" The most ridiculous affair that ever took place ,,,," Topic

… in the American Navy.
"In October 1861, Confederate Naval officers took Manassas and several other small ships down the Mississippi River and attack the Union squadron of three ships at the Head of Passes. What is the first ironclad attack against a wooden warship, Manassas went after the steam sloop USS Richmond. Neither side distinguished themselves in the battle as Manassas' ram attack only achieved a glancing blow, some of the rockets fired by the Confederate squadron meant to set off a series of fire rafts landed on their own ships, the Union squadron' cannon fire was erradtic, and the ships ran aground attempting to engage.
The Confederate squadron withdrew back to New Orelans, but not after putting enough fear into Pope to order a retreat. "Put this matter in any light you may, it is the most ridiculous affair that ever took place in the American Navy," Gideon Welles wrote to David Dixon Porter after the war. Pope later asked for medical leave. Welles made the request permanent and forced Pope out of the service. Manassas, in the mean time, was made ready to defend New Orelans."
From
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Interesting to know that the fist action by a monitor was won by fear.
And, the first Confederate Ironclad was payed by the pocket of a particular?

Hope you enjoy!.

Amicalement
Armand

Wikipedia gives a much fuller account. Pope was a poltroon, but the Confederate commander Hollins deserves a lot of credit for an aggressive attack, and I believe DID distinguish himself.

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What of the great "what ifs" for me is if the Rebs had chosen to build ARKANSAS class ironclads instead of the gigantic MISSISSIPPI and LOUISIANA. The resources going into those two behemoths could have produced four or more of the smaller ARKANSAS type, and some of them would have been ready when Farragut attacked.

Very interesting. By amazing coincidence I will be in New Orleans this upcoming week. I will have to look up the action while I am there.

Interesting…

Hollins did well with what he had. Manassas is not the finest warship you could ask for, but in those circumstances, he did enough to convince Pope to withdraw.

I suspect you are right doc. Without having to wait on big expensive parts to be machined back east, the Tift borothers could have pressed on and got at least two or three Arkansas class in service. Against Farrgut's wooden walls, they might have held the line at Fort Jackson.

That would make a good game!

The questions being 1) could they actually come up with 4 working steam engines. 2) could they find enough crew. The CSS arkansas went into battle with far less men than really required.

If they don't build the two big ones, they have 4 engines (more than 4, actually). The problem, as I understand it, was getting the engines to work together. Smaller with 1 engine per would have been faster.

As to crew, they had a whole fleet of wooden ships at NO. I suspect they'd have given priority to crewing ironclads.

The problems were varied. The wheel and screw design was ridiculous. More an issue that they really didn't have any naval architects in the city that actually knew how to design a steam boat, much less a state of the art ironclad. The engines did suffer from over heating. Of course, they were used, 2nd rate engines not designed for powering the load of an ironclad. Then, iron, rope and seasoned oak timber was in short supply. Poor organization meant that the few valuable, skilled workers were getting called up for militia duty (parades of all things) and money disputes led to a strike. Then, the south didn't have the capacity to forge the shafts for the screws. Tredegar finally did managed most of them. Finally, the military hierarchy failed to see the importance of New Orleans. They were far more interested in Hampton roads and Memphis, so resource placement wasn't a priority.

On the crew issue, some of the wood boats were privateers. So, they had no real interest on crewing a state owned boat. Then, that still didn't mean they were actually qualified to man a warship, much less their own boats. At any given period during the war the rebels were chronically short on sailors and naval gunners. I would estimate at 1/3 to 1/2 required strength.

In this battle, Mississippi was still sitting on the docks as no Iron was available to plate her and her engines were not functional. Louisiana was only fitted with half her engines (no more were available). Her boilers were also running dangerously high pressure due to poor design. If she pushed them it was likely they would explode. Her gun carriages were poorly built. Her gun ports were poorly designed so that the guns were difficult to train. Then, she had no gun crews at all. They had to borrow heavy artillerymen from the forts, an issue as the gunner had no experience in the art of firing from a moving platform and of course their guns in the forts were left unmanned.

Also "Smaller with 1 engine per would have been faster." Because of the weight of armor, CSS Arkansas type require at least 2 engines. Arkansas was just lucky in that she had one of the best engineers in the south continuously patching her garbage can engine together.

Yes to all of that, but I think the "software" problems were solvable (with our hindsight): recognition of NO's unique importance; unified command; focused use of resources; decision to build more but smaller ironclads. Inadequate resouces say choose the ONE spot most important and put everything there, so instead of inferior upriver fleet (the one destroyed at Memphis) concentrate ALL at NO. And send Buchanan or somebody there, with authority over La State Navy and Army rams and such.

After all, the South DID eventually produce some very effective ironclads; seems to me they could have done so at their largest city and port, given better management.

The usual caveats about hindsight being 20/20 apply, of course.