Implications of Naval Power in the American Civil War - Essay Example

? INTRODUCTION It was one of the most dramatically one sided battles in Naval history on that day in March, 1862 – when the CSS Virginia defeated twofederal warships, the Congress and Cumberland. The battle yielded the destruction of both ships and the deaths of at least 240 of their crew, making headway towards breaking the Union blockade of the lower Chesapeake bay. This victory over the blockade would yield any number of consequences for the war, upon which the fortunes of the slaveholding Confederacy Would rise or fall.1 An evacuation took place on April 20, 1861 of the Naval yards at Gosport, Virginia. The Merrimac and the Pennsylvania launched a barrage against the port with heavy batteries in addition to Marines units. The United States Navy was attempting to abandon port, within hostile Virginia even as the Confederates attempted to obstruct the channel to blockade them. The Merrimac this time being a mere wooden hulled ship as navies have used since time immemorial. The Confederates succeeded in destroying or damaging the Pennsylvania, the Delaware, the Columbus, the Columbia, the Raritan, three sloops of war, while the steam frigate Merrimac was scuttled and burned. Yet almost immediately steps were taken to raise the Merrimac and convert it into an ironclad vessel as the Confederate secretary of the Navy recommended in a letter in which he described the creation of such a vessel as "a matter of the first necessity."2 The ship was raised, and what had once been her berth deck became a gun deck, with a wooden encasement of oak and pine 2 feet thick was built first. A 20 foot wide ruled was covered with iron gratings to create four hatch ways. This wooden encasement was used as the foundation for two sheathes of iron plating 2 inches thick each. The resulting ship floated very low in the water with the 800 tons of pig iron used in total to get the ship the weight needed to allow a vessel to rest at the desired depth. The metal behemoth lay mostly under the water line and looked perhaps not unlike the roof of a house-boat. 10 guns, including four rifles as well as 6 inchers. The engines, being essentially the same design as the steam frigate have used prior tended to be dangerous and unreliable with the new configuration but initially performed quite well before several failures. 2 SCOPE OF THE WAR On 9 March, the situation was destined to become far more complicated, as the Confederate crew observed a vessel remarkably heavy, floating low within the waters. It had to be the USS Monitor, the North's answer to the challenge of an ironclad ship, soon to render every other Naval force on the planet obsolete. The first battle began with the objective of the defense of the grounded steam frigate the Minnesota, but the implications were far greater than the fate of a single steamship. It would spark a naval arms/armor race that would reach well into the 20th century. There were more Naval actions between the years of 1861 and 1865 on the North American Continent than the rest of the world combined throughout the 19th century. Actions ranged from the Bering Sea to the Indian Ocean, including skirmishes in the English channel, and numerous actions up and down the American coastlines and rivers, 3 including a violent naval raid in Oklahoma, as will be described below. It was the definitive, technical innovations that might be labeled 'secret weapons' that spurred the armaments that would later define the first world war. Various other aquatic contrivances besides ironclad ships had their first expression during this conflict, including submarines and torpedoes. 4, 5 The monitor itself was the New York brainchild of Swedish engineer John Ericsson. The first of many in her ship class. However it should be noted that Congress ordered an investigation on the possibility of ironclad warships in July of 1861 when it became clear that a massive struggle had begun, not simply the 'peace in 60 days' naive optimism some officials had promulgated. It was believed in most circles of military intelligence that the rebels were already experimenting with a similar concept. 17 proposals were brought before Congress, reviewed by the members of the board appointed to oversee the selection process. The monitor was the most bizarre out of the three designs eventually selected. The other two became the USS New Ironsides, and the USS Galena, but these two adhered more noticeably to prior ship building principles. 6 BATTLE OF THE IRONCLADS Upon the commissioning of the vessel on 25 February in 1862, the cheese-box iron hulk was immediately ordered to pit its eleven-inch, Dahlgren smoothbore cannon against the CSS Virginia, at Hampton Roads. The ironclad ships pounded away at each other for several hours, the Virginia was hit and lost its smokestack, but the Monitor had technical issues with the untested systems, and were unable to load their ammunition efficiently enough, and were forced to withdraw to shallower waters, beyond the reach of the deep-drafted Virginia, but the Confederates did not withdraw or permit escape, even though damage to their smokestack did limit their maneuverability. When the Monitor returned to action later, the Confederates aimed at the pilothouse of their Union adversary, blinding one man; the commanding officer of the ship. (John L. Worden) The Union vessel withdrew again, until their captain could be replaced. But by this time the Virginia had left the battle. The heavy armored plating of the unconventional vessels prevented any serious damage that might have sunk either ship, the cannon shot and explosive shells of the time had not yet caught up with the new armoring technology. This rendered the first engagement a draw. However, the action was successful from the Union perspective in that it preserved the blockade on Norfolk, the Virginia eventually withdrawing. Following this relative success the Monitor was deployed to the James River to lend naval support to the Peninsular campaign. It served faithfully until floundering off the coast of Cape Hatteras. Propulsion troubles also doomed the Virginia two months after the fateful battle. But the message was clear; the classical days of wooden ships plying their sails to catch the best winds and armed with solid shot would be relegated to the dustbin of history. The two ships and hundreds of men crushed by the Confederate ironclad the day before indicated the insurmountable advantage such technology, when properly developed would yield to navies of the future. Ironclad versus wooden ships resulted in an entirely one sided engagement. Few military observers could have doubted that while it was two ships that were destroyed, the outcome likely would not have changed with twice that many wooden vessels against the ship of iron. The cannons effective against wooden ships could hammer all day at an ironclad with no greater affect than just a few mild dents that did nothing to hamper the ship's effectiveness, nor to endanger the lives of its crew. As long as the ironclad possessed ammunition, it could blast with impunity nearly any number of wooden vessels, which would soon fall out of favor not only in the United States, but Europe as well. Ironclad construction programs throughout the industrialized world not only continued, but accelerated as fast as naval resources and the industrial infrastructure would allow. 6 THE BLOCKADE Earlier administrations had stood firmly against any aggressor that sought to blockade American ports from neutral shipping, 7 in a policy that dovetails with the Monroe doctrine. Yet it soon became apparent that the Confederacy would not relent through any initiative of diplomacy, nor obviously the threat of war – as it was they who fired the first shot. So this brewing crisis with the Confederacy had to be addressed through military options. But in order to defeat the South on the field of battle, the material advantage enjoyed by the Union states would become nullified should the South retain the ability to supplement its larder's through foreign trade, particularly with Great Britain. Thus the blockade became a necessity, as well as the confiscation of black slaves, soon to be, contraband – that any and all means by which the South could sustain further resistance would be cut off. In addition to the physical presence of a larger population with the skills and resources to match, scholars have argued that the North's efforts to capitalize upon material superiority were aided by superior managerial infrastructure. 8 But the Confederacy's objective, was not simply a pipeline of food and provisions – it was military assistance similar to that which the early United States secured from the French during the first revolution. But Britain balked; likely at the prospect of taking the side of slavery. The blockade was an area of great military and political interest, but it was not only union forces that attempted to close off Confederate ports. To press Great Britain into the Confederate camp, Southern diplomats also created a self imposed embargo; cutting off their own flow of cotton voluntarily to Europe, that they might be pressed into service on the Confederate side. But as northern forces made inroads into the South, the Confederacy would lose the ability to turn their cotton pipeline back on again, while Europe secured alternative sources for textiles. The South also had greater naval ambitions for which they would depend upon Britain, for whom they hoped to ameliorate their lack of shipbuilding facilities within the southern states, Britain could have been the South's best hope of constructing a true deep water, ocean going navy. 7 Integral to the North's strategy of embargo was the Anaconda plan, orchestrated by General-in-Chief Winfield Scott. The South must be strangled, constricted that it might be isolated and starved. Northern naval power became the coils of this snake, once the slaveholders were entirely isolated, the region could be cut in half Towards this end, 500 ships were assigned to patrol the 3,500 miles of coastline of the Confederate coast. The Pervasiveness of the blockade and embargo strategy was such that it even necessitated a naval battle in Oklahoma. 9 The steamboat JR Williams was used to resupply the gunships waging a fierce struggle for control of the Mississippi, up to and including the eventual siege and conquest of Vicksburg. During the battle, and fall of Vicksburg the small ship was in the midst of deadly action but escaped unharmed. After the fall of Vicksburg, the JR Williams was to be stationed in the Little Rock Arkansas, in order to transport troops and supplies throughout the length of the Arkansas River. This final, disastrous voyage brings the full spectrum of the War into perspective; as the $120,000 dollars worth of supplies, ($4.2 million when adjusted for modern inflation) was attacked by a force of Confederate Indians. They fired on the vessel from surprise, but this was a ruse to encourage the crew of the ship to flee overboard, intending to return and secure the JR Williams later. But before they could recover the valuable cargo, a pair of waiting rebels boarded the abandoned vessel with the intent of piloting the boat into the hands of the Confederacy. 10 Although the Indian confederates, having lost their homes to the ravages of war themselves rebelled and looted the provisions on board the ship, while Brig. General Stand Watie, unable to control his Indian platoon burned the remainder of the supplies and sunk the ship. THE BLOCKADE RUNNERS Although less dramatic than the fiery exploits of the ironclads, the Confederacy certainly did not underestimate the importance of the blockade runners. The hard necessities of warfare, as well as the consequences of operations such as the Anaconda plan, sparked a number of innovations in the opposite direction compared with ponderous metal behemoths. The blockade runners were like draft, and obviously high-speed vessels. There were several normal, prewar merchant craft that adopted this role – but innovations were made in the interest of constructing entirely new craft to evade the Union Navy, bringing much-needed supplies to the slave states. There were at least 1300 attempts to evade the blockade during the war, made by hundreds of ships. Most dedicated blockade runners were equipped with twin, parallel paddlewheels driven by steam engines, with telescoping funnels - yet they also possess the masts for Schooner rigging in addition to their steam propulsion. 11 Profits both military and economic are possible by supplying the demand created by any such blockade, and the slave-states were in desperate need of such supplies. Principally from Britain; who was nearly as dependent on Dixie cotton as the South was upon English munitions. Tensions strained between Britain and the Northern states for their economic assistance to the Confederacy; and while there were British in support of the South; it was insufficient to plunge the Island Nation into the war on the Southern side. Although the English had voluntarily ended slavery, and were nominally opposed to it, they did have considerable investments in what became the Confederate states; and were willing and able to render assistance to protect their economic interests. The British supplied the Confederacy with new, faster steamships to run the Union blockade. This situation likely would have continued had the Confederacy not willingly embargoed their own cotton supply to force their trading partners into full, military support.12 CONCLUSIONS On land, increased firepower led to disaggregation of large-scale formations, closing with the enemy becomes important. 13 To that end fortifications became more important, in order to prevent these very charges from occurring in the first place. The doctrine being that one rifle behind sturdy earthworks was worth five in front of it. 4 But neither generalship, nor fortification could save the slave-states; arguably weakened in their purpose to the extent that their doctrine of succession prevented a more perfect union. Beringer and other scholars accuse the South of having a weak sense of nationalism.14 In later years the North held a commanding advantage with their material superiority and reliable supply lines, in comparison to the Confederacy. Though in the early years, certainly the South would've maintained the defensive advantage as illustrated by battles such as that which occurred at Fort Wagoner. But the times soon came to an end where Confederate forces could support large fortresses or crew experimental warships The primary importance of the respective navies was to control the resources available to the South, pursuant of Lincoln's policy of cutting off every avenue of sustenance that might prolong the war effort, and the Union Navy's plan to blockade all shipping. There are few land battles where the life or death of thousands of men hinged directly upon naval actions in a tactical way, but the globe-spanning exploits of the competing maritime forces controlled the assets and supplies that made survival and Southern resistance possible. REFERENCES 1.Naval history and heritage command 2011. Action between the US as monitor and CS S Virginia; 9 March, 1862. Accessed 12/5/2011. http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/civilwar/n-at-cst/hr-james/9mar62.htm 2. Anselm, Clement. 1899. Confederate Military History Volume 12. The Confederate Publishing Company 1899. Atlanta. 3.Anderson, Bern. By Sea and By River: The Naval History of the Civil War. New York: Knopf, 1962. 4.Griffith, Paddy. 2001. Battle Tactics of the Civil War. (2001 edition) Redwood Books, Trowbridge, Wiltshire, ISBN: - 0-300-04247-7 5.McPherson, James. 1990. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. (1990) Ballantine Books. 6. AmericanCivilWar.com 2011. Union Navy Ship USS Monitor. Ironclad Armored Turret Gunboat. 7. Rickard, J (1 May 2006), American Civil War: The Blockade and the War at Sea, http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/wars_american_civil_war09_waratsea.html Accessed: 12/5/2011 8. Hattaway, Herman 1991. How the North Won: A Military History of the Civil War, (1991) 9. Cottrel, Steve. Thomas, Andy. 1995. Civil War in the Indian Territory. Pelican Publishing (June 30, 1995) 10. Cottrel, Steve. Thomas, Andy. 1995. Civil War in the Indian Territory. Pelican Publishing (June 30, 1995) 11. Carse, Robert. Blockade: The Civil War at Sea. New York: Rinehart & Co., 1958. 12. Wyllie, Arthur (2007). The Confederate States Navys. Lulu.com. pp. 466. ISBN 978-0-6151-7222 -4. 13. Romjue, John L., (1998) American Army Doctrine for the Post-Cold War, Military History Office of the U.S. Army. 14. Beringer R.E., et al. 1986. Why the South Lost the Civil War (1986) Read More