| William Garst | U.S. Navy |
| by Josh Grimm |
William Garst served on the Mowhawk during the Mississippi River Campaign of the Civil War. The Mowhawk, a steamer that was directly involved in the success of the campaign against Island No. 10, was one of 600 steamers used by the Union for naval operations during the war.
In a tactic emulated by Admiral Chester Nimitz nearly one hundred years later, the Union Navy on the Mississippi began a campaign of island hopping. On March 14, 1862, a flotilla of ships from the North steamed toward Island No. 10 (named because it was the tenth island down from Cairo), an egg-shaped island approximately two miles long and a mile wide. This tiny island was fortified with 6,000 troops, 123 heavy guns and 35 field pieces, and it “prevented the Union from having control of the Mississippi River.”
After attempting to soften the island’s defenses, the Navy decided to try a different and unique approach. Because of a sharp curve in the river and a bayou approximately two miles inland, the Union took sailors from the flotilla and had them construct a canal. In an amazing feat of engineering, the canal was completed in only eight days and was “4.5 feet deep, fifty feet wide and two miles long.”
However, while this was perfect for steamers and tugboats, the water wasn’t deep enough for the gunboats and, after nearly a month of planning, a second attack was made on the island and, thanks in large part to artillery support from the ships offshore, the island fell. The tactics used in the assault on Island No. 10 were used in similar campaigns in the years that followed.
The Mowhawk could have been involved with the Red River campaign, one of the last naval campaigns of the war. Garst died in 1864, along with many men who went on the Red River campaign.
Meanwhile, the Union Navy was proving itself once again in the Red River campaign. The armada of ships assembled churned upstream, capturing Fort De Russy before occupying Alexandria. However, the Confederates didn’t give up without a fight. “The way was slow-going, because sharpshooters and masked field pieces became a serious menace.”
As the fleet continued down the river, “…the vessels became prime targets for sharpshooters and Rebel masked artillery positions on the high bluffs on either side.”19 The flagship Cricket was riddled with minie balls and shots from a masked battery on the bluff. Hit 38 times, the ship suffered 12 dead and 19 wounded. The 570-ton ironclad Eastport struck a mine and immediately sank. It was refloated with two pump boats from Alexandria, but 40 miles downstream the Eastport ran aground and this time it was destroyed.
Other ships began to suffer the same fate as Eastport. The river was down to three feet in some places courtesy of a drought, meaning that some of the heavier gunboats with seven-foot drafts were stranded. In the tradition of the radical thinking involved with Island No. 10, Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Bailey, Chief of Engineers for the 19th Army Corps proposed damming the river above the rapids. To accomplish this feat, Bailey “…used large trees weighted down with rocks in some spots, cribs filled with boulders an bricks at other spots.” To make certain the current didn’t move anything, Bailey also sunk four Navy coal barges. This raised the water level to five feet and, using knowledge he acquired as a lumberman before the war, Bailey built another intricate set of dams to raise the water to six feet, thereby allowing the stranded ships to float free.
The Red River flotilla reentered the Mississippi on April 21 and Commander Selfridge called the expedition “one of the most humiliating and disastrous that had to be recorded during the war.”
Bibliography
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Coombe, Jack D. Thunder Along the Mississippi. New York: Sarpedon, 1996.
Jones, Archer. Civil War Command & Strategy. New York: Free Press, 1992.
Musicant, Ivan. Divided Waters. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.
Nevins, Allan. The War for the Union: 1863-1864. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971.
Luraghi, Raimondo. A History of the Confederate Navy. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1996.
Sweetman, Jack. The Great Admirals. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1997.
Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States. New York: HarperPerennial, 1995.