Your Affectionate Son -- The Gunboat Cincinnati Sinks before Vicksburg

The Gunboat Cincinnati Sinks before Vicksburg, Miss.

When the Cincinnati was lowered from the weighs at Carondelet she was really a brand new gunboat. All her injuries had been repaired and on her wheel deck was a nice round turret for protection against guerrillas who made us lots of trouble along the Mississippi. Well, we started down the river and nothing special happened until we reached the Yazoo River. We found that all the heavier gunboats like ours had run the batteries and were down about Port Hudson below Vicksburg. We found very few boats left, although the flagship was there and a new style of gunboat we had never seen before that was entirely different from the “turtle” gunboats like the Cincinnati, the St. Louis and others. It was nearly twice as long and had a long pointed bow with a long piece of steel in the end of the bow called a ram. This ram was used for running down and destroying boats of the enemy. In the case of this boat it was never used because the enemy had no boats to be destroyed. Back of the bow, say 50 to 75 feet, was a great gun turret that looked like a big beehive in shape. This was where the heavy guns were located and where the men hung their hammocks and slept. Back of this was a little house or galley, call the “cook’s galley” where the meals were cooked. Still back of this were two great wheelhouses, and between these houses was the spar deck, or officers quarters and promenade deck for the officers. Underneath this deck was where the officers slept. Away at the extreme aft, as the sailors call the back, was the Captain’s cabin. I describe this gunboat, which was called the Choctaw, because it has to do with our story. There was only one other boat like it on the Mississippi, and the sister gunboat was named the Lafayette.

Well as soon as we reached our destination, word came to us the next day, which was the 27th of May, 1863, we were to attack a water battery at the edge of a ravine which separated our Army from the army of the Rebels. As we were short of men, 40 men from the Choctaw were sent aboard our boat by order of Admiral Porter. Next morning, May 27/63, we started quite early for Vicksburg, the only boat to do the fighting. As we were moving fast south long before we reached the battery we were to fight, a shell came over us and dropped into the water nearby to tell us the Rebels were watching.

Vicksburg was situated in a bend and on high bluffs above the river and had batteries all along the banks. If you can think of a horseshoe you will see just how it was situated. Well, as we came down the river instead of fighting one battery, we had to fight a dozen and everywhere across this horseshoe came the whistling show and shell. The Cincinnati was not entirely ironclad and we had to put bales of cotton on the aft part of the boat to protect it, and on the sides between the boilers and on the bow we had hung chains to protect the unprotected part. The bow was covered with two-inch iron! We were fighting with our bow downstream, and every time we fired our guns, the current would carry us around and we’d be at the mercy of every shot that hit us! “Boom, Boom, Whistle, Whistle” went the shot and shell hitting our doomed gunboat and crashing through it as if it were made of paper. One shell came through and cut two strands of our tiller rope , threw it out of the sheaves, and struck the carpenter’s mate who was going forward to plug up some holes in the bow. The shell cut the man right in two, and as he dropped, he cried “chuck me overboard”. Frank Daniels saw that the tiller rope was out of sheaves so he jumped and put it back although there was only one strand to hold it.

Franks Daniels was first loader and second shotman on one of the Dalghren guns of the bow battery (one of the 9-inch guns). His duty was to sponge out the gun every time it was fired and to take the powder cartridge from the “powder monkey” and ram it home, then take the shell and send it home in the gun. In doing this, he and his helper had to jump out into the open to do their work, and all the time the rebel sharpshooters were trying to “pick him off” or kill him. After loading the gun they had to jump inside and help pull out the gun. An officer stood at the back of the gun with a lanyard (a small rope) in his hand to pull the hammer that struck the cap and away went the shell. Of course, before firing the gun, the officer had to sight it and get the range, and in those days everything was so crude that it is a wonder they ever hit anything. Nowadays what we did by hand is all done by machinery and done quickly.

By this time we were opposite the courthouse in Vicksburg right in the middle of the horseshoe, and it was “thud, bang, bang, bang” with “thud, crash” and “thud, crash” as we were hit. No boat before or since was probably under such a rain of shot and shell. Word came that we were sinking, so we were ordered to retreat. To show how accurate the fire of the Rebels was, our flag was shot away three times. The first time the aft mainmast was shot down. Then we raised the flag on the mainmast in the center of the boat, and that was shot away and the flag came down. The quartermaster was raising it on the forward mast, and again the flag came tumbling down. Frank Daniels saw all this because he was ordered to the deck in the midst of all this shooting and saw the flag shot away. Then they took the flag and nailed it to the stump of the mast, and when the Cincinnati went down, the flag was still flying. We were sinking and the groans of the dying were heard all over the deck. Our Pilot House was struck repeatedly and one shot drove a bolt through the back of our Pilot and he died in awful agony. Our Captain called Frank Daniels and another man to carry him from the pilothouse to the gun deck, and all the time he was crying “Shoot me for God’s sake, shoot me”. But he died as we laid him on the deck.

Men were hurt horribly by the splinters that were sent flying across the deck every time we were struck. One man had his breast torn away, and another, the calf of his leg. One man was struck by a shell and his leg, from his hip to his foot, was hanging in shreds. It is horrible to think of this battle with its broken and wounded men, its dead and dying, the shrieks and groans of agony. Frank was only struck once, and that was by a splinter that came flying across the deck, but when it reached him its force was spent and he only had a wore shin for a few days.

Well, we slowly made our way up the river. Gradually the water began to come over the gun deck and as we had go within our own lines, the order was given to run the boat ashore. The river had been going down for several days and it left a rim of deep mud along the bank. This looked solid enough till you got in it. An old soldier named Legassick and Frank Daniels were ordered to take a line ashore and make it fast to a tree. As they jumped on what they thought was solid ground they sank up to their armpits in mud, and before they could clamber out of it, the gunboat swung off into deep water and sank even with the spar deck, leaving the upper works above water. Then the men began to jump into the water and as the shot and shell were flying all around us, we were in a very dangerous position. One shell stuck in the mud beside us and sent the mud high in the air as it exploded and we thought it killed a good many in the water, but this we will never know. But we do know a number of men were missing and have never been heard of since, even to this day, and probably the corpses floated down the river and were buried by the rebels in unknown graves. Most of the boys ran across the bend to where the Flagship was lying and were taken aboard the Flagship as it was out of range.

All the small boats had been shot away except the second cutter. Frank Daniels stayed with the gunboat and we gathered what wounded there were and put them in the second cutter and raised a yellow flag so the rebels would not shoot at us, and rowed up to the Flagship.

I have made this story so long I’d better stop. But Frank Daniels told me a lot more but I do not wish to tire you out so I won’t tell you any more today. I spoke a while back of the shrieks of agony; perhaps I ought not to use that expression for the only one that I heard (perhaps there were others) was the pilot and his was a sort of suppressed shriek or prayer. Most of the men either endured dumbly or groaned. One man whose foot was shot off was evidently suffering a good deal, but the man whose leg was shattered never even groaned but lay there suffering dumbly. One foolish man pushed off a bale of cotton and sat on it, but instead of carrying him ashore, it carried him down the river and, I presume, he was captured by the Rebels as we never saw nor heard of him again. Well, this is as far as I will go. We had onboard 120 men, and I was told that only about 80 men show up, or in other words, we lost about 1/3 of the crew in killed, wounded or missing.

Grandpa

PS I might add to the Vicksburg letter the fact that a few nights after we were sunk, the Rebels came over in small boats and captured our flag and set fire to the deck above the water and burned the boat to the water’s edge. This was a bold thing to do as our Army was located right there, but did not know a thing about it, and we did not find it out till the next night. We used to go down to the wreck every night. After we got back we saw the light from the fire from the Flagship but did not know the wreck had been set on fire until we went down the next night.

The end

The Gunboat Cincinnati Sinks before Vicksburg, Miss.

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