“General Lovell-Captain, James C. Dellaney; Purser, Hardy; First Officer, Thomas Johnson; Pilot, William Cable.

Commodore of the fleet, J. E. Montgomery.

"The Federal fleet consisted of sixteen mortar-boats, six rams, and eight gunboats, besides any number of tugs and transports.'

Col. Ellet's dispatch to Secretary of War Stanton is as follows:

"OPPOSITE MEMPHIS, June 6th, via Cairo, June 8th.

"To Hon. E. M. Stanton, Secretary of War:

"The rebel gunboats made a stand early this morning opposite Memphis, and opened a vigorous fire upon our gunboats, which was returned with equal spirit. I ordered the Queen, my flag-ship, to pass between the gunboats and move down ahead of them upon the two rams of the enemy, which first boldly stood their ground.

Lieut. Col. Ellet, in the Monarch, of which Capt. Dryden is First Master, followed gallantly. The rebel rams endeavored to back down stream, and then to turn and run, but the movement was fatal to them. The Queen struck one of them fairly, and for a few minutes was fast to the wreck. After separating, the rebel steamer sunk. My steamer, the Queen, was then herself struck by another rebel steamer and disabled, but, though damaged, can be repaired. A pistol-shot wound in the leg deprived me of the power to witness the remainder of the fight.

"The Monarch also passed ahead of our gunboats, and went most gallantly into action. She first struck the rebel boat that struck my flagship and sunk the rebel. She was then struck by one of the rebel rams, but not injured. She then pushed on and struck the Beauregard and burst open her side. Simultaneously, the Beauregard was struck in the boiler by a shot from one of our gunboats.

"The Monarch then pushed at the gunboat Little Rebel, the rebel flag-ship, and having but little headway pushed her before her, the rebel commodore and crew escaping. The Monarch then finding the Beaure gard sinking, took her in tow until she sank in shoal water. Then, in compliance with the request of Commander Davis, Lieut. Col. Ellet dispatched the Monarch and the Switzerland in pursuit of the one remaining gunboat and some transports which had escaped the gunboats.

"Two of my rams have gone below.

"I cannot too much praise the conduct of the pilots and engineers and military guard of the Monarch and Queen, the brave conduct of Capt. Dryden, or the heroic bearing_of Lieut. Col. Ellet. I will name all parties to you in a special report. I am myself the only person in my fleet who was disabled.

[Signed]

CHARLES ELLET, "Col. Commanding Ram Fleet.”

This dispatch was also sent to the Federal War Department:

"OPPOSITE MEMPHIS, June 6th, via Cairo, 8th. "Hon. Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War:

"It is proper and due to the brave men on the Queen and the Monarch to say to you briefly that two of the rebel steamers were sunk outright and immediately by the shock of my two rams, one with a large amount of cotton, etc., on board was disabled by accidental collision with the Queen, and secured by her crew, after I was personally disabled.

Another, which was also hit by a shot from the gunboats, was sunk by the Monarch, and towed to shoal water by that boat. Still another, also injured by the fire of our gunboats, was pushed in to the shore and secured by the Monarch. Of the gunboats I can only say that they bore themselves, as our navy always does, bravely and well.

[Signed]

CHAS. ELLET, JR., "Col. Commanding Ram Fleet."

This battle between the ram fleets on the Mississippi very nearly destroyed the River Defence expedition, and demonstrated the folly which conceived and executed a plan of defence expensive and inefficient, and which, intrusted to men incapable of commanding because unwilling to obey, was certain to meet with an early and ruinous defeat.

Neither the Navy Department nor any naval officer was at any time identified with this fleet, and, as whatever it accomplished belongs to those commanding it, so the responsibility for its failure, destruction and expense rest on the C. S. War Department.

The city of Memphis, being without defences of any kind, was surrendered to the Federal authorities, and the Mississippi from Cairo to Vicksburg was open to navigation by Federal gunboats; but its banks, infested with guerrilla bands, still rendered its use too hazardous for trade and business.1

1 On the morning of the 6th of June, Brig. Gen. M. Jeff. Thompson and Capt. Montgomery were given by Gen. Beauregard joint command of the River Defence. It proved a very short and a very inefficient defence-for at 12:30 A. M. on the 6th, after receiving Gen. Beauregard's dispatch, Gen. Thompson reports, June 7th, that he "immediately wrote a note to the Commodore (Montgomery), asking what I should do to co-operate with him. He requested two companies of artillery to be sent aboard at daybreak (all of my men were at the depot awaiting transportation to Grenada). I at once ordered the companies to hold themselves in readiness. At the dawn of day I was awakened with the information that the enemy were actually in sight of Memphis. I hurried on board to consult with Montgomery. He instructed me to hurry my men to Fort Pickering Landing, and sent a tug to bring them up to the gunboats, which were advancing to attack the enemy. I hastened my men to the place indicated, but before we reached it our boats had been either destroyed or driven below Fort Pickering, and I marched back to the depot to come to this place (Grenada) to await orders.

"I saw a large portion of the engagement from the river bank, and am sorry to say that in my opinion many of our men were handled badly, as the plan of battle was very faulty. The enemy's rams (Col. Ellet's fleet) did most of the execution, and were handled more adroitly than ours; I think, however, entirely owing to the fact that the guns and sharp-shooters of the enemy were constantly employed, while we were almost without either. The Colonel Lovell was so injured that she sank in the middle of the river; her captain, Jas. Delancy, and anumber of others, swam ashore. The Beauregard and Price were running at the Monarch (Yankee) from opposite sides, when the Monarch passed from between them, and the Beauregard ran into the Price, knocking off her wheel-house, and entirely disabling her. Both were run to the Arkansas shore and abandoned. The Little Rebel, commodore's flag-boat, was run ashore and abandoned after she had been completely riddled, and I am satisfied the commodore was killed. The battle continued down the river. out of sight of Memphis, and it is reported that only two of our boats, the Bragg and Van Dorn, escaped."

A

CHAPTER XII.

BUILDING A NAVY AT NEW ORLEANS.

MONG the earliest acts of the C. S. Navy Department, March 17th, 1861, for the increase of the navy, was the appointment of a commission, consisting of Commander L. Rousseau. Commander E. Farrand, and Lieut. Robert T. Chapman, to purchase and contract for building the ten gunboats authorized by Acts of Congress, March 15th and August 19th, 1861, which were to be ship-rigged propellers of 1,000 tons burden, capable of carrying at least one ten-inch and four eight-inch guns. These vessels were to be of light draft and great speed. The commission entered upon its duties early in April, 1861, at New Orleans, and at Algiers opposite, where there were several ship-yards which had been formerly largely engaged in building and repairing river craft of all descriptions; but no war vessel had ever been built at New Orleans.

The commission did not find at New Orleans one vessel suitable for war purposes, but upon instructions from the Secretary it examined and purchased the Habanna and the Marquis de la Habanna, the former becoming the Sumter and the latter the McRae. Instructions for building vessels were given to Commander Rousseau, at New Orleans, on March 27th, and upon his report, after examination on April 22d, the steampropeller Florida was purchased and fitted up for service on the lakes. An ineffectual effort was made to purchase a steamer offered for sale by Hollingsworth & Co., of Wilmington, Del., but the vessel failed to reach New Orleans. The Star of the West, captured in Texas, was used as a receivingship, as she was not adapted to war purposes. Commander Rousseau, after a thorough examination of all the facilities at New Orleans for rolling iron plates, ascertained and reported that it was not possible to roll plates from 2 to 5 inches in thickness in any shop in New Orleans. His examination of the steamer Miramon was not favorable; but on the 9th of May he purchased the steamer Yankee, which was afterwards called the Jackson, and fitted her out, and with the McRae sent them

up the river to Columbus, Ky. In Federal accounts of upriver operations this vessel is always styled the Yankee.

On the 21st of May, 1861, Congress enacted a law, amending the tenth section of the act, recognizing a state of war with the United States; so that, in addition to the bounty therein mentioned, the government of the Confederate States would pay to the cruisers of any private armed vessel commissioned under said act twenty per cent. on the value of such vessel belonging to the enemy as may be destroyed by such private armed vessel. Under that act, the ram Manassas was built at New Orleans by private subscription; but after Commodore Hollins' successful clearing of the enemy's fleet from the mouth of the Mississippi River, on the 12th of October, 1861, the Manassas was purchased by the C. S. government.

The Manassas was constructed out of the Enoch Train, built in Boston, in 1855, by J. O. Curtis. Her correct dimensions were: Length on deck, 128 feet; breadth of beam, 26 feet; depth of hold, 12 feet 6 inches; depth of hold to spar deck, 12 feet 6 inches; draft of water, when loaded, 11 feet; 387 tons burden. Her frame, when built, was of white oak, and cross-fastened with iron and tree-nails. Her engine was of the inclined description, with two cylinders 36 inches in diameter, and a stroke of piston of 2 feet 8 inches. She was a propeller. Her machinery was constructed by Harrison Loring, of Boston; Capt. John A. Stephenson, a commission merchant of New Orleans, undertook the conversion of the Enoch Train. She was built up with massive beams, seventeen inches in thickness, making a solid bow of twenty feet, and fastening them in the most substantial manner. Over this impenetrable mass was a complete covering of iron plates, riveted together, and fitted in such a way as to render her bomb-proof. Her only entrance was through a trap-door in

her back, and her port cover sprang back as the gun was withdrawn. Her shape above water was nearly that of half a sharply pointed egg- shell, so that a shot would glance from her no matter where it struck. Her back was formed of twelve-inch oak, covered with one-and-a-half-inch bar-iron. She had two chimneys so arranged as to slide down in time of action. The pilot-house was in the stern of the boat. She was worked by a powerful propeller, but could not stem a strong current. She carried only one gun, a sixtyeight-pounder, in her bow. To prevent boarding, the engine was provided with pumps for ejecting steam and scalding water from the boiler over the whole surface. Such was the craft which in the earliest days of the war the enterprising people of New Orleans, without aid from city, State or Confederacy, contrived, and which proved not only, as Capt. Hollins said, the "most troublesome vessel of them all" at the fight at the passage of the forts, but which cleared the river in October, 1861, of the blockading fleet.

In the interval between March 17th, 1861, and February 1st, 1862, the utmost efforts of the Navy Department were made to put afloat a naval force competent to meet that being prepared at St. Louis by the United States. To that end, river boats were purchased and converted, not into gunboats, but into steamboats with guns on them. They were side-wheel steamboats of light draft, and though substantially built for commercial uses, were too frail to withstand the effect of heavy ordnance. They had no rails and no breast-works, but were pierced for eight or nine guns. Their armament was old navy smooth-bore forty-two-pounders, with a rifle thirty-twopounder to each boat.

The movements of the enemy's fleet down the river compelled Commodore Hollins, in December, 1861, to take his improvised fleet of steamboats up the river. This was composed of the General Polk, the Ivy, the Livingston, the Maurepas, the McRae and the Manassas, which last was, as we have stated, sheathed with one and one-half inches of iron. In January and February, 1862, the Bienville, Ponchartrain and Carondelet were completed, all of which were also converted river boats. The Livingston, built by Hughes & Co., under contract with the Secretary of the Navy, had more of the pretensions of a gunboat than any of the others; she was completed on the keel of a ferry or tow-boat, laid before hostilities began, and was more substantially constructed than her

consorts.

The floating batteries New Orleans and Memphis, the gunboats Mobile and the Leger, in Berwick's Bay, the St. Mary's and the Calhoun, with twenty-six fire-boats, were all prepared, and, as far as they were capable of being adapted to war purposes, were completed in less than nine months at New Orleans alone.