Battle of Hampton Roads After
towing service in
New York Harbor where the Navy was buying vessels to
blockade the coast of the
Confederate States of America, USS
Sachem, commanded by Acting Master Lemuel G. Crane, got underway on 6 March 1862, and with escorted the just-built
ironclad monitor to
Hampton Roads,
Virginia. The three ships reached nearby
Fort Monroe on the night of 8 March, the first day of the
Battle of Hampton Roads.
Sachem was present the next day during the
Battle of Hampton Roads,
Monitors |historic engagement with the Confederate ironclad
ram,
CSS Virginia. The Confederates built the
Virginia by using the raised hull and engines of the former —which had been burned and
scuttled by U.S. Navy forces as they retreated from the nearby
Norfolk Navy Yard in
Portsmouth, Virginia, when that facility was seized by the Confederacy early in the
American Civil War.
Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip On the 17th,
Sachem was assigned to the
United States Coast Survey and, with the assistant in charge, soon sailed for the
Gulf of Mexico where
Flag Officer Farragut was preparing to attack
New Orleans.
Sachem entered the
Mississippi on 12 April; and, "...while exposed to fire from shot and shell, and from sharpshooters in the bushes," her boats surveyed the river from the passes to positions just below forts
St. Philip and
Jackson. They marked off the channel for Farragut's deep draft
men-of-war and located firing positions for Comdr.
David D. Porter's mortar schooners. Whenever riflemen in the underbrush along the river's marshy shores fired upon the surveying parties, a few rounds of canister from the Union warships would silence the musketry. However, at night, Confederates managed to undo much of the work of these brave engineers by moving their carefully located stakes and flags. But the triangulation continued; and, when Farragut moved his fleet up the river on the 15th, charts prepared by the Coast Survey guided each of Porter's vessels to a position from which it could fire accurately at one of the forts while suffering minimum exposure to enemy guns. On the morning of the 18th, when the schooners began bombarding the forts, each gunner knew to the yard the distance from his mortar to the target. In the days that followed, whenever a vessel changed its position, an officer of the Coast Survey would immediately calculate the new distance for her gunners, enabling them to resume their extremely accurate fire.
Sachem, meanwhile, was busy transporting the wounded to the hospital at
Pilot Town, mapping the labyrinthine waterways in the vicinity, supplying pilots for military traffic on the river, and helping to refloat after that gunboat had run aground. Farragut, covered by an intense bombardment from Porter's schooners, had dashed through the obstructions across the river and past the forts on the night of 23–24 April. The outflanked riverine forts surrendered on the 28th.
Operations off the coast Sachem, after supporting Farragut near New Orleans, arrived at
Ship Island, Mississippi on 5 May, but got underway later that day to reconnoiter
Lake Pontchartrain and the
Pearl River. Then, on the 7th, she accompanied the steamers of the mortar flotilla to the bar off
Mobile Bay to get information and lay buoys for a contemplated attack on that port. On the 8th, when the steamer ran aground on Southeast Shoal under the guns of
Fort Morgan,
Sachem, ignoring the Confederate fire, steamed in to help refloat the ship. The appearance of the Union warships off Mobile Bay prompted Confederate forces to destroy and evacuate the navy yard at nearby
Pensacola, Florida. Porter assisted Brigadier General
Lewis G. Arnold in occupying and restoring the abandoned works which soon became a valuable Union naval base in the gulf. Few records have been found to help trace
Sachems movements during the coming weeks. On 16 May, while writing to the Superintendent of the Coast Survey, Porter mentioned
Sachem leading three steamers up the
Pearl River seeking Confederate gunboats reported there. On the expedition, Mr. J. G. Oltmanns of the Coast Survey was severely wounded by a Confederate rifle ball.
Sachems guns quickly scattered the Southern sharpshooters. It is not clear whether this action occurred during
Sachem's expedition up the Pearl which began on 5 May or took place during a later operation there. A late report states that men from
Sachem were ashore above
Natchez on the 25th, but nothing is known about their mission or about the operation of their ship at the time.
Operations off Texas On the last day of June, Farragut ordered Capt.
H. W. Morris, Senior Naval Officer at New Orleans, to man
Sachem with officers and crew, so the Coast Survey probably returned her to the Navy there about this time. In the same dispatch, he also ordered
Sachem to blockade
Aransas Pass, Texas. Commanded by Acting Volunteer Lt. Amos Johnson, the gunboat served there as tender to
bark late in July. On 12 August, she took an unidentified prize in Aransas Bay. Four days later, she and
yacht engaged a battery behind a levee. One shot struck the gunboat's side and wounded a petty officer before the Union ships silenced the Southern guns. The Confederate artillerymen later returned to their guns and resumed the duel which continued intermittently throughout the day. Two days later,
Sachem, , and
Arthur supported a party from
sloop , which landed near
Corpus Christi, Texas to attack a battery. Fire from the ships enabled the beach party to beat off a counter attack by large bodies of infantry and cavalry. They held their beachhead on the shore until freely withdrawing late in the day after exhausting their ammunition.
Sachem's commanding officer, Acting Master Amos Johnson, won high praise for his "courage and zeal" during the action. On the night of 6 December,
Sachem captured a small, unidentified schooner manned by three men and laden with salt. The prisoners told of an armed Confederate schooner which had left Corpus Christi to sound the channel at Corpus Christi Pass. Two boats from
Sachem got under way the next morning to intercept the Southern ship. They caught sight of their quarry some 28 miles further and gave chase. After pursuing the schooner,
Queen of the Bay, about 8 miles, the boats forced her ashore. The Confederates abandoned their ship and opened fire on the Union boats from the shore, killing three men and wounding three others including the commander of the boat party, Acting Ensign Alfred H. Reynolds. The Federal sailors then left their boats and retreated overland 30 miles to rejoin
Sachem at Aransas Bay.
Battle of Galveston Sachem, badly needing repairs, proceeded to Galveston where she arrived on 29 December. Two days later, before dawn on the first day of 1863,
Confederate forces surprised the Union Navy ships in that port. During the struggle,
Sachem and
Corypheus vigorously supported the Union Army garrison which was under attack. surrendered; and, after running aground, was destroyed to prevent capture.
Sachem, under orders of Lt. Comdr. Law, senior surviving naval officer, ran through heavy artillery fire from the shore and escaped to sea. She reached New Orleans about midnight of 3–4 January.
Vicksburg Campaign In need of overhaul before the action,
Sachem was badly cut up during the fighting in Galveston Harbor and had one propeller shot away. But, some two months of repair work at New Orleans restored the gunboat to fighting trim. At that time, early March 1863, Admiral Farragut was preparing to push up the Mississippi once more to help tighten the stranglehold which Admiral
David Dixon Porter and General
Ulysses S. Grant were closing around Vicksburg. Once past the Confederate batteries at
Port Hudson, he intended to blockade the mouth of the
Red River to stop the flow of men and supplies from the west to Southern armies fighting east of the Mississippi. While Farragut approached Port Hudson on 14 March, ,
Sachem, and several mortar schooners were already in position below the forts. That afternoon, as the mortars began a slow bombardment of the lower riverside breastworks,
Sachem steamed up close to Southern batteries tempting them to reveal the positions of their cannon; but the Confederate guns spurned the bait and remained hidden. As darkness fell, Farragut moved his assault forces, three steam sloops-of-war—each lashed to a gunboat—and side-wheeler, , up to predetermined positions just out of range of Port Hudson's artillery. Shortly after ten, the warships, led by flagship, , and her consort, , got under way and stealthily steamed upstream. About an hour later, guns of the lower battery opened fire.
Sachem,
Essex, and the mortar schooners immediately replied. Their fire so hampered the gunners in the lower batteries that they did little damage to Farragut's flotilla as it raced up the river, guns ablazing, toward more deadly batteries beyond range of
Sachem,
Essex, and the mortar schooners. About an hour past midnight on the 15th, Comdr. Caldwell, in
Essex, ordered
Sachem to investigate a ship which had been sighted coming down stream. It proved to be being towed by after the steam sloop-of-war had been disabled and forced to retire from the action. Later, a boat came down and reported that
Mississippi was aground and in trouble. While
Sachem steamed to assist the distressed side wheeler, another boat appeared, rowing down, bringing Capt. Smith,
Mississippis commanding officer; Lt.
George Dewey, the future hero of
Manila Bay; and word that
Mississippi had been abandoned.
Sachem transferred the officers to
Richmond and then headed back up river. She soon struck a raft, breaking it in two, fouling her propeller, and almost causing her to collide with
Richmond. A few moments later, blazing
Mississippi drifted into view and forced
Sachem, to maneuver desperately to avoid entanglement with that doomed and dangerous derelict. Then,
Sachem devoted the rest of the night to picking up stray survivors of the side wheeler. During the fighting,
Sachems only serious injury was a fracture in the barrel of her 20-pounder Parrot rifle. After supporting Farragut's attack on Port Hudson,
Sachem was based at
Baton Rouge, to help maintain Union control of the lower river. In April, while proceeding to Berwick Bay, La., to replace which had been captured there on 28 March,
Sachem developed serious leaks which forced her to return to New Orleans. After repairs had been completed, the ship returned to Berwick Bay; ascended the
Atchafalaya River, bypassing Port Hudson; and joined Farragut in sealing off the mouth of the Red River and in patrolling the Mississippi above Fort Hudson. This blockade stopped the flow of food and supplies to the Southern riverbank forts at
Vicksburg and Port Hudson. When Porter daringly raced his gunboats down the Mississippi past the batteries at Vicksburg, Admiral Farragut decided to leave the river and turn his attention back to the blockade of the gulf coast. On the morning of 8 May, he left his flagship,
Hartford, and embarked on
Sachem for passage back down the Atchafalaya to Brashear City, La., where he boarded a train for New Orleans.
Sachem then returned by the back route to the Mississippi between Vicksburg and Port Hudson where she served as a dispatch vessel carrying messages and supplies between Army and Navy units besieging those two Southern river strongholds. Early in July, the fall of those fortresses opened the entire Mississippi to Union shipping and freed
Sachem for duty in the Berwick Bay–Atchafalaya area which occupied the gunboat during the summer.
Second Battle of Sabine Pass Early in September,
Sachem was assigned to a joint Army-Navy expeditionary force mounted at New Orleans to
attack Sabine Pass, Texas. Possession of this port would close another important Confederate blockade running center and provide the Union with a base for a thrust into the interior of Texas.
Sachem arrived off Sabine Pass on the evening of the 7th, followed across the bar and entered the harbor there the next day. That afternoon,
Sachem, followed by , advanced up the Louisiana Channel while
Clifton and moved forward along the Texas shore.
Sachem and
Clifton opened fire on the Confederate battery at Fort Griffin, but the Confederate guns remained silent until the Union gunboats were at close range. Then they countered with a devastating cannonade. A shot through her boiler totally disabled
Sachem and another cut
Clifton's wheel rope causing her to run aground under the Southern guns. Nevertheless, the damaged gunboats continued their struggle until heavy casualties forced
Clifton to surrender.
Arizona and
Granite City then began to withdraw; so Lt. Johnson, with no possibility of saving his ship, ordered her Parrott gun spiked; her magazine flooded; and her signal book and spy glass destroyed. He then had her flag hauled down and a white flag hoisted. Confederate
cotton-clad steamer
CSS Uncle Ben then pulled up to
Sachem and towed the gunboat to Sabine City. On 17 October,
Sachem sailed for
Orange, Texas, and operated under the
Texas Marine Department supporting the Confederate Army. In March 1864,
Sachem was back at Sabine Pass; and, in April, was said to be commanded by a noted blockade runner of Galveston, John Davisson; was reportedly laden with cotton and awaiting a chance to slip through the blockade. However, no further record of her career has been found. ==See also==