Duel Between the First Ironclads by William C. Davis

Author:William C. Davis [Davis, William C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-81750-1
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-04-24T16:00:00+00:00

The ironclad was entirely enshrouded in the smoke from the battle. Few aboard could see anything of what was happening on the Cumberland, but Buchanan knew that she was sinking and felt that now it was time to turn to the Congress. To do so required that the ironclad turn around, as she was facing up the James River channel. Because of the ship’s slow speed and sluggish steering, made worse by the shallowness of the channel here, Buchanan had to run her up the river some distance and then begin a wide, slow turn. Her keel dragged in the mud throughout. As she turned, the vessel came in for fire from Federal batteries at Newport News, and replied in kind, with little damage done on either side. The men aboard the Congress, thinking that the Virginia was withdrawing from the fight by pulling up the James, began cheering wildly. They stopped abruptly when the ironclad slowly turned back toward the Roads. Buchanan, meanwhile, was heartily cheered when, in looking up the James, he saw Commander John R. Tucker bringing the James River Squadron down to his assistance. Before the fight, Buchanan had advised Tucker to come down the river and run past the enemy batteries at Newport News if he heard firing in Hampton Roads. Now Tucker appeared with the gunboats Patrick Henry, Teaser, and Jamestown. The latter two successfully ran the batteries, but Patrick Henry took a shot in her boiler and had to be towed out of the action until it was repaired. The others stayed behind the Virginia, ready to obey Buchanan’s orders.29

While the ironclad turned, Parker’s Beaufort kept up the fire it had trained on the Congress since the action began. Parker was aided for a time by the Raleigh, but soon that ship’s one and only gun was temporarily disabled and it had to pull out of the action. Meanwhile, Parker maintained his fire, though he failed to do the Congress much damage. Encouraging as this was to the Federals on board, they were even more heartened to see the Roanoke, the Minnesota, and now the St. Lawrence steaming to their aid. But the already ailing Roanoke barely got past Sewell’s Point before she ran aground. The Minnesota, meanwhile, advanced considerably farther before she, too, ran aground on what was called the “middle ground”—a shallows in the middle of the Roads that divided it into north and south channels. Van Brunt had hoped he could force the ship over, but found himself stuck fast. The frigate St. Lawrence, a fifty-two-gun giant commanded by Captain H. Y. Purviance, had come to the Chesapeake two days before to relieve the Congress. She did not learn of what was happening in Hampton Roads until two-thirty, and came in considerably behind the other two frigates. Yet she, too, would eventually ground—not far from the Minnesota. They opened on the Virginia with whatever guns they could bring to bear, but the range was too great to have any effect.

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