CSS Arkansas was the lead ship of her class of two casemate ironclads built for the Confederate States Navy during the American Civil War. Completed in 1862, she saw combat in the Western Theater when she steamed through a United States Navy fleet at Vicksburg in July. Arkansas was set on fire and destroyed by her crew after her engines broke down several weeks later. Her remains lie under a levee above Baton Rouge, Louisiana at .
Design and description
At the outset of the American Civil War, the Confederate States of America had a lack of warships. Seeking to offset the Union's advantage in numbers through technology, Stephen R. Mallory, the Confederate States Secretary of the Navy, decided to build ironclad warships.Barnhart An experienced steamboat man from Memphis, Tennessee, named John T. Shirley visited Mallory in mid-August 1861 and offered to build a pair of such ships to defend the middle portion of the Mississippi River. Acutely aware of the lack of Confederate naval facilities in the region able to build ironclads, Mallory and Shirley signed a contract for two ships, Arkansas and her sister ship CSS Tennessee, at $76,920 each on August 24. Neither Shirley nor his master builder Primus Emerson owned a facility suitable for building a ship, and none were available for use in Memphis. The pair ultimately settled on a riverfront site below the bluff on which Fort Pickering sat on the southern edge of Memphis where Arkansas was laid down in October 1861.
Shirley consulted with naval architect John L. Porter and gun designer John M. Brooke during his trip and their views greatly influenced the design. Unlike virtually every other Confederate ironclad, the Arkansas-class ships were built with a traditional keeled-hull design with vertical sides to their casemates, probably to improve their seakeeping abilities in the Gulf of Mexico. The ships measured between perpendiculars, had a beam of , and a depth of hold of . As designed they would have displaced about and had a draft of . They were equipped with a pair of horizontal, direct-acting steam engines, each driving one propeller using steam provided by four coal-burning, high-pressure boilers, although two additional boilers were added to Arkansas while she was under construction. The ship had a maximum speed of in still water, but mechanical problems reduced that speed considerably in service. The boiler combustion gases exhausted through a single funnel in diameter made from thin iron plates. Although the amount of coal storage aboard the ships is unknown, Arkansas demonstrated a range in excess of during her brief career.
The Arkansas-class ships were equipped with a pointed cast-iron ram that was bolted to their bows at or just below the waterline. They were designed to mount four guns, two on each broadside, but Arkansas was modified while under construction to accommodate 10 guns, three on each broadside and two each on the fore and aft faces of the casemate. Sources differ as to the exact numbers of each type, but the ship was armed with two 64-pounder Columbiads in the front face of the casemate and a pair of 32-pounder smoothbore guns converted to be rifled cannons in the aft face while the broadside armament consisted of two Dahlgren guns and four 32-pounders of which at least two had been rifled, according to naval historian Myron J. Smith. The side gun ports allowed the guns there to traverse somewhat, but the oval gun ports on the fore and aft faces of the casemate were very narrow which badly restricted those guns' ability to traverse and severely limited the ability of the gun crews to see their targets.
The vertical sides of the sisters' casemates were constructed from oak logs thick while the fore and aft faces of the casemate sloped at a 35° angle from the horizontal and were built from oak squares to which were nailed oak planks inches thick. Behind the sides of the casemate was a layer of compressed cotton, possibly deep, backed by a wooden bulkhead between each gun port. Arkansas was intended to be armored with rolled iron plates, but the only delivery of such plates was diverted to the ironclad which was much further along in construction. Instead Arkansas used railroad T-shaped-rails, possibly deep, alternating top and bottom to present a relatively smooth surface. The pilothouse protruded above the top of the casemate and was protected by two layers of bar iron. The visibility of the pilot was badly restricted by the narrow slits cut in the sides of the pilothouse. The casemate roof was minimally protected by of wrought iron boiler plate and the deck fore and aft of the casemate was unarmored. A shortage of rails meant that the stern face of the casemate was only protected by boiler plates. The broadside gun ports were protected by hinged iron shutters divided into upper and lower halves, but the fore and aft gun ports were fitted with iron collars into which the gun fit when firing. Captain William F. Lynch, commander of Confederate naval forces in the region, described Arkansas as inferior to the ironclad and criticized the quality and construction of the ship's armor and smokestack.
Construction Despite his initial support for the Memphis ironclads, Major General Leonidas Polk, the Confederate regional commander, generally refused to release any skilled workmen from his command to assist in their construction; shortly after the ships were laid down, Shirley petitioned Polk for 100 carpenters, but only received 8. Other petitions for manpower were ignored, greatly slowing progress on the ships, as Polk gave priority to his newly formed flotilla of ships on the Tennessee River, all of which except Eastport were unarmored. Material shortages also slowed construction and Shirley chose to focus his efforts on completing Arkansas.
Union ships captured the incomplete Eastport and the lumber and armor plates already delivered, but not yet installed, on February 7, 1862, after the surrender of Fort Henry gave the Federals command of the Tennessee the previous day and towed her way to be completed in a Union shipyard. The beginning of the siege of Island Number Ten north of Memphis in early March threatened the city and alerted Confederate commanders and officials to the lack of progress on the Arkansas-class ironclads. Prompted by the request of Secretary of War, Judah P. Benjamin, Major General P. G. T. Beauregard sent an officer to inspect the sisters and evaluate how much progress had been made in mid-March. He reported that Arkansas was well advanced, but that Tennessee would need six more weeks to before she could be launched. About this time Mallory sent Commander Charles H. McBlair to expedite the ships' construction and appointed him as captain of Arkansas.
The ironclad was apparently launched in early April, although other sources state later in the month. At this time, the exterior of her hull had been covered in iron down to below the waterline and the casemate had been built although gun ports had not yet been cut. The engines and boilers were aboard, but not yet installed, and the propellers and their shafts had been mounted. Only four guns were available, but McBlair had not yet decided where to mount them. The surrender of Island Number Ten on April 8 left only Fort Pillow between Memphis and the advancing Union forces. Three days later Mallory ordered McBlair to take the Arkansas for completion "if she is in danger at Memphis". McBlair hired the side-wheel steamer Capitol to tow the ironclad if necessary and quartered much of her crew aboard after her arrival on April 19.
On April 25, the same day that the Union captured New Orleans, McBlair commissioned Arkansas and prepared to transfer his ship to Yazoo City, Mississippi, for completion. One or two days later, the ironclad, as well as a barge containing additional materials, were towed by the Capitol to the mouth of the Yazoo River and thence up that river to Yazoo City. The ships left the city on May 7 for Greenwood, Mississippi, which was further upriver, after being warned by Mississippi governor John J. Pettus that Union ships were coming up the Mississippi River, possibly hunting for Arkansas. The two ships reached Greenwood on May 10, just as the annual spring rise of the river was beginning. Several levees broke and the consequent flooding put the uncompleted Arkansas almost from shore. To further complicate things, the barge that had accompanied the ship from Memphis also sank during this time, and vital machinery and material had to be recovered from the river bottom using a diving bell. Progress on the ironclad advanced at a snail's pace during these difficulties.
On May 19, Beauregard inquired about Arkansass status and, displeased by the lack of progress, telegraphed Mallory, requesting new leadership for the ironclad. Three days later Mallory appointed Lieutenant Isaac N. Brown captain of Arkansas, ordering him to complete her "without regard to the expenditure of men or money." Mallory ordered McBlair back to Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital, on the 24th. Brown received his orders on 26 May and reached Greenwood three days later. He was disappointed to find the ship much less advanced than he had hoped and found only five carpenters at work and one blacksmith's forge in use. Dismayed by his predecessor's lack of energy and failure to discipline his workforce, Brown requested some workmen from local Confederate Army units and persuaded several local men to join the crew and slave owners to loan some of their slaves to work on the ship that same day. Brown had Arkansas towed back to Yazoo City lest she run aground as the flooding subsided and to utilize the greater resources and manpower available there. He jailed some of the troublemakers among the workmen to reestablish discipline and ordered McBlair off the ship at gunpoint, tired of the senior man's interference.
Brown's appeal for more workers at Yazoo City drew a larger response than he had anticipated, with men volunteering to work on the ship and slave owners volunteering both their field hands and skilled workmen. Brown took advantage of the additional labor by working his men around the clock, every day of the week. Blacksmithing tools were borrowed from local plantation owners and 14 forges were operated at the site to make iron fixtures and machinery parts. With the armor-drilling machinery lost when the barge sank, a makeshift crane was set up on Capitol to hold the newly fabricated drill which was powered by a leather belt driven by the steamboat's hoisting engine. Within five weeks, Arkansas had been mostly completed, although the iron plating on her stern and pilothouse was not yet finished. However, river levels were falling, and further construction was no longer practical. Boiler plate was added to the stern, which was viewed to be less likely to be exposed to enemy fire. Brown described the additional boiler plate as being "for appearance's sake".
The ironclad departed for Liverpool Landing, Mississippi, on either June 22 or 23, to rendezvous with Confederate forces defending the Yazoo River further downstream. A log raft had been constructed there across the Yazoo to serve as a barricade, and three Confederate gunboats were positioned to defend it. While she reached a top speed of eight miles per hour, the voyage revealed the ventilation for the engine room and casemate was grossly inadequate, especially since the boilers were uninsulated. The mechanical weakness of her engines was also demonstrated as they tended to hang up at top dead center, forcing the crew to use pry bars to manually move the pistons to another position to restart the engine. The engines were linked by a 'stopper' that was supposed to stop one engine if the other stopped for any reason, but this never worked and Arkansas would start to turn in a circle as the working engine overpowered the turning force provided by the rudder.
Career