Turnover and Turmoil off Charleston

The work of a naval squadron’s staff often goes unnoticed and underappreciated. Staff members help coordinate training, shuffle personnel between ships, and plan operations. In combat, a good naval staff can help keep ships in the fight, clear the fog of war, and execute a commander’s intent. However, when a staff is inexperienced, suffers through attrition, and cannot provide the support a squadron commander needs, it can inhibit senior leaders’ effectiveness. Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren was in just such a situation as he coordinated efforts to capture Charleston, South Carolina, from the Confederacy in 1863.

Dahlgren had assumed command of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron on 4 July 1863, and within a week his Passaic-class monitors, ironclad frigate New Ironsides, and wooden steam-powered blockaders were supporting Major General Quincy Gillmore’s X Corps as it completed an amphibious landing and advanced to capture Fort Wagner and Battery Gregg on Morris Island. From there, Fort Sumter could be bombarded into submission, opening the way into Charleston. To oversee the naval component, Dahlgren needed a versatile and experienced staff.

Duties of Staff Officers

During the Civil War, a naval squadron staff was led by a fleet captain, whose job was to assist the squadron commander “in the various details and arrangements for the management of the fleet or squadron, and for maintaining it in the most efficient condition.”¹ The fleet captain, or chief of staff, oversaw squadron paperwork, stepped in to assume charge of a division of ships or single vessel if needed, and took up any assignments the commander thought necessary. Present-day naval squadrons and strike groups still have fleet captains, though squadrons now call them deputy commodores and strike groups call them chiefs of staff. 

Typically, the fleet captain remained on board the flagship, helping the squadron commander. However, he often operated elsewhere. When Flag Officer David Farragut steamed past Forts Jackson and Saint Philip in April 1862 to capture New Orleans, a feat that earned him promotion to rear admiral, his West Gulf Blockading Squadron was divided into four parts. Three of them—one under Farragut directly, one under Fleet Captain Charles Bell, and another under Captain Theodorus Bailey—passed the forts and engaged Confederate warships beyond, while the fourth under Commander David D. Porter remained to bombard the Confederate fortifications. Thus, Farragut’s senior subordinate was on another ship ready to command the squadron should Farragut’s flagship Hartford sink.

Junior staff officers also filled roles one might expect. There was an ordnance officer for regulating munitions. Squadron fleet engineers oversaw maintenance and performance of vessels’ machinery, while fleet surgeons oversaw the work of medical officers in the treatment and care of sailors. A squadron also had a chief signal officer responsible for official flaghoist and light communications from a commander to ships. Even a military adjutant and aide-de-camp had an equivalent naval staff position in the flag lieutenant, who was to “assist the Fleet Captain in his duties.”² Today, flag lieutenants remain in the form of flag aides, admirals’ personal assistants.

An Unexpected Appointment

The first staffing challenge for Dahlgren was that he originally was not assigned to command the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron in 1863. When Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles determined to relieve Rear Admiral Samuel Francis Du Pont from that position, he initially chose Rear Admiral Andrew H. Foote as the replacement. Foote, who was wounded commanding the Western Gunboat Flotilla in 1862, had extensive experience working with military forces, having cooperated with Generals Ulysses S. Grant, John Pope, and Henry Halleck.

Dahlgren was supposed to be Foote’s immediate subordinate, commanding the division of ironclads in combat operations against Charleston Harbor. Thus, Dahlgren spent his initial planning time focusing efforts toward that goal, confident Foote could handle squadron administrative matters while he focused on combat. The ironclads were armed with the large soda-bottle-shaped shell guns invented by and bearing Dahlgren’s name. It was hoped Dahlgren’s technical prowess, and his connections as a favorite of Abraham Lincoln, would complement the siege expertise of General Gillmore and cooperative spirit of Admiral Foote.

Foote, however, never assumed squadron command. Before moving south to take charge, he developed nephritis. It proved fatal, with Dahlgren’s friend of 20 years passing away on 26 June 1863. “What a loss to the country!” Dahlgren mourned.³ Lieutenant George Belknap, on board the New Ironsides, agreed, calling Foote’s death a “national calamity.”⁴ Now, Admiral Dahlgren stepped in to take charge, and his responsibilities immediately expanded from just leading combat elements of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron to running the whole force, as well as naval assaults on Charleston forts, the blockade of the southeastern coast, and all squadron maintenance and administrative matters.

When Dahlgren assumed squadron command in July, he chose Captain William Rogers Taylor as his fleet captain. As the skipper of the screw sloop-of-war USS Housatonic and with experience managing independent flotillas, he was a solid choice. Dahlgren intended to rely on Taylor a great deal and first directed him to survey and audit the recently captured Confederate ironclad Atlanta. From there, Taylor helped Dahlgren oversee naval support for an amphibious landing on Morris Island. This assault was smoothly executed on 10 July, but a first attempt to storm Fort Wagner near the island’s northern end failed the next day. For a week, Dahlgren and Taylor directed naval bombardments against Wagner in preparation for what proved to be a second failed assault on 18 July. A traditional siege followed.

Unfortunately, Taylor would not remain in his position for long. Within three weeks, he was “sent home sick” after summer heat and overwork crippled his ability to function.⁵ Taylor would recover and later command another steam sloop-of-war, the USS Juniata; act as naval escort for Abraham Lincoln’s body from Washington to Illinois following the President’s assassination; and ultimately become a rear admiral himself, but his departure left Dahlgren overworked. “Now I have a staff entirely inexperienced,” the admiral penned in his diary on 30 July. “No secretary, new clerks, and, sad to say, I begin to feel the effects of the climate.”⁶ A replacement fleet captain was sorely needed.

‘A Fatality Seems to Attend My Staff’ 

To replace Taylor, the admiral selected Commander George W. Rodgers. Having previously commanded the monitor Catskill, Rodgers was not afraid to handle things personally and appeared a good choice for chief of staff. He also was a capable administrator, even recommending that African American pilots, formerly enslaved men who had escaped from Charleston, should be made official pilots in the Navy for their demonstrated “knowledge of the locality, skill, courage, and intelligence.”⁷

But Rodgers’s personal touch led to his downfall. On 17 August, he resumed command of the Catskill for that day’s bombardment of Forts Wagner and Sumter. Rodgers was in the monitor’s pilothouse, atop her turret, when Confederate shot from nearby Fort Moultrie struck the structure, which was “crushed in.”⁸ Rodgers and another officer were killed instantly, while others were wounded. Dahlgren went to sleep that night “a weary man,” noting the loss of Rodgers as significant.⁹ “It is but natural that I should feel deeply the loss, thus sustained,” the admiral wrote Navy Secretary Welles, “for close and confidential relation, which the duties of Fleet Captain, necessarily occasions, impressed me deeply with the worth of Capt Rodgers—Brave, intelligent, and highly capable—devoted to duty and to the Flag under which he passed his life.”¹⁰

Next promoted to fleet captain was Lieutenant Commander Oscar Badger, the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron’s ordnance officer. The loss of capable senior staff was beginning to affect Dahlgren. The 26th of August was “one of those debilitating days” when he admitted, “I was so feeble that I could hardly rise from the chair and walk across the room” of his flagship’s cabin.¹¹ Two days later, Dahlgren felt so badly it became “an exertion to sit in a chair.”¹² The strain of command, summer heat, and adjusting to attrition among his senior staff were indeed taking their toll.

Badger was only in the flag captain role for two weeks. On 1 September, he was wounded when a round shot struck the monitor Weehawken, then Dahlgren’s flagship. Badger’s leg was broken by “a flying plate of iron” the Confederate projectile had dislodged.¹³ “I have lost three flag captains in the short span of two months,” Dahlgren lamented to Welles, adding that he “shall feel greatly the loss of Captain Badger’s services at this time.”¹⁴ He confessed even more worries about the burden of command in his diary, writing on 1 September: “A fatality seems to attend my staff. Taylor went home sick, Rodgers killed, and Badger’s leg broken by splinter.”¹⁵

‘Left . . . Without a Staff Officer’

Dahlgren next turned to 21-year-old Lieutenant Samuel Preston, his flag lieutenant, to step in as acting chief of staff. He had extensive service on squadron staffs, having previously also been the flag lieutenant to then–Flag Officer Samuel Du Pont in 1861’s Port Royal expedition. After that action, Du Pont praised Preston for his “undisturbed intelligence” that “proved very useful.”¹⁶ He even temporarily stepped in as acting fleet captain for Du Pont for several months in early 1862, for which the flag officer praised his energy. Preston “rattles off work as I never saw before in a person his age.”¹⁷ Once in 1862, and again for most of August 1863, Preston was sent north to recuperate his health after strenuous campaigning. This meant that he had only just returned to the squadron when he was immediately tapped to fill in as de facto fleet captain.

Quickly assuming the duties, Preston helped Dahlgren organize a landing party for an amphibious assault against Fort Sumter on the night of 8–9 September. Though the Army and Navy knew that each service was planning an assault against Sumter that night, Gillmore and Dahlgren failed to coordinate their plans into a cohesive combined effort. Perhaps it was in part due to Preston being absent from the scene for the past month that the assaults were uncoordinated and failed miserably. 

Dahlgren would not have a chance to find out, however, as he, at Preston’s insistence, allowed the lieutenant to join the naval assault. In doing so, the admiral was “left . . . without a staff officer” at all.¹⁸ With no one else to fill in as observer, Dahlgren embarked in a rowboat and attempted to manage the final assault timing personally, spending the entire night in the boat coordinating a withdrawal because his flagship retreated without him. Amid the chaos, Lieutenant Preston was captured. He was later exchanged and would be mortally wounded assaulting Fort Fisher on 15 January 1865.

The Cascading Effects of Turnover

The turnover of Dahlgren’s fleet captains was not the sole reason Union forces failed to seize Charleston in 1863, but it certainly did not help that the admiral lacked a consistent staff. As the 1863 Charleston campaign continued, Dahlgren was forced to depend on lower-ranking officers to advise him and keep ships operational. He started the campaign with a fleet captain who was a navy captain (army colonel equivalent), his second fleet captain was a navy commander (lieutenant colonel equivalent), the third was a lieutenant commander (major equivalent), and the final acting chief of staff was a navy lieutenant (army captain equivalent).

The problem of rank also cascaded to more junior positions on Dahlgren’s staff, as they were either left vacant as officers were advanced to fleet captain or filled by even more junior officers. Such turnover did not render the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron ineffective, but Dahlgren readily admitted the loss of so many fleet captains in two months “has embarrassed me beyond measure in the transaction of public business.”¹⁹ Perhaps the lower-ranking staff officers were taken less seriously or lacked enough experience to properly advise the admiral.

There was another major distraction compounding Dahlgren’s stress and functional capacity that summer. Two days after the failed 18 July assault on Fort Wagner spearheaded by the African American 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, and four days after his first fleet captain—William Taylor—departed northward, Dahlgren learned that one of his sons, Ulric, had been wounded during the Gettysburg campaign. “An anxious day with me,” he wrote at the top of the day’s diary entry.²⁰ The stress of not knowing the extent of Ulric’s wound remained on Dahlgren’s mind. On 22 July, he admitted: “My mind is with my poor boy. I do wish to know how it fares with him. Oh, that he may escape any permanent injury!”²¹ Detailed news of Ulric’s wound reached the admiral on 4 August, but he remained “in extreme anxiety” after learning his son’s wounded leg had been amputated, anxiety that would resurge in 1864 when Ulric was killed near Richmond, Virginia.²² 

When Dahlgren learned of his son’s wounding, a competent chief of staff could have stepped in to ensure that the admiral could focus his energies on both family and the big operational picture. But with so much attrition in his own staff, this was impossible. 

Only when the campaign calmed in late September did his staff receive new members. To alleviate both Admiral Dahlgren’s personal woes and staff shortage, his eldest son, Charles, was reassigned from the Mississippi River Squadron to become his father’s new ordnance officer, reaching the Charleston front in late September. Dahlgren appointed Captain George F. Emmons to be his fifth fleet captain on 17 September, but by then active operations against the port had ceased for the rest of the year.

The ordeal of losing four fleet captains in the middle of the 1863 Charleston campaign pained Dahlgren so much that he devoted more than an entire page in his autobiography attempting to explain its impact. He in part wrote:

The work at Charleston engrosses all—however I had other cares—the “beat” covered some 300 miles of Coast . . . requiring an effective blockade. . . . The correspondence was enormous—and required a large clerical staff. . . . Then I labored under the disadvantage of losing several Fleet Captains (Chiefs of Staff)—one so great that it is difficult to be understood. . . . Thus in two months of continued Naval operations I lost four Chiefs of Staff which almost entirely deranged the particular duties belonging to them and threw much of them on me.²³

With the combination of the summer heat, stress of command, personal anxiety over family, and attrition among his staff, Dahlgren’s ability to effectively command the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron was significantly inhibited. He said it best in a letter to Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus Fox, admitting that “some allowance is to be made for the state of my staff,” and because of attrition within it, the admiral “can not be said ever to have had the assistance of a fleet captain.”²⁴ This was not the sole reason the U.S. flag would not fly over Charleston until 1865, but Rear Admiral John Dahlgren losing four chiefs of staff in the two most critical months of campaigning around Charleston in 1863 certainly played a role, demonstrating the importance of a professional staff in assisting senior naval leaders with both administration and operations.