laststandonzombieisland

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week.

– Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday April 16. The Odd Case of the Stono.

A depiction of the commercial steamer Isaac Smith, a 453-ton (burden), 171-foot long screw steamer built at Nyack, New Jersey, in 1861. The hardy little craft was built by the Lawrence and Foulks company for the Hamilton & Smith steamship company who wanted the craft to ply the Hudson river with both passengers and cargo. He draft, just 9 feet, and her steam engine allowed her to navigate the river with ease. She was named Isaac Smith after one of that firm’s founding members.

Well in September 1861, the US Navy came a callin on her owners, it seemed that they were in need of as many steamships as they could find to blockade the newly formed Confederate nation’s ports. A quick military addition of a 30-pounder Parrott rifle and eight 8-inch Dahlgren smoothbores brought her the title of USS Isaac Smith on 17 Oct, 1861.

She soon sailed south and joined DuPont’s South Atlantic Blockading Squadron. Within days of her commissioning she was fighting off rebel gunboats, chasing blockade runners, and assisted in the seizure of Port Royal, South Carolina. Sailing for Florida waters she was refitted in New York then took up station in the shallow tidal channel located southwest of Charleston, South Carolina known as the Stono River to wait for blockade runners creeping towards that city from the Bahamas.

On 30 Jan, 1863, in a sharp action, she was engaged by rebel batteries in a crossfire. Under the orders of Brig Gen Roswell Ripley (recently sent back home from the Army of North Virgina after being criticized for his performance at Antietam) and the blessing of PGT Beauregard, five 24-pounder guns in two camouflaged batteries were set up along the river to ambushed the little steamer once she was at point blank range. Three guns manned by Captain John Gary and men of the 15th South Carolina Heavy Artillery set up near Grimball’s plantation, while the remaining two, manned by Major J. Welsman Brown, and men of the 2nd South Carolina Artillery and 8th Georgia Volunteers battalion were set up on John’s Island.

From Gary’s report:

“Between the hours of 3 and 4 o’clock on the afternoon of the 30th ultimo the gunboat Isaac Smith made her appearance and anchored off Mr. Thomas Grimball’s, some 500 yards distant from my batteries.  After waiting some twenty minutes and the Abolitionists showing no disposition to land I ordered my batteries to open fire, which they did in handsome style and apparently with great precision.”

Her path of escape blocked, the steamer surrendered, her stack shot away and her engine room choking on its own cloud of exhaust. Eight men were dead and 17 were wounded, amounting to half of her crew. One of her crew earned the MOH that day, Landsman Richard Stout. His citation read:

“Serving on board the U.S.S. Isaac Smith, Stono River, 30 January 1863. While reconnoitering on the Stono River on this date, the U.S.S. Isaac Smith became trapped in a rebel ambush. Fired on from 2 sides, she fought her guns until disabled. Suffering heavy casualties and at the mercy of the enemy who was delivering a raking fire from every side, she struck her colors out of regard for the wounded aboard, and all aboard were taken prisoners. Carrying out his duties bravely through this action, STOUT was severely wounded and lost his right arm while returning the rebel fire.”

Her former captain, Acting Lieutenant Francis S. Conover, reported to the Navy after he was exchanged that “we were obliged to receive the raking fire of between twenty and thirty guns.” (Srsly?)

With most of her armament being taken ashore to use in the siege train around Charleston, the rebels renamed the now-much lighter steamship the CSS Stono and, after replacing her shot away stack, pressed her into service as a blockade runner. She would have a brief career of it.

Taking a load of cotton to Bermuda, she returned with a cargo of war materials but was forced aground near Fort Moultre just off Charleston’s waterfront on  5 June 1863. The Confederates saved what they could over the next 18 months and then fired the ship in 1865, burning her to the waterline.

Over the years her hull remained just off the waterfront, hidden by a growing blanket of sand and silt.

Rediscovered in the 1980s, she has yielded an incredible store of artifacts from her buried hull. This included a full case of 20 Enfield .577 Caliber Tower-marked rifled muskets that, made in England, never reached the Confederacy.

 

Archivists are in the process of preserving the finds.

Specs:

Displacement: 453 tons
Length: 171 ft 6 in (52.27 m)
Beam: 31 ft 4 in (9.55 m)
Draught: 9 ft (2.7 m)
Propulsion:     steam engine
screw-propelled
Speed: not known
Complement: 56
Armament:     one 30-pounder Parrott rifle
eight 8″ Dahlgren smoothbores (In US service 1861-63) unknown in Confederate.

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