The Capture of New Orleans 1862

FOUR: Emergence of the Mosquito Fleet

FOUR Emergence of the Mosquito Fleet Withfour Union warship,* guarding thepadded, Confederate privateering came to a standstill on the lower Mississippi. New Orleans businessmen•who had invested large sums of money to convert steamships into privateers began looking for ways to recover their money. Shipping was no longer a safe alternative, except for flatboats running upriver to towns like Shreveport, Helena, Alexandria, Vicksburg, and Memphis. Small coasting vessels still sailed out of Lake Pontchartrain, passing through Mississippi Sound to enter Mobile Bay or make a midnight lunge for the shores of Cuba. From Barataria Bay, schooners folio-wed the Texas coast all the way down to Brownsville and Matamoras. If chased, they ducked into inlets too shallow for Union vessels to follow. Trade remained vigorous, but on a scale too small to whet the appetites of big investors. The problemwas the Union blockade. While Naval Secretary Stephen B. Mallory and the ancient Captain Lawrence Rousseau considered their options, businessmen like John A. Stevenson (sometimes spelled Stephenson), a commissionmerchant,began to take matters into their own hands. On May 12, 1861, Stevenson opened subscription books at the Merchant's Exchange to raise $100,000, intending to buy and convert the steamer Enoch Train, captured by Ivy, into a seagoing privateer. He raised the money about the time Brooklyn appeared off Pass a 1'Outre, and a few days before Powhatan reached Southwest Pass. The presence of Union blockaders caused Stevenson to reconsider his plans. Even a strengthened and armed Enoch Train was no match for a Union warship, but there might be still greater rewards for Stevenson and 68 The Capture of New Orleans, 1862 his investors if the steamer could sink a few blockaders. Destroying just one warship like Brooklyn, valued at $500,000, would not only aid the Confederacy but return a tidy profit. That would mean modifying Enoch Train into a vessel capable of taking on the Union navy's best. - Stevenson, who was also the secretary of the New Orleans Pilots Benevolent Society, went to Montgomery to discuss his plans with Mallory. Two light-draft Union vessels had been reported in Northeast Pass (Balize) by General David E. Twiggs. Somebody had to clear them out, and Stevenson -wanted approval—and pay—to do it. With encouragement from Mallory and Rousseau, Stevenson returned to New Orleans and set to converting Enoch Train into a sturdy, swift ironclad ram.' Enoch Train had been built in Boston in 1855 by J. O. Curtis as a packet and passenger ship. To convert the vessel to an ironclad, Stevenson had to strip the ship and and remove all vestiges of her former lines.The length was expanded from 128 feet to 143 feet, beam from 26 feet to 33 feet, and depth from 12 feet 6 inches to 17 feet. Then Stevenson rebuilt the ship with massive seventeen-inch-thick beams, makinga solid bow of twenty feet, fastened securely. Over this mass of heavy lumber workmen layered a covering of iron plates, riveted together and fitted to make the exposed portion ofthe vessel shotproof. The only entrance was through a trapdoor aft. Above the water the ship's lines resembled an elongated eggshell, shaped so a shot striking any point would carom off. Her back was formed of twelve-inch oak, covered with one and one-half-inch bar iron. Unlike many renditions of her appearance, the vessel had two stacks, not one, and both were designed to telescope down in timeof action. Unfortunately, Stevenson located the pilothouse in the stern, partially obscuring the helmsman 's vision. The engines, built by Harrison Loring of Boston,were quite powerful, but when the rebuilt Enoch Tram was cut loose for the first time, she could barely stem the current. As a precaution against boarding, the engine was provided with pumps for ejecting steam and scaldingwater from the boiler, but if used, this apparatus would reduce further the engine's efficiency during a fight. The ship's main weapon was an underwater iron ram designed by the owners to bash in the sides of Welles's wooden-hulledwarships. She carried a single stationary 32-pounder carronade covered by a spring-back shutter in the bow, but the gun was a luxury and probably a nuisance to the crew. 1. ORN, Ser. 2, I, 48, Statistical Data for USS Brooklyn: ORN, XVI, 821, Twiggs to Walker, June 10, 1861; William Morrison Robinson, Jr.. The Confederate Privateem (New Haven, 1928), 154-55; John S. Kendall,Hi'tory...