Decks Covered With Blood - May ‘97 America’s Civil War Feature

Enemy shells ripped into Hartford. One shot cut a box of socks in half, another shell was found lying harmlessly on a sailor’s bunk. Assistant engineer Edward Latch stared in horror as a shell hurled a wooden splinter, 5 feet long and 4 inches thick, directly across the ship. “The effect of this missile whirling through a deck crowded with men can better be imagined than described,” he later wrote.

By 12:15 a.m., Hartford had safely navigated the bend and stood beyond Confederate range. Fortunately for her, enemy gunners had misjudged the distance and failed to depress their weapons sufficiently, a mistake they would not repeat with the following three ships. Farragut, his arm resting on Loyall’s shoulder, stared into the darkness downriver to see which vessels followed, but could discern no forms looming toward him. “My God,” he cried, “What has stopped them?”

The tricky Mississippi River, heavy smoke and lethal Confederate firepower were his answer. Smoke thrown up by Farragut’s ships joined that created by enemy shelling to obscure movement on the river–good if you were a target for heavy guns but hazardous when you needed to navigate a testy river. Pilots strained to see through the heavy mist but saw little more than occasional shore lights or gun flashes. In the confusion, true navigation proved impossible.

Richmond was next to test the enemy guns. An awesome array of mortars, large guns and sharpshooters opened up on her. One Confederate soldier, astounded by the noise erupting from Port Hudson, later gushed in wonder, “My home was about 20 miles from Port Hudson, and my people said the reverberation was so great it seemed that the glass would be shaken out of the windows.” Richmond sustained numerous hits, one in the engine room that blew out the safety-valve lever and knocked out the steam pressure. The river’s 5-knot current speedily turned the ship about without the crew realizing it. When gunners saw gun flashes on the left, they fired at what they thought were enemy positions. Instead, they had fired on Mississippi.

Splinters of wood and bits of sail and rope plummeted to Richmond’s decks as Confederate projectiles smashed home in grueling succession. One huge shell plowed into the bridge, a second demolished an entire Marine gun crew. Marine Private John Thompson was decapitated by a missile that also killed three shipmates, while another missile bounced off the deck before exploding and killing boatswain’s mate John Howard. Commander James Alden rarely had seen such horror, and later recalled: “The groans of the wounded and the shrieks of the dying were awful. The decks were covered with blood.” In the midst of the carnage, executive officer Lt. Cmdr. A. Boyd Cummings maintained his composure and repeated to his crews: “You will fire the whole starboard battery, one gun at a time, from the bow gun aft. Don’t fire too fast. Aim carefully at the flashes of the enemy’s guns.”

Richmond was saved by the heroics of four firemen. Immediately after the safety valve blew, firemen Joseph E. Valentine, Matthew McClelland, John Rush and John Hickman rushed onto deck, removed their thick, woolen shirts and soaked them in water. Covering their faces with the shirts, the four rushed back to the boilers where, braving scalding steam and the threat of explosion, they put out the fires in the damaged starboard boiler. Each man later received the Medal of Honor for this action.

Richmond headed back downstream with a loss of 18 killed and wounded, including Cummings, whose left leg was torn off by a cannon shot. He quietly told crewmen: “Quick, boys, pick me up. Put a tourniquet on my leg. Send my letters to my wife. Tell her I fell in doing my duty.” Cummings was then carried below to the surgeons. A doctor started to treat the mortally wounded officer, but he calmly turned him away. Pointing to a gravely wounded sailor, he muttered, “No, he was here before me and must be attended to first.” Cummings died four days later.