Michael G. Laramie - Gunboats, Muskets, and Torpedoes: Coastal North Carolina, 1861–1865

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR OFFERED numerous examples of coastal warfare. Given the nature of this conflict where the North possessed a clear naval superiority over the South, two of the major components of this warfare, blockading and amphibious operations, came to the forefront. These operations were conducted from Virginia to Texas, and along the banks and tributaries of the Mississippi River, often with a devastating effect. The three-hundred-mile seacoast of North Carolina was no exception to this rule, but at the same time, it offered a unique set of challenges and opportunities to both Union and Confederate military planners. The first of these concerned the port of Wilmington. Given the Souths dependency on foreign goods and materials to sustain the war effort, Wilmington, along with New Orleans, Mobile, and Charleston, would prove to be one of the most important ports in the Confederacy. The rail lines to South Carolina and Virginia passed through this location, allowing for the quick distribution of war materials and supplies to the Confederate forces in Virginia. The North Carolina port was guarded by a number of natural defenses at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, which restricted all incoming and outgoing traffic to two shallow inlets.The dual approaches to the river aided in its defense by forcing the Union to employ two widely separated fleets to cover these avenues. Coupled with poor weather that battered the blockaders cruising off the cape, and a series of forts, including the formidable Fort Fisher on Federal Point, Wilmington proved an ideal destination for blockade runners, and a source of frustration to the Union.

While the Union Navy struggled to maintain its blockade against Wilmington 150 miles away the interior waters of Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds offered a different opportunity. The sounds, sheltered behind the barrier islands and accessed through the narrow Hatteras Inlet, quickly magnified the states tidal shoreline from a few hundred miles to a few thousand miles. Fed by several navigable rivers that reached deep into the interior, nearly a third of the states agricultural products came from this region, and for much of the interior these waterways acted as a transportation hub, particularly the town of Newbern, which was connected to the railroad. It was quickly recognized by both sides that with a single guarded entrance at Hatteras, these inland waterways would offer a safe haven for a fleet of Confederate raiders and blockade runners, as well as a ready-made distribution network for their cargoes and plunder.

The threat was too great to ignore on the part of Union planners, and while simply seizing the Hatteras Inlet would blockade the sounds and deny the Confederates access to the sea, more enticing possibilities presented themselves. Asserting Union naval control over these interior waters would allow for the establishment of a beachhead and the reduction of the principle ports along the sounds. This foothold could then be expanded, and with the major rivers able to support small Union gunboats, the combined force could advance into the interior of North Carolina, opening another front against the Confederacy and threatening the vital north-south railroad line. Rightly suspecting that the enemy was ill-prepared to counter such an amphibious campaign, Federal forces struck in a bold early move that haunted the Confederacy and forced the latter into a series of costly campaigns in an attempt to break the Union stranglehold over the region.

Of course, as the first major conflict of the industrial age there was another important element to this equationone that would echo through the future and shape conflicts to come. With the advent ofsteam propulsion, the telegraph, rifled cannon, repeating firearms, ironclads, and naval mines the lessons of littoral warfare were being rewritten in the dawn of the machine age. The methods of old soon faltered and fell to the wayside, and an entirely new set of tenets and principles evolved. The net effect along the coast of North Carolina was to create a fertile ground for the application of new technologies, new ideas, and even the revival of a very old one. The effect was felt ashore as well. At the most basic level the technology had a drastic effect. Men could fire farther and faster than ever before. Repeating pistols and carbines, a few designs of which were experimentally introduced before the conflict, flourished by the end of hostilities and had even led to the next technological step with the introduction of brass-cased cartridges. With rail transportation available, marches were no longer weeks but days or even hours, allowing commanders to quickly shift men and materials to meet an oncoming threat or exploit an enemy weakness. Fortifications changed to meet the challenges imposed by improved artillery, and the telegraph began being employed, which stretched the battlefield even farther.

Yet for all the technological changes, many of which would be harbingers of greater conflicts to come, the real story of this strategic coast is found in the words and actions of the Union and Confederate soldiers and sailors who vied for this region for nearly four years. It is here, where the choices made, whether good or bad, whether misinformed or not made at all, intersected with logistical hurdles, geography, valor, and fear to shape the conflicta conflict that would ultimately culminate in the capture of one of the worlds most powerful forts, the fall of the last major Confederate port, and the birth of a modern naval power.