People are very inventive creatures, especially when it comes to sending your fellow man to the next world. Then flint knives and bronze swords, lead pipes wrapped in newspapers and bicycle chains in duct tape, Maxim machine guns and Rodman's Columbiades, not to mention the all-destructive nuclear weapons, come into play. “Everything is for the good of man!”, Since everyone understands the word “good” due to the tasks facing him. And if the task is to send your neighbors to the next world, then a person's ingenuity simply knows no bounds. Well, and wars only fuel and spur this ingenuity … One example of such "stimulation" is the civil war between the northern and southern states in the United States in 1861-1865. Then, in an effort to destroy "their neighbors" as much as possible, shock hand grenades and underwater mines, multiply-charged rapid-fire rifles and mitrailleuses were introduced into the military affairs, a whole new class of warships was created, and … powerful weapons for their armament.
The gunboat of the northerners "Tuler" and two mortar rafts near the very shore.
With the outbreak of the civil war between the North and the South, as is known, the military command of the northerners adopted a plan of "boa encirclement". Its essence was to isolate the southern states with a blockade from the entire civilized world and thereby force them to surrender. However, the plan had a rather serious flaw - the Mississippi River, which was in the hands of the southerners, and those states that were behind it in the West. From there, the southerners could be supplied with food, and through Mexico they could buy weapons.
13-inch Federal Mortars, Battery # 4, 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery Corps soldiers near Yorktown, Virginia, May 1862.
It was necessary to cut this important transport artery, "the backbone of the rebellion", as Lincoln said, but for this, firstly, it was necessary to bring warships into the Mississippi, and secondly, to take control of New Orleans. Well-armed forts prevented them from breaking through to the city. And there was simply nothing to act on the river, in connection with which the northerners in an accelerated manner began, and then forced the construction of "battleships of brown water", called "Uncle Sam's Pointed Geese." Southerners also built similar ships. They were covered with armor from rails, casemates with inclined walls were installed on the decks of passenger Mississippi steamers, they were armed with Parrot's rifled guns and Dahlgren's smooth-bore guns, and … fierce clashes of such impromptu battleships began to occur on the river here and there, so they even sold tickets for them … They installed benches on the shore and offered them to local residents along with popcorn and drinks. However, it was not easy to break through to Orleans itself from the sea.
As you know, at that time they were even placed on railway platforms …
It was decided to combine the actions of the army and the navy. The fleet provided the breakthrough, the army landed troops numbering 18,000. But how to suppress the forts, because the fire of land guns is always more accurate than those that are afloat ?! However, the military decided that no forts (and the experience of Sevastopol had already proved by this time!) Could withstand the fire of heavy mortars, such as, for example, the 330-mm mortar "Dictator" weighing 7, 7 tons, which fired a 200-pound bomb. It was decided to place this murderous weapon on sailing schooners. It seemed obvious that the massive shelling of the forts with hinged fire would destroy their fortifications, inflict huge losses on the garrisons, after which they could be captured even with very limited forces.
And this is a 330-mm mortar on the deck of a mortar schooner during the battles near New Orleans.
Admiral David Farragut, who commanded this operation, strongly doubted that the bombing of these mortars would destroy the forts, and that such makeshift boats would be useful at all. Instead, he proposed a rush past the forts under cover of nighttime darkness. Well, once it was up the river, the fleet could land troops, cut them off from the supply bases and force them to surrender without firing a shot.
Watercolor map of Fort Jackson and Fort Saint Philip.
But since the commander of the mortar squadron was Commodore David Porter, who had great political influence, and besides, he was also a half-brother to Farragut, the admiral decided to agree to participate in this operation of mortar boats and bombardment of forts instead of an unexpected breakthrough.
Another map that clearly shows the location of mortar ships hidden behind the forest.
The position in front of the forts was taken in the immediate vicinity of them, but downstream. By April 18, 1862, 21 mortar boats were anchored so that the terrain and the forest growing on the shore sheltered them from return fire from the forts. At the same time, the masts were removed from the boats, and they themselves were disguised with branches and freshly cut bushes.
Engraving in 1903. Fight of the flagship of Farragut "Hartford" with the battleships of the Southerners during the breakthrough to New Orleans.
In the early morning of April 18, mortar boats opened fire on the forts with their 330mm mortars. The main target was Fort Jackson, which was closer to the squadron. According to Porter's calculations, each mortar had to fire one shot every ten minutes. However, their calculations were not able to maintain this pace for a long time, although they fired more than 1400 bombs in just the first day of the bombing. Porter decided that a continuous 48-hour bombardment would be enough to turn the fortifications into ruins, but the bombing had to be carried out for a whole week, and during this time the northerners fired more than 7,500 bombs.
The reason for such a prolonged shelling was commonplace: the fire was ineffective. So, of the one hundred and twenty guns that were in the forts, only seven of them were disabled by the bombing. The losses in the garrisons of the forts were simply depressing: two killed and several wounded. That is, they almost completely retained their combat capability, and it was not possible to take them without heavy losses. However, the reasons for such unsuccessful shooting were purely technical: the fuses for mortar bombs worked poorly. For example, in the early days, many bombs exploded in the air. Of course, this had a moral impact, but the garrisons were in the casemates and did not suffer losses. Upon learning of this, Porter gave the order to install the ignition pipes with the maximum delay. But at the same time, the falling bombs began to simply bury themselves in wet soil, so that their explosions did not cause much harm. So the mortar schooners, on the one hand, did not justify their hopes. But on the other hand … the constantly falling and exploding bombs on the forts turned the life of the local garrisons into a living hell. All barracks burned down, warehouses and water tanks were destroyed, and walking in the dark through the territory of the forts became simply dangerous, so as not to fall into some kind of camouflage. The soldiers sat for days without going to the surface in stone casemates in the stuffiness and dampness, as they were partially flooded by the Mississippi flood. All this led to a decline in strength, both physical and moral. The soldiers, to put it simply, were overcome by apathy. It is interesting that moral suffering directly affected the accuracy of the forts' shooting, which was later noted by Farragut himself. Fort Jackson subsequently, when his fleet did make a breakthrough, fired much less accurate and less intense fire than the next Fort Saint-Philip, which suffered less mortar fire.
Fort Jackson is bombarded by mortar ships.
As a result, they still had to go for a breakthrough, however, after the surrender of the forts, it was decided that the mortar boats still provided some assistance in their capture.
Plan of Fort Saint-Philip.
And here a very specific person - flag officer Andrew Foote decided to try to go even further, namely, to install such mortars not on boats, but on special rafts! The fact is that 330 mm mortars had such a weight and such a strong recoil that the decks on small schooners had to be seriously reinforced.
By this time, there had already been proposals to use rafts for transporting weapons and troops, and even for … reconnaissance, and this was even tested, and quite successfully. But here the proposal was very unusual. From thick logs sheathed with boards on top, the hull of a raft was knocked off, on which a casemate with inclined walls in the form of a hexagon was assembled from boards sheathed with iron sheets. This was necessary to protect the crew of the raft from possible shelling from the shore and shell fragments.
The original construction of a raft made of rubberized prefabricated caissons for transporting soldiers and weapons, used during the American Civil War.
Inside the casemate there was a 330-mm mortar with a stock of shells and that was all - the mortar raft had neither an engine nor any premises there. But he, like any ship, had anchors and towing cables. The benefits turned out to be very large. One paddle steamer, used as a tug, could pull not one such raft, but several at once. Then they were installed near the coast, if necessary, camouflaged and opened fire. At the same time, the crew of the raft, before firing, often left their casemate and was outside. Well, it was almost impossible to hit such rafts, since they stood near the very shore, and besides, they were hiding behind the bends of the river. It was these rafts that were used in the bombardment of Island 10 and Fort Pillow. It should be noted that one very interesting story of the period of the American Civil War is also associated with Fort Pillow, and, perhaps, this historical event will also be told here someday.
Well, in conclusion, it should be noted that the source basis for this material was the book by James M. McPierson "War on the Waters", published in the United States in 2012 by the University of North Carolina Press: James M. McPherson. War on the waters. ISBN 0807835889. In particular, on page 80 there is a wonderful engraving of that time, depicting a shot from one such mortar raft …
Painting by Moritz de Haas. Farragut's fleet breaks through forts Jackson and St. Philip towards New Orleans.
