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Unlike her virtual twin, Missouri, which sailed for only two years before accidentally catching on fire and exploding off of Gibraltar in 1843, Mississippi enjoyed a long and glorious existence before she, too, burned and exploded.
She spent her first few years performing research and demonstrations vital to the evolution of steam-powered warships, before sailing to the West Indies, where she became the flagship of her construction overseer, Commodore Perry. In the right place at the right time during the war with Mexico, Mississippi engaged in actions against Tampico, Panuco, Alarado, and several other coastal ports, blockading incoming commerce. She was also heavily involved with the amphibious operations at Veracruz, where she landed vital military matériel for Winfield Scott’s army. She also supplied heavy guns, and the crews who fought them, all the way to Mexico City, where they bombarded fortifications and helped bring about the city’s surrender in only four days. Throughout much of the war, Mississippi conducted a series of raids on coastal towns before helping to capture the important town of Tobasco.
After the war, she cruised with the American fleet in the Mediterranean for two years before returning to America in preparation for Commodore Perry’s celebrated voyage to Japan. Mississippi was his flagship on most of the expedition to open Japan to Western trade. In one of the most studied and admired naval and diplomatic operations in history, Perry negotiated a treaty with the emperor, and the nation that had been utterly opposed to outside influence opened its ports to international trade.
Mississippi sailed for New York and later returned as Commodore Josiah Tatnall’s flagship. Commodore Tatnall “went south” at the begi
From 1857 to 1860, the now-aging ship supported and protected America’s booming trade in China and Japan. She was also with the British and French ships during the attack on Taku and landed her marines at Shanghai when the American consul requested Tatnall’s help in quelling the rioting in the city.
The veteran steamer sailed back to Boston and was laid up until it was reactivated at the begi
As previously related, during the battle, as Farragut’s fleet ran the gauntlet between Forts St. Philip and Jackson, Mississippi battered the Confederate ironclad Manassas after it made an unsuccessful attempt to ram and sink her. Surviving the hail of shot and shell from the forts, Mississippi triumphantly entered New Orleans with the rest of the fleet and aimed her guns on the buildings along the shore until the city capitulated.
Nearly a year after, Farragut ordered Smith to take Mississippi and join the ships that would attempt to pass the Confederate guns of Port Hudson to Vicksburg to help General Grant in his siege of the city. The battle of the bluffs would prove to be her final moment of glory.
Just as Richmond, the second ship in line, was turning the bend and within a hundred yards of safety, a shot ripped into her engine room and shattered her steam valves and pipes. Unable to maintain pressure and make headway with Genesee tied to her port side, her captain had no choice but to reverse course and retreat back down the river out of the range of Confederate guns.
Monongahela fared no better. A shell struck the rudderpost of Kineo, the gunboat making the run at the frigate’s side, and jammed it. Unable to steer against the current while maneuvering both ships, Monongahela ran aground. The sudden stop tore away the lines gripping the ships together. While under a devastating fire, Kineo struggled valiantly to get a hawser to the big frigate before pulling Monongahela free of the bottom mud.
The two ships endeavored to resume their course upriver, but shots incapacitated the frigate’s engines, and both ships had to drift helplessly back down the river while sustaining heavy fire from the enemy gun batteries.
Alone and bringing up the rear, Mississippi now became the prime target. Concentrating their fire on the lone warship, the Confederates poured shell after shell into the old frigate. She soon became enveloped in a pall of swirling smoke.
Captain Melancthon Smith paced the bridge, calmly smoking a cigar, seemingly oblivious to the hail of shot and shell bursting on and around his ship. Mississippi’s paddle wheels were beating the water, propelling her past the bluffs alive with ca
They were moving slowly, the pilot feeling his way through the heavy smoke. Believing that they were safely past the jutting point of the west bank and its shoals, the pilot called out, “Starboard helm! Full speed ahead!”
In the words of the Mississippi’s executive officer, George Dewey, “As it turned out, we were anything but past the point. We starboarded the helm right into it and struck just as we developed a powerful momentum. We were hard aground and listing.”
Dewey would later become the hero of Manila Bay, where his fleet of warships decimated the Spanish fleet, and he would utter words that have come down through naval history, along with John Paul Jones’s “I have not yet begun to fight,” Oliver Hazard Perry’s “We have met the enemy and they are ours,” and James Lawrence’s “Don’t give up the ship.” As the great Spanish-American War sea battle was about to commence, Dewey turned to the captain of his flagship, Olympia, and calmly said, “You may fire when ready, Gridley.”
Dewey was a handsome man with black straight hair, bushy sideburns, and a great mustache that he kept until his death in 1917.
With guns blasting, engines pounding with every ounce of steam the chief engineer could coax from them, and paddle wheels thrashing the water, old Mississippi refused to budge. The Confederates took happy advantage of the stationary target lit up by the nearby burning house, pouring in shells and a swarm of bullets from the rifle pits. As the ship struggled helplessly to back off the shoal, the number of dead and wounded climbed appallingly.
Dewey hunted for Captain Smith and found him lighting a cigar as coolly as if he were standing at a garden party. “Well, it doesn’t look as if we could get her off,” said Smith, almost indifferently.
“No, it does not,” Dewey replied.
At that moment, a fiery hot shot tore into the forward storeroom and set the inflammable supplies and matériel afire. A holocaust soon spread out of control as flames quickly reached the decks above. Looking around at the destruction and his mortally wounded command, Smith had to face the sad prospect of losing his ship.
“Can we save the crew?” he asked Dewey.
“Yes, sir.”
Shells had shattered the three boats on the side facing the enemy, but those on the port side were still seaworthy. Dewey directed a crew of able-bodied men to load the worst of the wounded into the first boat and directed the crew to row to one of the ships downstream.
Dewey supervised the loading of the lesser wounded and some that were unhurt. He was frustrated to see how slowly the boats returned. The oarsmen were decidedly unenthusiastic about making the trip back once they reached the temporary safety of the other ships. Unable to speed up the boats’ return to the burning ship, Dewey swung a line into a boat just as it was about to push off with a load of crewmen.