What Should Admiral DuPont Have Done? Considering the April 7th, 1863 “Attack of the Ironclads” on Fort Sumter and Charleston

Above: 1864 Painting of Charleston Harbor by Conrad Wise Chapman. This painting shows CSS Chicora, CSS Charleston, and Castle Pinckney with the city of Charleston in the background. White Point Garden is at left in the background. CSS Charleston would not be commissioned until the fall of 1863 so was unavailable in April. But CSS Chicora and CSS Palmetto State were in the harbor. Although no match for a undamaged monitor in fighting trim, the Confederate ships might have posed a real danger to ships partially disabled by passing under the guns of the forts

What should Du Pont have done on April 7th, 1863?

"Oh, that we had a Farragut here to take command at once, and do what has been so weakly attempted by Admiral Du Pont." - Journalist C.C. Fulton writing for the Baltimore American, April 8th, 1863

"I am now satisfied that the place can not be taken by a purely naval attack, and I am admonished by the condition of these vessels that a persistence in our efforts would end in disaster and might cause us to leave some of our ironclads in the hands of the enemy, which would render it difficult for us to hold those parts of the coast which are now in our possession." Rear Admiral Du Point writing to Major General Hunter, April 8th, 1863

"The commanders of the monitors came on board and reported verbally the injuries of their vessels... I determined not to renew the attack, for, in my judgement, it would have converted a failure into a disaster, and I will only add that Charleston can not be taken by a purely naval attack, and the army could give me no cooperation. Had I succeeded in entering the harbor I should have had 1,900 men and 32 guns, but five of the eight ironclads were wholly or partially disabled after a brief engagement." Rear Admiral Du Pont reporting to Secretary Wells, April 8th, 1863.

"[The US Navy Monitors] had only reached the gorge of the harbor, never within it, and were baffled and driven back before reaching our lines of torpedoes and obstructions, which had been constructed as an ultimate defensive resort, as far as they could be provided. The heaviest batteries had not been employed; therefore it may be accepted, as shown, that these vaunted monitor batteries, though formidable engines of war, after all are not invulnerable or invincible, and may be destroyed or defeated by heavy ordnance, properly placed and skillfully handled. In reality they have not materially altered the military relations of forts and ships." from a report of General Beauregard, May 24th, 1863.

"The plan of naval attack apparently best for the enemy would be to dash with as many ironclads as he can command, say fifteen or twenty, past the batteries and the forts, without halting to engage or reduce them... If the ironclads pass the forts and batteries at the gorge, or throat of the harbor, then the guns at Forts Ripley and Johnson and Castle Pinckney would be of no avail to check them. In consequence of the exposed condition of the foundations of Fort Ripley and the general weakness of Castle Pinckney, it would not be advisable to diminish the armament of the exterior works to arm them... The batteries at White Point Garden, Half Moon, and Lawton's and McLeod's batteries for the same reasons can not be prudently armed at present with heavy guns." From a September 29th, 1862 report by General Beauregard and Commander Ingraham, CSN, the state of the defenses of Charleston.

"The attack on Fort Sumter was not made with the vigor or persistency that often distinguished the United States Navy, and particularly [compared to] forcing and entrance through torpedo obstructions into Mobile Bay the following year." John Johnson, former Major CS Army who had served at Charleston, writing in his 1890 Book "The Defense of Charleston Harbor". Johnson goes on to state that despite the reports of US Navy officers that they had seen torpedoes "close aboard", the obstructions were known by Confederates to have been 300-400 yards closer into the harbors than the point reached by the monitors. And Johnson also states that there was a clear passage through the obstructions some 300 yards wide.

"In conclusion, I shall avail myself of the occasion to give as my opinion that the best, the easiest way to render Fort Sumter impregnable would be to arm, conformably to its original plan, both tiers of casemates and the barbette with the heaviest guns, rifled or smoothbore, that can be made." from General Beauregard's May 24th, 1863 report.

What would Farragut have done?

Had Du Pont led his squadron through the obstructions and into the harbor, what would have happened? On that day, Du Pont let Rogers and Drayton lead in Weehawken and Passaic, and when those two ships encountered what they thought were torpedoes (I think they were buoys used to mark range for the artillerists ashore), they turned aside, halted their advance, confused the line and turned the action into a gunnery duel with Sumter and Moultrie and Bee.

In the quote above, Du Pont states that he would have had 32 guns and 1,900 men had he entered the harbor. Left unsaid is his belief, not entirely inaccurate, that he would have been surrounded by hundreds of cannons and thousands of troops.

Du Pont also expresses concern that if his ironclads are captured, they might prove capable of evicting United States forces from their hold on the Carolina Coast (around Port Royal). How ironclads which proved so incapable of taking fortifications as to be captured while doing it were to then go successfully take other fortifications with their new crews is left unsaid. Likely what Du Pont really meant is that he didn't want to be the Admiral who lost any of the Navy's new technological marvels.

Beauregard mentioned that his heaviest batteries were unengaged. I am not entirely sure what he is talking about. Certainly two of Fort Sumter's powerful faces were unengaged, but I have seen no account of what cannons were on Sumter's unengaged sides as all the reports in the official records only record the engaged batteries. Battery Bee's five 10-Inch Columbiads were heavily engaged during the battle - together they fired 225 rounds at the Federal fleet, but only at long range. Had the US Navy run through the channel, they would have been subject to a crossfire of Bee's Columbiads and Fort Sumter's historically unengaged sides.

But once the US Navy ships made it into the harbor? As noted in the Beauregard/Ingraham report above, in the fall of 1862 the inner batteries were still very weak. Fort Johnson is credited in September 1862 with a single 32-Pounder Rifle - and that unbanded. The other inner batteries are not described as having a single gun more powerful than a smoothbore 32-Pounder. While some improvements may have been made in the next half year, what heavy guns were available were still needed at Sumter and Moultrie. Given that a considerable portion of the batteries of Sumter and Moultrie were still relatively weak 8-Inch Columbiads (many likely the chambered 1844 Pattern) and ex-Navy shell guns on April 7th, I can't see that many heavy cannons could have been reassigned to the inner batteries. (Photos of Fort Johnson, Castle Pinckney, and White Point Garden that show heavy, formidable guns all date from 1865 after the reduction of Fort Sumter by Federal batteries on Morris Island. Indeed some of the guns to arm these batters came from Fort Sumter.)

One notable addition to the harbor's defenses were the ironclads CSS Chicora and CSS Palmetto State. Both were steaming ready to intercept any US Navy ship that made it into the harbor, but neither was armed or armored to the standard of a US Monitor. With their 4-Inch armor, both would have been extremely vulnerable to the 15-Inch Dahlgrens of the monitors as CSS Atlanta had been. Smaller, unarmored craft were taken into service as well - seemingly some armed with spar torpedoes, others outfitted to carry boarding parties. While little threat to an undamaged, coordinated Federal squadron of ironclads, the Confederate naval force might have posed a real danger to battered and disorganized ships having run the gauntlet into the harbor.

While Beauregard worried that a powerful squadron might dash past the outer defenses and take up station just off the palatial homes of the planters' facing the harbor on East Bay Street, brushing aside whatever feeble resistance the inner batteries could offer, I wonder if Du Pont's mistake was not that he didn't go far enough in entering the harbor but rather that his ships went too far. As fought, he engaged two faces of Fort Sumter and came within range of Moultrie and Bee. As his plan was to proceed further, when the lead ships stopped, the line was thrown into confusion and a portion of the squadron was subjected to extremely heavy fire from multiple points. Even had he continued, he monitors were only capable of a slow advance, especially Weehawken which was encumbered by the anti-torpedo raft. Such a slow advance would have left them under the combined weight of Sumter, Moultrie, and Bee for a long time.

While Sumter escaped serious damage on April 17th, some of the impacts, especially from the 15-Inch guns, were concerning. Had such impacts continued, they could have been devastating to the structure of the fort. Du Pont's original orders for the attack were to enter the harbor, move around to the western side of Fort Sumter, and aim for a single point on the base of a single wall of the fort - presumably to achieve a collapse. In practice, it was all the Navy gunners could do to hit anywhere on the wall of the fort, as more than three quarters of their shot missed the towering brick walls entirely.

What if the fleet had been arrayed to face only the southeast face of Sumter and concentrated its fire on that face? As heavy shot told against that face, return fire may have been suppressed. A fleet that stayed out of the arcs which other batteries could bear and/or at greater range from other batteries might also have been spared the hurricane of shot that some of the ironclads experienced.

But I am, at very best, an armchair admiral. I am sure the narrowness of the channel would have made this approach difficult, and closely coordinating the movements of poorly handling, underpowered ironclads in a narrow channel subject to tides and currents would be... a challenge.

What are your thoughts? How should Du Pont have fought the battle?

Dahlgren, when he replaced Du Pont, ended up embarking upon a methodical siege in concert with the Army. In the end, the city was not taken by the sea or land forces arrayed against it, but it was instead evacuated in February 1865 as Sherman advanced through South Carolina.

There are drawbacks to Farragut's approach - Above illustration shows the sinking of USS Tecumseh at Mobile Bay, Naval History and Heritage Command

Fort Sumter photographed from White Point Garden on a foggy day in March of 2008 - Author’s Photo