Confederate Floating Battery Revival - July ‘96 America’s Civil War Feature

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Popular during the Crimean War, the floating battery
was revived by hard-pressed Confederates.

By Robert Collins Suhr

During the Civil War, the South used an 18th-century concept called the floating battery–naval guns mounted on some sort of craft that had to be towed into position. Unable to maneuver to avoid gunfire, batteries usually were covered with iron plate.

The principal difference between a floating battery and an ironclad warship was propulsion. During discussions with the naval board on ironclads, Union inventor John Ericsson wrote, “This plan of a floating battery is novel, but seems to be based upon a plan which will render the battery shot and shell proof.”

Writing after the war, Ericsson traced the idea of a floating battery back to designs submitted to the Directory, France’s executive body, during the French Revolution. Early in the 19th century, American inventors proposed several designs of their own. Floating batteries reached the height of their popularity during the Crimean War. The chief proponent was France’s Napoleon III, who built several, including three batteries that were used on October 17, 1855, in the allied attack on Kinburn.

Efforts by the United States to build a floating battery actually antedated the French models. In 1842, Congress authorized construction of the Stevens Battery for harbor defense. When experiments showed the iron plate could not withstand a cannon shot, the government rejected the proposed battery. In 1861, the Navy rejected it again. The next year the ironclad board sent Captain Charles Henry Davis to inspect the battery, but he rejected it a third time.

The South began work on its first floating battery before the war. In early 1861, Lieutenant John Hamilton, the son of a former South Carolina governor, began building a floating battery in a dry dock in Charleston that he hoped to tow near Fort Sumter to batter down the gorge wall. One hundred feet long and 25 feet wide, the battery had two layers of railroad iron protecting the guns. Hamilton used sandbags to counterbalance the weight of the four large naval guns. Some men refused to serve on the unwieldy battery, nicknaming it the “Slaughter Pen.” General P.G.T. Beauregard sent it to the western end of Sullivan’s Island.

Subsequently, the floating battery participated in the bombardment of Fort Sumter, receiving several hits in return. The Confederates later broke up the battery to use the iron plate in construction of an ironclad.

Southerners employed several floating batteries out of necessity. In 1862, private resources were used to build the ironclad Georgia to protect Savannah. Although designed as a ram, her engines were so weak that she had to be towed into firing position. She was later destroyed to keep Maj. Gen. William Sherman’s men from capturing her in 1864.

Another Confederate ironclad used as a floating battery was Louisiana. Like Georgia, Louisiana was designed as a ram, but Flag Officer David Farragut’s assault on New Orleans came before her engines were ready. On April 21, 1862, Brig. Gen. Johnson K. Duncan, commanding the forts downriver from New Orleans, wrote about the decision to use Louisiana as a floating battery: “It was not within the range of possibilities that she could be regarded as an aggressive steamer or that she could be brought into the pending action in that character. As an iron-clad invulnerable floating battery, with sixteen guns of the heaviest caliber, however, she was then as complete as she would ever be.”

Commander John K. Mitchell took Louisiana downriver near Fort St. Philip, where he could bring her bow guns to bear on the Union fleet if Farragut attempted to storm past the fort. While they waited for the Union attack, 50 mechanics worked to try to get her machinery functional, but Farragut struck first. As his ships steamed past the fort, Louisiana poured shot into them. Mitchell reported, “The enemy returned the fire of the Louisiana in passing with grape, canister, and shell, but without serious damage to her hull.”

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