After the battle of the armored ships on the Hampton roadstead, the southerners decided to start building several battleships at once in order to act with them against the northerners' fleet and defend their strategic supply ports from them.
Breakthrough of the northerners' fleet into the Mobile Bay. Painting by H. Smith (1890)
One of them was the Port of Mobile in Alabama. After the southerners lost Florida and New Orleans in the summer of 1862, it was Mobile that became for them the only port in the Gulf of Mexico, through which their high-speed vessels ("blockade breakers") could deliver them military equipment and … lace for ladies' dresses. The seizure of the port of Mobile by the northerners would be a real disaster for the entire South.
That is why the approaches to the port of Mobile were mined, and the coastal batteries were placed so as not to allow the ships of the northerners to break through to it. In addition, in 1862-1863. its defenses were strengthened with the help of two small armored ram ships, Huntsville and Tuscaloosa. Of course, in terms of their combat significance, they were insignificant. One cannon, a battering ram on the bow and … a very quiet ride - what special benefit could such a ship bring in battle? And the southerners, realizing this, already in the fall of 1862 at the shipyard in Selma laid another much stronger and faster battleship, which was named "Tennessee". They just built it slowly, since the Confederation had a severe shortage of everything that had anything to do with technology, from metal and machine tools to experienced personnel and … files. There were few workers, and even those went on strikes because of low wages, so the command of the southern fleet had to recruit them!
Having created the battleship Virginia, the southerners decided that they were not looking for good and good, and Tennessee received the same design: a low port, which was very difficult to get from a gun, and a smooth deck, on which there was a rectangular armored casemate for guns. The displacement of the battleship was 1293 tons. Length 63, 7 m, width 14, 6 m and draft 4, 6 m, which was relatively small and helped him to operate in shallow water.
Compared to other Southerner ships, this battleship had a strong artillery armament: two 178-mm rifled muzzle-loading guns of the Brooks system, firing forward and backward, and four 163-mm of a similar system, installed in pairs on the sides. There were so many cannon ports that the bow and stern guns could be deployed aboard, so that they could also participate in side salvoes.
Scheme of the battleship of the southerners "Tennessee".
Brooks' rifled guns had a greater range compared to the smoothbore guns of the northerners, but their shells were lighter than the cannonballs of Rodman's Columbiades. Therefore, at short combat ranges, they were significantly inferior in muzzle energy to the guns of the northerners' monitors. There was one more important problem. The gun ports in the casemate were located so that the guns firing through them had limited sectors of fire, which is why the battleship had to turn towards the enemy with its entire side for a salvo.
The Tennessee also continued the Southerners' tradition of equipping their battleships with a cast-iron bow ram. But again, here a lot depended on the speed, and it was not too high for the "Tennessee" either. The Tennessee, by the way, did not have a pole mine on its nose. But the battleships that were built in Charleston had it.
There is also evidence that special pipes were installed at the Tennessee in order to supply boiling water from boilers to the roof of the casemate in the event of boarding. But how it was supposed to be applied and how it was arranged is unknown.
"Tennessee". History of the American Civil War in photographs in 10 volumes. Volume 6. Fleet. Review from The Raviews Co., New York York. 1911.
As for armor, the Tennessee differed from all other armored ships of the Confederation in that it had not even two, but as many as three layers of "armor" of wrought iron plates superimposed on each other. And this was not a surrogate armor made of rolled rails! Three layers of armor plates gave a total thickness of 150 mm, which, due to the slope of the armor at 45 degrees, was equal to 212 millimeters of armor installed vertically. It seems to be great, but in fact it would be better if homogeneous armor was on the battleship. It was stronger!
The roof of the casemate was made lattice to improve ventilation. The gun ports could be closed with iron armored shutters. Each such shutter was suspended above the embrasure on a pin: before the shot it was raised, opening the port, and after the shot it lowered due to its own weight.
Model "Tennessee" from the company "Cottage Industries" M1: 192. Front view.
The board of the Tennessee was protected by armor of two layers of iron plates with a total thickness of 100 millimeters. The deck had armor protection from one layer of 53 mm iron plate armor. Ideally, one could assume that the southerners had the most protected ship of their time, but it is not clear why the steering gear chains passed directly along the aft deck without being covered by anything. And it turned out that this particular feature of his design played a critical role in his fate.
Model "Tennessee" from the company "Cottage Industries" M1: 192. Back view.
The ship had one propeller, which was rotated by two steam engines powered by four boilers. The speed at full load did not exceed 5 knots, in addition, the ship turned out to be very clumsy and difficult to control.
Henkel paper and cardboard Tennessee model.
The ship was accepted into the fleet on February 16, 1864, and immediately faced a problem. There was neither a trained crew of sailors nor a sufficient number of technical engineers to service it. Even to lead the ship to the Mobile Bay because of the sandbanks, it was not immediately possible. It was necessary to build wooden pontoons to raise the ship above the ground. But … as soon as they were finished, they were destroyed by fire and the pontoons had to be rebuilt! As a result of all these delays, only on May 18, Tennessee tried to get out into the bay at night at night, and in the morning unexpectedly attack the ships of the northerners who were blockading the port. And everything was fine, but the commander of the ship, Admiral Buchanan (at one time in command of the ill-fated Virginia) did not take into account the fact that there would be an ebb tide. And as soon as the "Tennessee" was freed from the pontoons, he immediately ran aground. In the morning the northerners, naturally, saw him, and the effect of surprise was lost. True, the tide began here and the battleship was able to fly off the shallows, after which it came under the protection of one of the forts and prepared for battle.
"Model of the battleship" Arkansas "by" Cottage Industries "M1: 96.
And on August 5, 1864, the famous breakthrough of the ships of the northerners under the command of Admiral David Farragut into Mobile Bay began. Moreover, his squadron consisted of 19 sailing-steam frigates, corvettes and gunboats, and four more monitors, which he requested specifically for the battle with the Tennessee, which the northerners knew very well about the presence of the southerners.
At the entrance to the strait there were three forts - Powell, Gaines and Morgan, and the only deep-water fairway passing by them was mined with the help of anchor mines, which at that time were called torpedoes. Confederate ships: three wheeled gunboats and the battleship Tennessee awaited the northerners behind the line of obstacles.
The layout of the mine - "torpedo".
Farragut knew that the southerners had installed their "torpedoes" in the middle of the fairway, so he ordered the squadron to break through as close to the shore as possible, literally under the very guns of Fort Morgan. The ships went to the breakthrough, the guns rumbled, the forts and ships were enveloped in powder smoke, and then the Tekumse monitor, which was heading quite close to the shore, was suddenly blown up by an underwater mine. The ship immediately capsized on board and in a matter of moments went to the bottom. Seeing this, the commanders of other ships were horrified and stalled the machines. There was a danger that the southerners from the forts would take advantage of this situation and inflict irreparable losses on the northerners with the fire of their artillery.
Rescue of sailors from the sunk Tekumse monitor.
It was then that Admiral Farragut just shouted his famous order, which was included in textbooks on American history and monographs on the Civil War: “To hell with torpedoes! Full speed ahead! And the ships of the squadron again set in motion and soon broke through into the bay, having lost only one ship.
Despite the huge inequality of forces, the ships of the southerners, nevertheless, attacked the enemy. However, the northerners were not afraid. So, the parahodofrigate of the northerners "Metakomet" rammed the gunboat of the southerners "Selma", after which it surrendered. Gunboat Gaines was so badly hit by the artillery of Farragut's ships that she chose to throw herself ashore, while gunboat Morgan pulled out of action.
Now "Tennessee" was left in splendid isolation and, in order to inflict maximum losses on the northerners, tried to ram the ships of the northerners. The Brooklyn screw sloop was chosen as the first target, but failed to do so. Moving along the line of the northerners, "Tennessee" tried to ram the corvette "Richmond", and again failed. Then his commander decided to attack the flagship frigate of the northerners "Hartford".
Monongahela rams Tennessee.
But getting to him was not easy. As the Tennessee made its way to the Hartford, she herself was rammed by two wooden steam sloops of the Northerners, the Monongahel and the Lakeevanna. They did not do much harm, but they knocked the battleship off course. Therefore, he will hit the side of the frigate not at a right angle, but in passing. The frigate fired an onboard salvo at him, but the shells, even fired at point-blank range, did not penetrate his armor. For a new attack, it was necessary to turn around, but such a maneuver required both space and time.
Meanwhile, the northerners' monitors Chickasaw, Winnebago and Manhattan, armed with 15-inch Dahlgren guns, finally came to the aid of the wooden ships. Their rate of fire was low, but the cannonballs weighing 200 kg at close range could break through the armor of the Tennessee. The large monitor "Manhattan" took up position in front of the "Tennessee" and opened fire on it from its heavy cannons, while the river two-tower monitor "Chickasaw", came close to it from the stern, and began to shoot the battleship at close range. And here the flaw of the creators of the ship also affected. One of the Chickasaw shells interrupted the Tennessee's rudder drives passing through the deck and took control of it. One of the cores demolished a pipe on it, the casemate armor was broken in several places, although not through and through. Even the armored shutters of the gun ports were jammed from the terrible blows of 200-kilogram cannonballs.
"Tennessee" surrounded by ships of the northerners. J. O. Davidson.
Seeing what was happening, the captain of the ship Johnson realized that a little more, and the matter will end in that he will repeat the fate of the Tekumse. So he ordered the white flag to be raised. But since not a single flagpole remained on the ship, a piece of white cloth on a stick had to be pushed through one of the embrasures.
The battle ended with a complete victory for the northerners, in whose hands were the entire bay and the entire Alabama coast. Fort Morgan held out for three weeks after that and surrendered when it ran out of provisions. In the course of the battle, 12 southern sailors and more than 150 northerners were killed, most of whom were on the deceased Tekumse monitor.
Fort Morgan after delivery.
The northerners, being practical people, repaired the captured ship and incorporated it into the United States Navy. He took part in the battles against the remaining forts of the Mobile Bay in the hands of the Southerners in late August 1864, and when they surrendered, he was transferred to New Orleans to patrol the Mississippi and defend its coast from the raids of the Southerners.
In 1867, the Tennessee was removed from the lists of the fleet and sold for scrap. The ship's two 178-mm and two 163-mm cannons are on display in American museums today.
