Jeff Shaara's Civil War Battlefields by Jeff Shaara

Author:Jeff Shaara [Shaara, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-345-49384-2
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2006-04-24T16:00:00+00:00

The USS Cairo

THOUGH HOUSED WITHIN THE BOUNDARIES OF THE PARK, THE Cairo is not technically a participant in the siege of Vicksburg. But it is one of the most significant artifacts of the entire war.

The gunboat is constructed in late 1861, one of several ironclads designed to take the Union navy’s fight up the waterways of the South. The technology is then less than a decade old, layering the exterior surfaces of wooden boats with thick plates of iron, making them considerably less vulnerable to cannon fire. But there is genius in the design that goes beyond armor. In order to have any usefulness in the frequently shallow depths of the rivers, the gunboats must have a shallow draft and a relatively flat bottom. The challenge for the engineers is to add the weight of the iron and still allow the boat to float and maneuver in shallow water. Seven gunboats are commissioned by the U.S. government, and the contract is awarded to engineer James Eads. As a testament to Eads’s skills at both design and construction, the seven ships are built and delivered within one hundred days from the signing of his contract. Among them is the Cairo.

She is 175 feet in length, weighs nearly nine hundred tons, yet can float in only seven feet of water. The boat is well armed, and though slow, with a speed of only six knots, she is considered virtually impervious to any land-based artillery the rebels might throw at her. But the Cairo does have a vulnerability, shared by all the boats of this design. Below the waterline, there is no armor.

On December 12, 1862, the Cairo accompanies several other small vessels up the Yazoo River, seeking to clear the river of obstructions, part of Grant’s cooperative plan with the navy. She carries a crew of 175 men, commanded by Lieutenant Commander Thomas Selfridge, an outstanding naval officer who was first in his class at Annapolis. As the Cairo begins its push slowly up the Yazoo River, she is suddenly rocked by a sharp blast from beneath her port side. She has been struck by a Confederate mine. The mine, constructed of a five-gallon glass jug of gunpowder and attached to the shore with a rope and a copper wire, is ignited by an electrical charge by rebels who must surely be astonished and delighted to watch the ironclad settling into the muddy bottom of the Yazoo in only twelve minutes. No lives are lost, and the entire crew escapes to be picked up by another of the Union vessels.

The Cairo sinks in thirty-six feet of muddy water, so her smokestacks are still visible. To prevent the rebels from possibly looting what remained below the surface, the other navy vessels destroy any evidence of the Cairo’s location, making her difficult to find.

And difficult it is. The Cairo lies buried in the mud of the Yazoo for nearly a century, guarded by layers of sunken trees and other debris. But local fishermen have

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