The US Ironclad Gunboat the Essex

"Destruction of the rebel ram "Arkansas": By the United State gunboat "Essex," on the Mississippi River, near Baton Rouge, August 4th 1862." 1 print : lithograph, hand colored. New York: Currier & Ives, [1862?] Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/91795896/ (Accessed 10/18/2013).

The US Ironclad Gunboat the Essex

Richard faced this ship in three different battles, at Fort Henry, Fort Donelson and at Port Hudson where it was the only Ironclad gunboat in the lower Mississippi Fleet. The rest of those ships were oceangoing warships and some of them were in Commodore Perry's trip to Japan ( 1852-1854).

“U.S. gunboat Essex - Mississippi River Fleet.” 1 photographic print on card mount: albumen. Baton Rouge. [photographed between 1861 and 1865, printed between 1880 and 1889]. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/cwp/item/2013647495/ (accessed 9/1/2013).

Ironclad Gunboats were made with plates of Iron on them so when you shot them with cannon balls, they would bounce off. They were heavily armed with artillery guns and so they could sit there under fire and shoot it out with an enemy for hours at a time at point blank range. The North and the South were making these ships and they made the fleets of all of the other navy's obsolete.

“U.S. ironclad gunboat Essex” 1 photographic print on stereo card: stereograph, albumen; 3.5 x 7 in. 1863 March. LC Civil War Maps (2nd ed.), 239. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Civil War Photograph Collection. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/97501522/ (accessed 9/3/2013).

On the Mississippi the way to get rid of an Ironclad was to build ironclad Rams and push the Ironclad gunboat into a bank, to run them aground, then ground forces could sneak up on the boat and set it on fire.

Fire was a method of getting rid of Union ships on the Mississippi and it was used against steamships. If you knew you were going to lose a battle, better to burn and scuttle your own ship than to let it fall into enemy hands.

Three years In the C.S. Army (P.A.C.S) A Diary of a Confederate Soldier by Jerry Pepper and Richard Lauren McClung
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