Drewry’s Bluff was a fortified point seven miles below Richmond at a sharp bend in the James River—a thorn in the Union side. Had it not been for that strongpoint, Federal ships could have steamed much closer to Richmond, a fact not lost on the Union high command in the spring of 1862, when Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan was trying to attack the Rebel capital from the east with his Army of the Potomac.

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As McClellan closed in on Richmond in mid-May, Commander Rodgers added Galena to his makeshift James River fleet. Rodgers’ force also featured the battle-scarred Monitor as well as Naugatuck—an aging, partially armored gunboat loaned to the Navy by the Revenue Cutter Service. The gunboat Aroostook and the side-wheeler Port Royal followed in support. No longer worried about the menacing Virginia—which its crew had reluctantly scuttled near Hampton Roads on May 11—Rodgers decided to make a dash for Richmond.

One hundred feet above the river at Drewry’s Bluff, behind a series of reinforced embankments known as Fort Darling, a small, patched-together Rebel force of Virginia’s crew, infantrymen and artillerymen under Commander Ebenezer Farrand waited with a 10-inch Columbiad and an assortment of 8-inch smoothbores and rifles for whatever Yankee ships might come their way. The Rebels had also blocked the narrow waterway with a combination of junks, stone, “spiles and chains”—even the sunken gunboat Jamestown—and backed it with the gunboat Patrick Henry.

About 7:45 a.m. on May 15, Galena, at the head of the fleet, opened fire on the heights. The battle quickly devolved into a shootout between Farrand’s and Rodgers’ gun crews. Monitor, unable to raise its guns to fire at the Rebel batteries on the bluff, soon retreated downriver, where Rodgers’ gunboats were dueling with pesky sharpshooters firing from the riverbank. Naugatuck’s single 100-pounder Parrott gun burst, meanwhile, rendering that vessel useless.

For three hours Galena sat anchored some 600 yards off Drewry’s Bluff, firing with little apparent effect. Farrand’s 10-inch Columbiad had burst early in the fight, but his men continued to blast away with their remaining cannons. At least 43 shots struck their mark, with 13 penetrating Galena’s suspect armor. Even the pesky Patrick Henry got in a lick, puncturing the hapless Galena’s lower hull with a shot late in the contest.

By 11:05 a.m., Galena’s ammunition was virtually gone, and Rodgers withdrew. By that time 13 crewmen were dead, their blood and body parts mixed with shattered timbers in what was described as “a perfect slaughter house.”

Criticism of Galena and its design began immediately, initiated by a disgusted Rodgers: “We demonstrated that she is not shot-proof; balls came through, and many men were killed with fragments of her own iron.” The new ironclad’s “failure” looked especially bad in the wake of Monitor’s recent celebrated performance against Virginia, and following the publication of official reports on newspapers’ front pages. While Galena was riddled, Monitor commander Lieutenant William N. Jeffers wrote, his beloved “cheese-box…retained her superior strength and invulnerability. The balls glanced harmless from her tower of strength and fell into the placid waters of the river.” Jeffers later declared that both he and Rodgers were convinced before the engagement “that the armor of the Galena was readily penetrable by shot from the class of guns we were likely to find on the battery” and that the assault on Fort Darling was “nothing further than a reconnaissance in force and a trial of the Galena ’s armor.” [italics original]

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