![]() Detail from “Battle of Mobile Bay,” Library of Congress.įurther adding to the danger was the rise of steam engines. She sank three times in trials and finally in combat, drowning her entire crew in two of those. When I reached the topmost round of the ladder the vessel seemed to drop from under me.” A more experimental craft, the famous Confederate submarine H.L. One of the very few survivors, pilot and Acting Master John Collins, later recalled “There was nothing after me. At the Battle of Mobile Bay, the USS Tecumseh struck a mine and sank in ten seconds, taking nearly all her crew, including the surgeon. Without watertight compartments, and weighed down by heavy iron, they could go straight to the bottom with little warning. The blood was over the soles of my boots all over the berth deck, and the shrieks and groans of the wounded were heartrending. As fast as the men were wounded, they were passed down to us and we laid them one at a time on the table, cut their clothes from them, and extracted the balls and pieces of shell from them. God grant that I may never witness the like again. Mann and I looked like butchers, our coats and vests off, our shirt sleaves rolled up and we covered with blood. Flusser, and wounded Ensign Hargis, Enginer Harrington and ten men, Capt Flusser was awfully mangled had 19 musket balls, and pieces of shell in different parts of his body. Nichols, who I quoted in part one in marveling how the wooden gunboat USS Miami’s shells bounced off the ironclad CSS Albemarle “without even denting her,” testified to how the Albemarle was able to tear through his crewmates: Sailors and marines unfortunate enough to serve on wooden vessels against ironclads faced horrifying odds. They quickly made up a significant portion of naval fleets. Virtually impervious to artillery fire, ironclads like the CSS Virginia could effectively neutralize wooden fleets in a single day. Ironclads began to dominate naval combat after the Battle of Hampton Roads in 1862, kicking off an arms race not only between the Union and Confederacy, but also between the United States and the rest of the world. The Industrial Revolution changed all that. For example, at the massive Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, involving sixty ships of the line, only two were destroyed from damage sustained in combat, and a few others intentionally scuttled after the fact. And sinking ships could take hours to go down, giving ample time for evacuation. While naval combat has always been indiscriminate and impersonal, in the age of fighting sail, most of the time combat ended with a ship escaping or being captured, rather than sunk. Maratanza showing damage from shell fire, July 4 1862,” Library of Congress. Deck of Confederate gunboat Teaser, captured by U.S.S. Llewellyn in life.” īy the Civil War, naval combat was focused on filling the enemy ship with enough holes to send her to the bottom, and that meant much of her crew went with her, including the wounded. Her first officer, First Lieutenant John McIntosh Kell later remembered: “Assistant Surgeon Llewellyn was at his post, but the table and patient on it had been swept away from him by an 11-inch shell, which made an aperture that was fast filling with water. Such was the fate of a doctor on the CSS Alabama. Surgeons could be struck by shells as easily as their patients or legitimate combatants. Indeed, those same medical professionals might end up saving the life of an enemy if they wound up under their knife.īut in naval combat you fired at ships: impersonal and imprecise. Not only out of humanity, but also because they were not a threat. Surgeons and hospital stewards were largely spared if they appeared on the battlefield and the opposing side could identify them as medical professionals. Another is that there was no choosing individuals to target. A reliance on artillery as the main tool of warfare, rather than the more precise rifle, was a major factor. There was no truly safe zone aboard a ship. Naval warfare in the Civil War was, by its very nature, indiscriminate. Why did the Union Navy suffer more dead than wounded in combat when the opposite was true ashore? Sailors and marines, on the other hand, were more likely to die in combat than be wounded. However, soldiers were more than twice as likely to be wounded as killed. Navy and Marine Corps lost only 2.7% of its enlisted to combat deaths. Army was killed in combat throughout the Civil War. ![]() Masury, Library of Congress.īy percentage of enlisted, 6.5% of the U.S. While there are many reasons why sailors and marines were less likely to die of disease and combat than their comrades ashore, naval combat could be remarkably lethal. Navy and Marine Corps compared to the Army. In Part One of this series, I examined the low casualty rates of the U.S. Navy and Marine Casualties of the Civil War, Part 2 Posted on: June 9th, 2021 Museum members support scholarship like this.
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