Cruise of the CS Stonewall / Part I

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.