VICKSBURG Chapter Fifty-Five

 

While the oarsmen steadied the dingie, two young ensigns – one barely fourteen - clambered over the gunwale and splashed into the knee deep water. It was broad daylight, ten minutes after 1:00 pm on Tuesday, 12 May, 1863. And the Yankees were here to play pirates.

With extra pistols and knives jammed into their belts and boot tops, stripped of their jackets and hats, carrying no symbols of rank, the would-be buccaneers rushed up the muddy bank and struggled for a foothold in the cotton stockade wall, until the elder lad pulled the smaller onto the top of the barricade. Turning, they discovered, laid out before them as if in a Brady daguerreotype....

...the entire garrison of the cotton fortress of Warrington, Mississippi.  Three hundred drowsy men, playing cards, cooking ersatz coffee, sewing worn garments, in the building heat of the day, but every man within arm's reach of their weapons.

There was a long moment of stunned surprise, while each side examined the other, and processed their own shock. The only sound was the panting of the two Yankees. The only movement were the wisps of wood smoke rising from the occasional smoldering fire. Then, an instant before rebel gunners managed to uproot their legs, the bareheaded pirate ensigns shouted, pulled their revolvers and began blazing away.

The gunners dove for cover behind their massive cannon. And after a frenzied moment of shouting and shooting, like schoolboys caught in a prank, the Yankees disappeared, tumbled back down the bank, and into the dingie, screaming for the oarsmen to PULL AWAY!  Minnie balls cut the muddy brown river surface.  Chipped paint flew off the off the dingie's stern, and even clanked off the iron slope of the black behemoth lurking far too close in shore. And after a moment, a great blast of white smoke erupted from the monster. The crew of the dingie instinctively ducked while the shell tore the air inches over their heads, and the ground rattled as a it slammed into the cotton facade at point blank range.

It was a grand and foolish adventure, inspired by 2 weeks of unremitting boredom. Aboard the black ironclad - the very type of ship which had rendered pirates "romantic"  -  reveille sounded at 5:00 each morning, and the Jack's spent the next 3 ½ hours swabbing decks and bringing the 13 cannon and 2 engines to a spit shine. At 8:00 came breakfast, and at 9:30, inspection. In the forenoon they had to replace the 6,000 pounds of black dusty coal burned each day, just to keep up half steam, It was the always burning engines which earned the ironclads the nickname, Federal Bake Ovens. The lunch mess was at noon, and in the afternoon the crew ran drills. The dinner mess was at 4:00, followed by the dog watches and battle quarters again at 5:30. The 8:00 p.m. tattoo darkened and silenced the ship, except for the constant rhythmic thump, thump, thump of the sweating engines. Day after day . Four hours on and four hours off, until the crew were desperate for anything to break the monotony.

This raid – if you could call it that - had been conceived by USS Mound City's 25 year old Ohio born commanding officer, Lieutenant Byron Wilson (above). Lurking below Vicksburg over the past two weeks, the Lieutenant was intrigued when gunners in the newly built fortress at Warrenton, 3 miles south of the Vicksburg docks, had ceased firing at his ship, The new fort was built of cotton bales covered with logs,  And while clearly not finished, it was already extensive and maned. But the soldiers inside had even stopped showing their heads above the parapets.   It seemed unlikely they would evacuate such a recently invested position, but when they remained hidden this morning, Tuesday, 12 May of 1863,  Wilson decided to give the “Johnny Rebs” a poke.

One after the other, all 4 starboard guns of The Mound City (above) blasted the into the rebel bales, splintering the logs and shaking the entire fortification. The ship's engine room went to full speed, and the hidden stern paddle thrashed at the water, trying desperately to push the 510 ton ironclad out of range.  A brave lad remained on the stern deck long enough to toss a line to the dingie, and secure it to an iron toggle. And for a few minutes the landlubbers and seamen aboard the dingie enjoyed a 9 knott taste of a Nantucket sleigh ride, with the added thrill of 30 pound rebel cannon shot skipping across the water, threatening to decapitate or obliterate them at any moment.

Painful death was the ironclad crew's constant companion. The year before, in June of 1862, under 52 year old Lieutenant Augustus Henry Kilty, the Mound City had suffered what was generally agreed to have been the “deadliest shot of the war” (above, center). Probably through a hatch left open to lessen the suffocating heat inside her iron shell, a rebel shot cleanly penetrated to the metal water jacket enclosing the ship's engine. No other damaged was sustained. But in an instant the entire vessel was filled with pressurized steam. Over a hundred men were instantly scalded to death. Another 45 crewmen suffered 2^nd and 3^rd degree burns. Many jumped overboard, only to be shot by snipers along the Arkansas shore.  Lieutenant Kilty's left arm was so deeply charred, it had to be amputated.  Towed out of danger, the ship was quickly repaired, but the psychic wounds were not fully mended until the Mound City escaped the rebel guns of Warrington, without a scratch.

But what capped the legend of the adventure of the two ensigns was what happened next. One of Mound City's cannon shots - perhaps the first - ignited a smoldering fire within the splintered wood and cotton bales which proved impossible to extinguish. Within 15 minutes the work was ablaze, and in less than an hour the entire fort defending Warrington was destroyed. 

Rebel gunners dragged off their ordinance, to strengthen defenses closer to the city. And without losing a man the Yankee navy won yet another victory over the Confederate engineers.  Before the army had even laid Vicksburg under siege, the navy was tightening the walls around the defenders.

As a reward for his initiative, Lieutenant Bryon Wilson would be promoted a grade, to Lieutenant Commander. And within a year he would be given a semi-independent command, of the captured southern sidewheel steamboat renamed the USS Ouachita. With it came a share of the prize money from the sale of any rebel ships and cargo which he captured. After serving in the Asiatic Squadron  post war, in 1893 Byron Wilson would retire as a full captain,  and would die 3 years later.   One of last real swashbucklers in the United States Navy.

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