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Shipwreck Book Sinks

June 6, 2009 12:36 am

THERE are some very famous Civil War shipwrecks that have been partially or fully recovered, such as the ironclad USS Monitor off Cape Hatteras, N.C., and the Confederate submarine CSS H.L. Hunley just outside the harbor at Charleston, S.C. There are some that are not as well known, such as the river ironclad USS Cairo at Vicksburg, Miss., and the ironclad CSS Neuse at Kinston, N.C. Others have not been recovered even in part and lie silent and forgotten in their watery graves.

"The Encyclopedia of Civil War Shipwrecks" by W. Craig Gaines aims to be a one-stop reference source for information on the famous and obscure ships lost in America's bloodiest war. By my count there are 1,837 named ships listed, along with 184 entries for unnamed ships (some of the latter are for more than one vessel, such as several unnamed small boats lost at the same time in the same location).

In the preface, after discussing why he wrote the book, the author wisely defines exactly what constitutes a shipwreck for his purposes: "a vessel sunk, scuttled, burned, grounded, lost, capsized, missing, blown up, one that collided with another vessel or object and sank, or one that was generally made unusable without salvage and substantial repairs." It does include ships that were sunk and later raised and removed, such as the CSS H.L. Hunley--it's not just for wrecks still underwater.

Next he describes how he categorized the location of the wrecks. This can get tricky, especially when considering a shipwreck in a river between two states.

One way the author got around this was to include as locations named rivers (the Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio) in addition to the nearby states. The location also includes ships lost outside of modern U.S. territorial waters, such as New England whalers sunk in the Bering Sea near the Arctic by the CSS Shenandoah, and Union merchant ships sunk in the Atlantic and Indian oceans by the CSS Alabama. They include the CSS Alabama itself, which rests on the bottom of the English Channel just outside the French port of Cherbourg.

The author forthrightly acknowledges how data found in various sources can be conflicting and contradictory. This is something every Civil War naval history researcher will encounter and must use his best judgment to resolve.

The author says he copes with this by putting his best estimation of the truth first in each ship's entry, with other information he considers less reliable coming next in parentheses. Additionally, he cites his source--usually multiple sources--after each entry, enabling interested readers to check for themselves.

There is a lot of good information in this book. Unfortunately, there are also a lot of problems: factual errors, misspelled place names, referring to places by the wrong name and omitting information that could have clarified statements that otherwise seem unusual. My eyes glazed over and I stopped counting after finding more than two dozen such problems in the entries for ships I am familiar with. A sample follows.

Page 4: The CSS Muscogee was burned by the Confederates to keep the Union from seizing it. (The opposite happened--Union forces captured and destroyed it to deny it to the Confederates.)

Page 43: The USS Merrimac, a captured blockade runner converted into a gunboat, had a complement of 519 men. (The author confused this ship with the USS Merrimack, the wooden steam frigate later converted into the ironclad CSS Virginia. The steam frigate did have a crew of 519. The smaller gunboat had a complement of only 116.)

Page 46: The CSS Chattahoochee was an "ironclad gunboat." (The Confederates had only 22 commissioned ironclads, and the Chattahoochee wasn't one of them. It was a small wooden steam gunboat.)

Page 46: Catesby ap R. Jones commanded the Chattahoochee, and later commanded the CSS Virginia at Hampton Roads. (Author got this backward. Jones commanded the Virginia at Hampton Roads before he commanded the Chattahoochee in Georgia.)

Page 69: Author omits to mention in entry for CSS Manassas that it was the first ironclad of either side to see action.

Page 112: The ironclad CSS Albemarle had "armor 2-inch iron." (The Albemarle had two layers of 2-inch iron plates.)

Page 114: The engine of the CSS Arctic was removed and used on the CSS Virginia II. (The engine was used in the CSS Richmond.)

Page 124: The USS Monitor's anchor was recovered in 1987. (It was in 1983.)

Page 127: The CSS Raleigh had "two 4.6-inch smoothbore rifles." (This is an oxymoron, like "dry water." Cannons can be rifled or smoothbore, but not both.)

Page 189: Author makes the common claim that the CSS Virginia was the "first Confederate ironclad." (No, that honor goes to the CSS Manassas, which fought some five months before the Virginia.)

Twice our fair city's name is botched: Fredricksburg [sic] on the map on page 178; Fredericktown [sic] on Page 187 in the entry for the CSS Rappahannock. Also, Gwun's [sic] Island instead of Gwynn's Island on Page 175 in the entry for the Alleghany.

By way of comparison, I am familiar with only two other books covering all shipwrecks in the Civil War, and both are out of print. "Beneath the Waters: A Guide to Civil War Shipwrecks" by James E. Hemphill (Burd Street Press, 1998) is based just on wrecks mentioned in the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies and overlooks some other relevant sources. "Shipwrecks of the Civil War" by Donald G. Shomette (Donic, 1973) is a book I've never examined but have seen mentioned.

A lot of ships were lost in the Civil War, and it's handy to have a single reference to consult, like "Encyclopedia of Civil War Shipwrecks." However, the book in its current form will not live up to the publisher's claim on the rear dust-jacket flap that it is "an essential reference work" unless it is extensively re-edited and fact-checked. So many mistakes permeate the book that it's distracting for the well-informed reader, misleading to the casual reader, and unfair to both.

Scott Boyd of Spotsylvania County is a freelance writer and secretary of the Civil War Round Table of Fredericksburg. E-mail him in care of
Email: gwoolf@freelancestar.com.