Trip Report - Old Fort Jackson, Georgia
August 2, 2003
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
After the war, a deep moat was dug, brick barracks
were built, and the rear wall and sally port were added.
From 1845 to 1860, the fort was enlarged and strengthened and received use as
the headquarters for the Confederate river defenses in the Civil War. The fort
was finally abandoned in 1905. Today, the eight-acre site, appearing much as
it did during the 1860s, is managed by the Coastal Heritage Society. Currently
it houses numerous displays and artifacts
of the history of the area.
The infant Confederacy faced many problems—one of the more pressing
ones being that the Navy had only a handful of ships—most of which were
old, wooden river steamers lightly built for commercial purposes. In order
to survive, the Confederate Navy would need to borrow, build, buy, or capture
a fleet, and they would have to do it quickly. Ships were commandeered in the
Chesapeake Bay - Norfolk area to include the Merrimac which was to be converted
into the first ironclad the CSS Virginia. The nature of two of the borrowed and purchased vessels of the Savannah Squadron
was described in a New York newspaper: "
The Rebel Flag of Truce Boats coming down the Savannah River to meet the Federal
Transports The quality of vessels built in Savannah for the war effort was in stark contrast
to that of Swan and General Lee. Savannah’s ship building for the navy
was noteworthy. One historian wrote: “No seaport in the Confederacy turned
out more or larger war vessels than Savannah. The work of naval construction
was more energetic and on a larger scale than in any other Confederate coast
city…” When the city fell in 1864, two wooden gunboats and three
ironclads had been completed, one ironclad was within days of completions,
and two more ironclads were on the stocks or planned. Ironclads were cutting
edge naval technology and Savannah was turning them out in quantity.
In March of 1862, the most famous naval battle of the war took place at Hampton
Roads, Virginia—the first involving two ironclad warships—Monitor
and Virginia (formerly USS Merrimac). The battle’s outcome made the obsolescence
of wooden warships clear. By summer, many believed that ironclads would win
the war for the Confederacy. Out of this enthusiasm grew patriotic groups called “Ladies Gunboat
Associations” that raised money for building warships. One such group
formed in Savannah in early 1862 with plans to build an ironclad and donate
her to the cause. Women of Savannah, Augusta, Macon, Milledgeville, Rome, and
other Georgia cities raised over $75,000 of her $115,000 cost. The rest of
the money came from the state. Confederate troops and ordinary house carpenters built the ship based on a
plan provided by Savannah iron founder Alvin Miller. Her original purpose was
to steam to the mouth of the Savannah River and help Fort Pulaski destroy the
blockading fleet, thus opening Savannah to trade. This was not to be. Fort
Pulaski fell before Georgia was completed and, when launched, the ship was
found to have a major propulsion problem. Her top speed was about 2 knots,
while the river’s current could do four.
When the Confederate Navy moored Georgia near Fort Jackson, they seriously
doubted her ability to repel an attack. They were not aware of her effect
on the officers of the Union blockading fleet. Ironclads were new and untested
and there power largely unknown. It was known that wooden ships were merely
an exercise in target practice for them. Rumors greatly exaggerated this
power. Later, he described his officers: “… Lardner looks 10 years older … the
generals have him worried and his anxiety has been kept up by affairs in the
Savannah River, I think Collins who is there will go crazy next, and the Captain
of the Hale—who I left hale and hearty—is broken down… they
imagine they see ironclad vessels and rams…” the stress is causing
nightmares and excessive drinking.... Everyone seems to be affected and is
causing significant deterioration of moral and morals and desertion remains
a problem.
Georgia was scuttled by her crew and the ironclad Savannah was blown up to
prevent their capture. Most of the remaining vessels of the Savannah Squadron
were torched. Only two wooden vessels—the tug Sampson and the gunboat
Macon—escaped upriver to Augusta.
Georgia went down quickly. An officer noted that he only had time to grab his
saber and sidearm. She went down with everything but her crew, and they left
most of their personal belongings behind. As one can see, the shipping channel
is very close to the fort and it serves the fleets of the world. If my statistics
are correc`t over a million containers a year pass through the harbor. Georgia’s fund raisers, builders, and crew never realized the significant
part she played in delaying the fall of Savannah. Considered a failure and
abandoned in the opaque waters of the Savannah River, she was soon forgotten The Craft to the left is the diving boat that is conducting the Army Corps
of Enginers survey of the wreck and its possible disposition.
Old Fort Jackson, named for James Jackson, a hero of the Revolutionary War and
past governor of Georgia, is the oldest standing fort in Georgia. The first part
of the fort that was built was an earthen battery during the Revolutionary War.
In 1808, the original brick structure was begun in enough time to be manned during the War of 1812. However,
the fortification was little more than a brick battery, crude wooden barracks,
and a wooden palisade.
On January 3rd 1861, Georgia citizens boarded a United States’ Revenue
Cutter docked at Savannah. They seized her in the name of the State of Georgia
and imprisoned her crew. This was over two weeks before the state voted to secede
from the Union. This act of treason marked the beginning of Georgia’s
naval involvement in the war and foreshadowed the important role that Savannah
was
to play in the Confederate Navy.
The Confederacy assembled a fleet at each major port. Savannah’s was
typical, including any small wooden vessels that could be bought, commandeered,
or built, and large locally-built ironclads. These ragtag assemblages quickly
earned the nickname “mosquito fleets.”
The particularly striking feature of the scene, to my eye, was the grotesque
appearance of the rebel steamers, especially the Swan and the General Lee.
Both vessels are great slab-sided, flat-bottomed affairs, like unsightly houses
washed from their foundations, having three rudders to guide them on account
of their lightness of draught.
A spectator at a distance, without being blessed
with a lively imagination, might have supposed these queer specimens of naval
architecture to be floating hearses, the illusion being fostered by the funeral-like
plumes of Cimmerian smoke which waved from their slender chimneys.”
Iron-clad Atlanta
The reasons for this problem were many. A timber got stuck to her bottom during
launch, hindering her steering ability. She was extremely heavy. Her armor
included over 500 tons of railroad t-iron. They considered throwing her coal
overboard to lighten her. Her weight made her bulge at the seams and leak so
badly that her pumps ran continuously. One man described her interior as “a
swamp in an iron box.”
Adding to her problem was the possibility that her engine may have come from
a side wheel steamer. Adapting it for use with twin screw propellers would
have meant a big power loss to an already inadequate supply. Her creators thought
she was a failure. One man dubbed her a “mud tub.” Due to her propulsion
problem, she was moored as a floating battery near Fort Jackson where the river
is limited to a single channel. 
From there, she could
bring a broadside of four well-protected guns to bear on any vessel that tried
to come up the river to Savannah.
Savannah was vulnerable in 1862. The line of river batteries had not been completed
and the other ironclads, which, unlike Georgia, were built under the direction
of skilled naval architects using real ship’s carpenters, were still
under construction.
The Commander of the blockading fleet wrote in 1862: “…we have
been disturbed by the repeated reports of there being an ironclad ship in the
Savannah River, and for the first time since I took command of this squadron
I have felt a sense of oppression…”
The strategic
value of Georgia is shown in an account by a reporter who saw her from a Union
flag of truce boat: “…on rounding a sharp turn,
we came in sight of the obstructions by which the rebels have attempted to
bar our way up to Savannah; above them, and apparently close to them, lay a
nondescript marine monster, which is the ironclad battery Georgia armed with
Dahlgren rifles firing at 32 pound round. The rifled barrel insures greater
accuracy and range than does round shot. the Dahlgren was also the forerunner
of the breech loading cannon which made all mussel loaders obsolete as soon
as the breach loader`was available in significant quantities.She lies there,
moored with her broadside down the river, prepared to defend the
narrow
passage which is left in the barrier of piles for the ingress and egress of
rebel craft. We steamed up steadily nearer… up to the mouth of Augustine
Creek, …and ever nearer and nearer to the enemy, till at last an angry
flash from the broadside of the Georgia and presently after a sharp report… warned
us that we were far enough.”
The Union naval attack never came. The ironclads Georgia and Savannah, and
the river batteries, kept them at bay. It took Sherman’s army, two years
later at the end of its famous “March to the Sea” to take the city
by land.
She lay undisturbed until 1866 when she was dynamited by a Mr. Welles under
a United States Treasury Department contract to clear the river of obstructions.
He succeeded in salvaging only a small portion of her railroad iron, gave up,
and defaulted on his contract. In 1871, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers considered
removing her, but decided that she was not a significant obstruction and would
be too expensive to remove.
