Farragut and Our Naval Commanders
By Hon. J. T. Headley
A companion volume to Headley’s "Grant and Sherman". Comprising the early life and public services of the prominent naval commanders who, with Grant and Sherman and their generals, brought to a triumphant close the great rebellion of 1861-1865.
(First edition 1867)
Page numbers refer to the original book.
Chapter IModern Science in Naval Warfare
Page 33-45 / Chapter XII
Rear-Admiral Charles H. Davis
Page 252-270 / Chapter XXIII*
Rear-Admiral John A. Dahlgren
Page 456-495
Chapter II
Admiral David Glascoe Farragut
Page 46-102 / Chapter XIII
Commander Homer C. Blake
Page 271-287 / Chapter XXIV
Rear-Admiral Hiram Paulding
Page 496-502
Chapter III
Rear-Admiral Charles Wilkes
Page 103-111 / Chapter XIV
Commodore John A. Winslow
Page 288-319 / Chapter XXV
Rear-Admiral James S. Palmer
Page 503-511
Chapter IV
Rear-Admiral Silas H. Stringham
Page 112-122 / Chapter XV
Rear-Admiral David D. Porter
Page 320-382 / Chapter XXVI
Captain John L. Worden
Page 512-522
Chapter V
Rear-Admiral Samuel F. Dupont
Page 123-151 / Chapter XVI
Commander William B. Cushing
Page 383-399 / Chapter XXVII
Rear-Admiral Henry H. Bell
Page 523-529
Chapter VI
Rear-Admiral Andrew H. Foote
Page 152-181 / Chapter XVII
Rear-Admiral Stephen C. Rowan
Page 400-415 / Chapter XXVIII
Commodore Melancthon Smith
Page 530-541
Chapter VIII*
Commodore Charles S. Boggs
Page 182-195 / Chapter XVIII
Commodore Samuel P. Lee
Page 416-421 / Chapter XXIX
Commodore John Rodgers
Page 542-547
Chapter IX
Rear-Admiral Louis M. Goldsborough
Page 196-208 / Chapter XIX
Commodore Thornton A. Jenkins
Page 422-425 / Chapter XXX***
Rear-Admiral Thomas T. Craven
Page 568-575
Chapter X
Colonel Charles Ellet
Page 209-223 / Chapter XX
Rear-Admiral Henry K. Thatcher
Page 426-434
Chapter XI
Rear-Admiral Theodorus Bailey
Page 224-251 / Chapter XXI
Commodore William D. Porter
Page 435-455
*No Chapter VII or XXII.
**This twenty-page gap is for the illustrations.
***Chapter XXX also mentions: Rear-Admiral Charles H. Bell , Rear-Admiral George F. Pearson , Rear-Admiral Sylvanus Godon , Rear-Admiral Lardner, Rear-Admiral Gregory , Rear-Admiral William Radford , Commodores Henry Walke, James Alden , James Mckinstry, Oliver S. Glisson, Augustus H. Kilty, John B. Marchand, Wm. Rodgers Taylor, Benjamin F. Sands, Daniel B. Ridgely, and Captain Percival Drayton
Pages 33-45
CHAPTER I.
MODERN SCIENCE IN NAVAL WARFARE
EARLIEST NAVAL ENGAGEMENT ON RECORD—BATTLE OF SALAMIS—ROMAN MODE OF FIGHTING—ANCIENT ENGINES AND IMPLEMENTS OF DESTRUCTION—CANNON FIRST USED IN NAVAL COMBATS.—THE TERRIBLE BATTLE OF LEPANTO—RAPIDITY WITH WHICH ANCIENT NAVAL EXPEDITIONS WERE FITTED OUT—IMPROVEMENT IN SHIPBUILDING—THE PAIXHAN GUN—EXPLOSION OF SHELLS BY CONCUSSION—OUR SECOND WAR WITH ENGLAND—ASTOUNDING RESULTS OF THE VARIOUS COMBATS—CHIEF CAUSE OF OUR VICTORIES—SIGHTS ON CANNON—INFERIORITY OF OUR NAVY AT THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE REBELLION—IMPROVEMENTS IN GUNS—DAHLGREN GUN—DESCRIPTION OF THE PARROTT GUN—CONSTRUCTION OF IRON-CLADS—THE MONITOR, GALENA, AND IRON!SIDES—FOUNDATION OF THE IRON-CLAD NAVY—STRENGTH OF THE NAVY AT THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE WAR—ITS DIVISION—EXTENT OF COAST TO BE BLOCKADED—NUMBER OF VESSELS BUILT AND PURCHASED—EUROPE ON THE BLOCKADE—ENGLAND—SOUTHERN EFFORTS TO BREAK THE BLOCKADE—BLOCKADE RUNNERS—NUMBER CAPTURED THE FIRST YEAR—TOTAL NUMBER DURING THE WAR—INCREASE OF OUR NAVAL FORCE DURING THE WAR—AMOUNT EXPENDED BY OUR NAVY DEPARTMENT.
Modern science has worked greater changes in naval warfare since the breaking out of the recent rebellion than ever before in the same period of time. These changes have been not only in the size and destructive power of cannons, but in the mode of constructing ships of war.
The earliest naval engagement on record was fought by Eurythus, a prince who controlled the Red Sea. The most noted one of ancient times was that of Salamis, between the Greeks and Persians. The fleet of the latter consisted of twelve hundred galleys, manned by five hundred thousand men, while the former had but four hundred vessels. Xerxes caused his throne to be placed on a mountain overlooking the scene of combat, in which he sat surrounded with secretaries, pen in hand, to note the heroic deeds of individual commanders, and to mark the laggards in the conflict. The mountain ridges near the Acropolis and the Hill of Mars were crowded with spectators of the fight, which ended in the dispersion and destruction of the whole Persian fleet. This was five hundred years before Christ.
The Romans were accustomed to advance to the attack with their galleys arranged in the form of a triangle-the admiral’s vessel at the head. Then, as now, human ingenuity multiplied the engines of destruction. Turrets were erected on the prow or stern, from which arrows could be discharged in showers; huge engines arose from the centre, from which rocks were hurled with a power that sent them, like round-shot, through the bottoms of the vessels; battering-rams swung from the masts, to beat in their sides; while pots of live coals and melted pitch and combustible compounds were added to the battle-axe and spear. It is said that the ancestor of Hannibal threw pots of live and poisonous serpents on board his enemy’s ships, which, darting around on deck, spread consternation among the crew.
The invention of cannon introduced a new element into naval warfare. The Venetians and Genoese, the great naval powers of the 16th century, first used them in naval combats. The first great battle fought after their introduction was that of Lepanto, in 1571, between the Venetians and Spanish on one side, and the Turks on the other, in which the great question was decided whether Christianity or Mohammedanism should control Northern Europe. The Turks had two hundred and thirty galleys and transports, with six vessels carrying heavy artillery. The Christians had two hundred and fifty, manned with fifty thousand men. Nearly five hundred vessels, with two mighty armies on board, met in mortal combat. No time was lost in distant firing, for the vessels rushed on each other in a close death-grapple. Modern naval warfare furnishes no such an imposing array of force. It was a frightful struggle, and when it closed nearly a hundred of the Turkish vessels had sunk to the bottom of the sea, and twenty-five thousand men lay dead on the decks, or had disappeared beneath the waves, Ten thousand Christians also had fallen, making the total number of victims in this terrific sea-fight thirty-five thousand. Such a loss of life in a naval combat at the present day can hardly be conceived of.
In those old barbarous times, as we are accustomed to call them, grand naval expeditions were fitted out with a rapidity that even in these days would be regarded with astonishment. Rome once fitted out an immense fleet in ninety days after the trees were standing in the forest. Pisa built and equipped a fleet, to sail against the king of Syracuse, of two hundred and twenty vessels in forty-five days.
War-vessels kept pace with improvements in ship building, till huge fabrics with three gun-decks, and throwing a terrific amount of metal in a single broadside, were launched by the great maritime powers of the world.
Hollow shot or shells were very early introduced into the navy; but being thrown from mortars, were used chiefly in assailing fortified places on land. The Paixhan gun, though invented by an American, about 1812, received but little attention here until it was introduced into France by Captain Paixhan. This was a great improvement in naval warfare, for with this piece of ordnance shells were fired point-blank like round-shot. Before they were thrown in a curve, and hence of but little use on the water. The explosion of shells by concussion was a great step forward. With this exception, however, the improvement in cannon was very slight. There is, however, a great difference between the howitzer of 1693 and the Dahlgren howitzer, which is used for firing grape and canister at close quarters.
In our second war with England we made a great stride forward in naval warfare. England had been regarded by the world as “mistress of the sea," and the attempt to contend with her on her favorite element was considered the world over to be a piece of madness on our part.
The first conflict took place between the Constitution and Guerrière, and lasted less than an hour, yet so terribly was the English frigate cut up, that she went down in the waves while yet crimson with the blood of her slain. In the single-handed fight that occurred not long after between the United States and Macedonian, the latter had a third of her- entire crew and officers, numbering three hundred men, killed and wounded, while the American frigate lost but twelve, all told. So also the United States suffered but very little in her hull, while the Macedonian received a hundred shot below her bulwarks. In the fight between the Constitution and Java, the former came out of it with every spar standing, and ready for another antagonist, while the latter resembled a slaughter-pen, and sank a helpless wreck to the bottom. In nearly every contest the same result followed. Not only were we the victors, but the disparity between the killed in the two ships, and the frightful manner in which the enemy was cut up, while we suffered but little, caused the most unbounded astonishment. The English accounted for it on the ground of a slight difference in the weight of the respective broadsides, or attributed it to mere accident. We made as great a mistake in boasting that our success arose from superior bravery or seamanship. The simple truth was, we had introduced an improvement in gunnery, of which the English at that time were ignorant. We had placed sights on our cannon. The English regulated their firing by a pendulum, swinging in the square of the hatchway, by which the inclination of the ship was indicated, and which enabled them to know when the guns were in a horizontal position, and thus, if in a smooth sea, on a level with the hostile ship. But with a vessel rolling on a swell it was a very uncertain guide. On the contrary, we had sights on the guns, sometimes on the muzzle-ring, answering to the forward sight of the rifle, and sometimes tubes were laid along the gun, and capable of being adjusted to suit the range. Hence our gunners took aim when they fired, and the consequence was, that in a broadside engagement, we, in an incredibly short space of time, made a wreck of the enemy. This rifle-practice with cannon on board ships was an entirely new thing in naval warfare.
This new improvement was soon adopted by the naval powers of Europe, and others made, so that at the commencement of the recent civil war, our navy was hardly equal to one of the third-rate maritime powers. The country was living on the fame of its former achievements, and had we been suddenly thrown into war with either France or England, we would have been amazed and mortified at the sorry exhibition our navy would have made. Our ports would have been blockaded and our ships shut up in harbors, until we could have built vessels and created a navy of respectable proportions. We were, however, making improvements in guns as well as England. The Dahlgren gun differs from ordinary cannon only in that the metal is taken from the forward part of the piece and put around the breech. The great strain always being in the back part of a cannon, the strength is concentrated here, so that a Dahlgren gun and one constructed on the old principle of the same weight, would have very different calibers-the former throwing a much larger shot. Almost endless experiments have been made to make guns of large caliber that would be safe. The casting of so large a mass as a gun that should be capable of throwing one hundred or two hundred pound shot, and yet have it, in the cooling process, retain its strength, was very difficult. Throwing a jet of water in the bore while the atmosphere cooled the outside has overcome some of the difficulty.
The rifled cannon of Parrott attracted but little attention from the public at large, until the breaking out of the war. It seems strange that the superior accuracy of the rifle to the musket did not suggest rifled cannon before, but the great difficulty was to make any large iron ball fit so closely as to get a spiral motion from the grooves. This was at last overcome by having the ball long instead of round, and slightly conical, and a band of copper metal around the base, which would expand into the grooves by the air being forced underneath it when the charge was fired. A tumbling shot from a rifled piece would, of course, be worse than a round shot from a smooth bore.
But a charge of thirty or forty pounds of powder required great strength in the breech of the piece, and to secure this, Parrott resorted to an ingenious contrivance. After the gun was cast, the surface of the breech was made of polished smoothness. Then a wrought-iron bar, several inches square, was rolled by machinery into a spiral coil, and the inside dressed off perfectly smooth, yet a fraction too small in bore to slip over the gun. This was then heated to make it expand, when it was driven over the breech. Contracting in cooling, it hugged the piece almost as close as though it had been welded to it. This wrought-iron reinforcement gives the rifled cannon prodigious strength, for the strain on the former is lengthwise of the metal. The various English rifled guns, such as the Whitworth, Armstrong, and others, differ only in the manner of producing the spiral motion of the shot or in being breech-loading.