahlgren 10-inch shell gun, the Benton, Foote's flag-ship, having two of these in her forward battery. But we will speak more particularly of the construction and history of these boats before the close of the chapter. When Captain Foote went to his head-quarters at St. Louis, on the 6th of September, 1861, he at once took up the work which had been commenced by his predecessors. It can not be denied that he went to this Western field from a simple sense of duty, his decided preference being to have a purely naval command, in which he doubtless would soon have made his mark on the Southern coast. He loved blue water and plenty of sea-room. He was every inch a sailor, and had little taste for soldiering and for amphibious operations in swamps and rivers. This work on Western waters was a "hybrid service," part on land and part on water-something demanding totally new expedients. It was an untried field, involving in every part and aspect of it immense perplexities, difficulties, and, to any but the most energetic man, impossibilities. Of course the preparation of the boats was his first care. He could do nothing until these were ready, and fitted for their work on waters of a peculiar character and beset with peculiar obstacles. The creation of this fleet, which be * Wherever 42-pounders are spoken of, it should be understood that they were really 7-inch rifle guns; the guns were old 42-pounders, smooth bore, that had been rifled, and the shells used in them weighed some eighty pounds. |