VICKSBURG Chapter Seventy-Four

One Vicksburg woman remembered that June began with a “clear and unusually warm day. The men sought shelter from the sun's scorching rays beneath the shade of outstretched blankets and in small excavations and huts in the hill sides...” However she was also  forced to admit that it was not only the sun from which the besieged citizens sought protection. “We have slept scarcely none now for two days and two nights.” What was disturbing the lady's sleep were the 200 Federal artillery cannon arrayed against the city.

For Lida Lord (above), daughter of a minister, the siege meant sharing a large cave complex with up to 65 others, “packed in, black and white, like sardines in a box.” Forced underground by the Yankee guns the civilians suffered an endless lists of indignities. “We were...in hourly dread of snakes,” she wrote. “...A large rattlesnake was found one morning under a mattress on which some of us had slept all night.”

An 18 year old Confederate signal corpsman from Virginia, Edward Sanford Gregory, remembered, “...hardly any part of the city was outside the range of the enemy’s artillery. … Just across the Mississippi … mortars were put in position and trained directly on the homes of the people. … Twenty-four hours of each day....their deadly hail of iron dropped through roofs and tore up the deserted and denuded streets. …How many of them came and burst, nobody can have the least idea …”

In fact the Federal commissary had to account for every shell. On average each Yankee gun fired 14 rounds a day - an average one round every 2 minutes. But the guns moored across the river on rafts were not army weapons, but 6 ugly, brutal U.S. Navy 13 inch Seacoast mortars (above)  forged in Pittsburgh,  Pennsylvania. Their squat barrels alone weighed 17,250 pounds, the carriages another ton. These were not mobile artillery, but they were unusually accurate. And they weren't aimed at people's homes. They arched 200 pound projectiles from the DeSoto peninsula and precisely dropped them, half a mile away, at the corner of Washington and First Streets, along the Vicksburg waterfront.

Their target was the foundry operated by Adam Breach Reading and his brother, C.A.. Antebellum the firm had serviced the steamboat trade, and repaired the occasional locomotive (above). 

Once the war broke out they began producing 6 and 12 pound bronze cannon. Their production was only about 2 a month and perhaps 40 in all were cast before the supply of copper was cut off. But day and night the big mortars kept pounding the site, 7,000 shells in all. Occasionally they overshot, in the process destroying the offices of “The Vicksburg Whig” newspaper, and some private homes. Such insults fell into the category of collateral damage.

And these were not the only Naval guns belching fire upon the city. In the original run passed the Vicksburg batteries on the night of 16 April, 1863, the charge had been led by the ironclad USS Benton (above).  She suffered damage that night, and a more serious injury on 29 April during the ironclad duel with rebel guns at Grand Gulf.  Over the last month the Benton had been tied up along the Mississippi shore while her engines were being repaired. But Admiral Porter was never one to let a gun grow cold.

Two 1 ton 42 pound rifled cannons from the USS Benton were off-loaded at the abandoned port town of Warrenton, 2 miles south of Vicksburg. They were manhandled to within range of the South Fort (above), where they were operated by a detachment from the 34^th Iowa Infantry, and commanded by a Missouri artillery lieutenant named Joseph Atwater,   Battery Benton began to methodically pound the South Fort into silence. 

At the opposite end of the 5 mile long Federal line was Battery Selfridge, whose weapons were navy owned and operated – operated in this case by the very brave and the often sunk, Thomas Oliver Selfridge.

The outbreak of the civil war found the 26 year old naval lieutenant, and son of a Naval Captain, Thomas Selfridge (above),  in command of the 6 gun forward battery aboard the 50 gun frigate the USS Cumberland. 

On Saturday, 8 March, 1862, the Cumberland was rammed and sunk by the Confederate Ironclad CSS Virginia. Thomas did not allow his men to abandon their guns until ordered to do so, despite their shots failing to penetrate the iron skin of the rebel ship. 

As reward for his bravery, Thomas was then given command of the first Yankee submarine, the 47 foot long USS Alligator. She broke down on a test cruise up the Potomac, and had to be towed back to the naval yard by a passing schooner (above). Disgusted with the sub, and having lost his place in the promotion line for the blue water navy, Thomas now begged a transfer to the brown water navy.

In November he was promoted to Lieutenant Commander, and given command of the city class ironclad the USS Cairo, with a crew of 215 men and officers. On Thursday, 11 December, 1862, the USS Cairo was steaming up the rain swollen Yazoo river,  following 2 tin-clad gun boats, the USS Marmora and the Signal. When they suspected trouble and slowed, the impatient Lieutenant Commander Selfridge steamed ahead and ran into two torpedoes (above). The ironclad went down in  only 12 minutes, luckily without any loss of life. The "Oft Sunk" Thomas was then transferred to gun boats in less exposed positions. But he still kept pushing to get in the fight.

On 27 May of 1863, the ironclad USS Cincinnati had been sunk in 18 feet of water just north of the Vicksburg lines. Naval engineers were able to quickly raise three 9,200 pound 8 inch Columbiad cannons from the wreck. The first week in June these were mounted atop Steele's Hill, in “Battery Selfridge” (above), manned by crewmen from the USS Cairo, and commanded by its namesake. At least on land the "oft sunk" Lieutenant could not be sunk so easily.

On Saturday, 6 June, 1863, one of the Navy's mortar shells punctured the roof of the 4 story tall Washington Hotel (above, at the corner of Washington and China Street hill). Luckily the shell exploded on contact, only destroying three adjacent storage rooms. The hotel had been converted into a hospital, and as yet did not have many patients. So the only person injured was a surgeon whose leg was so mangled it had to be amputated. But the round also destroyed most the rebel morphine and quinine supplies.  The siege had not begun well for the rebel forces.

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