|
As warships go, she was small, only one hundred and
seventy-one feet long and of shallow draft. But her armament exuded force
with a rotating turret mounting two 70 pound Armstrong rifles aft and a 300
pound Armstrong gun amidships. Her English Oak frame was overlaid with six
inches of iron plating from the keel to the main deck.
Her boilers were of the newest European design and
afforded enough steam energy to her massive twin screws to shove her through
the sea at an unheard of nineteen knots. She could turn on her center while
going forward or back in ninety seconds. Her main compartments were
protected by watertight hatches and her powder magazines were covered with
double armor. A giant iron ram projected under the water beneath her iron
bow. She slid off of the ways of M. Arman’s Shipyard at Bordeaux, France late
in 1864 and shipped for the port of Quiberon off the French coast.
There, at Quiberon, Captain T.J. Page, Confederate
Provisional Navy, came aboard and began shipping her crew. Munitions and
stores were placed aboard the vessel and the Confederate Naval Jack was hoisted
to her mast top. She was christened the Confederate States Ship
Stonewall. Her maiden voyage would shake the world and tumble a despot.
She sprung a leak on her shakedown cruise. Captain
Page ran her into the harbor at Ferrol, Spain for repairs. The next
morning the United States warships U.S.S. Niagara and the U.S.S. Sacramento
appeared at the harbor mouth in an attempt to blockade the C.S.S. Stonewall’s
passage from the harbor.
The Niagara had the reputation of being the fastest ship
in the Union Navy. She mounted ten 150-pound Parrott rifles. The
Sacramento mounted seven of the huge Parrotts. Between the two ships, no
known ship of the line could survive their devastating broadsides. But the
C.S.S. Stonewall was a new class of warship; something that none of the ships
of the world’s navies had ever faced before. Her British Armstrong rifles
were fast breech loaders with long ranges; and while the Niagara could turn
about once every fifteen minutes, the Stonewall could turn in a tenth of that
time while her gun turrets could revolve from target to target regardless of
her position in relationship to that of her enemies. The prestige of the United
States Navy was about to suffer a devastating blow.
The Stonewall caught the tide and steamed out of the
harbor with her blood red naval jack with the blue cross of St. Andrew whipping
in the salty breeze. The Union warships fled into the harbor and refused
combat. The Stonewall flaunted her flag in the face of the enemy and
crisscrossed the harbor mouth. The Federal warships refused her challenge
and remained in the Spanish harbor. The Stonewall’s crew cheered lustily
as the Southern warship turned west and sailed toward the eastern seaboard of
America and home.
Nine days of fair steaming and the Stonewall hove to in
Nassau’s harbor. The harbor was crowded, crammed with blockade-runners
awaiting an opportune time to ship their cargoes of war through the Federal
Blockade of the Southern ports. Sailors and Confederate sympathizers lined
the rails of their ships and cheered as the Stonewall fired her guns in salute
to the British Governor of Nassau. The United States Consul immediately
entered a protest to the Stonewall’s anchorage and then commanded the United
States warship Powhatan to steam out and seal the harbor to prevent the
Confederate vessel’s escape to sea.
Resupplied with coal and victuals, the Stonewall sailed
out of Nassau’s Governor’s Harbor and immediately engaged the U.S.S.
Powhatan. The first shot fired by the Confederate gun crew aboard the
Stonewall missed the Yankee warship. The second round from the 300 pound
Armstrong hulled the Union vessel while the steady fire from the Stonewall’s turret
guns demasted the foe and blasted her guns from their mounts. The
Powhatan sank in 30 fathoms of water with the United States flag still flying
from her mast as she disappeared beneath the waves. The victorious
Stonewall headed North by Northwest for the new Confederate nation.
A day and a half later she raised land. Her watch
could see the masts of the ships of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron of
the U.S. Navy lying off Charleston, South Carolina.
Captain Page ordered his crew below decks and quieted the
ship. Engines stilled, the Stonewall wallowed in the Atlantic swells
awaiting darkness. At eight o’clock, the watch of the Stonewall saw the
blue navigation and warning lights of the Yankee fleet appear above their
topgallant sails. Page ordered his boiler fires brought up and steam pressure
increased. The crew was piped to battle stations and the command “Full
Speed Ahead" given. The C.S.S. Stonewall slipped over the waves, a bone
in her teeth, and stood in toward Charleston to engage the enemy.
The Stonewall struck the U.S.S. New Ironsides first.
The Confederate raider crashed her iron ram into the New Ironsides
amidships. Reversing her engines, she withdrew the ram as the Yankee
vessel, the pride of the Union navy, heeled over to starboard. The twin
Armstrong rifled guns poured a steady beating fire into the next Federal
vessel, the U.S.S. Paul Jones, tearing away her masts and then her
quarterdeck. The New Ironsides began to go down stern first while the Paul
Jones drifted away south, her decks littered with her dead and dying sailors.
Another league and the monitor U.S.S. Weehauken came under
the Stonewall’s guns. The U.S.S. Patapsco, another monitor, fired her
200-pound turret gun at the Stonewall. The astonished crews of the two
monitors watched as the 200-pound solid shot bounced off the hull of the
Confederate warship. The Stonewall replied with fire from her 300 pound
Armstrong gun. The Armstrong projectile with its truncated nose penetrated
the armor belt around the Federal ship’s magazine. The entire ship erupted
in flame, noise, and a burst of light and disappeared beneath the
waves. Her sister ship, Weehauken, fired at the Stonewall. The shell
skidded across the Stonewall’s deck, decapitating the gunnery officer and
scattering the crew of the amidships gun. Her aft turret rotated to engage
this new threat and unleashed a raining fire on the monitor. One shell
wedged the Weehauken’s turret, another blew away the forward hatch cover and
seawater began to cascade into the ship’s inner compartments. Men
scrambled for the deck as the monitor stood on end and slid beneath the waves.
The monitor U.S.S. Nahant turned about from the engagement
and fled toward Charleston harbor, risking the fire from Forts Sumter and
Moultrie in an effort to escape the Confederate vessel. The Stonewall soon
overtook the fleeing monitor. The Stonewall sank her ram into the stern of
the Union ship with such force and speed that the ram rode up on the deck of
the monitor and forced the vessel below the water’s surface. The force of
the blow unseated the Nahant’s turret and tore it from the ship, exposing the
below decks to torrents of seawater that rapidly sank the vessel.
The remaining blockading vessels fled the
scene. Immediately green rockets were launched from the deck of the
Stonewall to signal the Confederate forts of her victory. The Stonewall
sailed unhurt past the guardians of Charleston Harbor and anchored alongside
the C.S.S. Palmetto State and the Lady Davis.
©Ted Gragg, 2008. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. |
