Admiral Luce's Pontiac

Not a modern automobile but a Union gunboat of the Civil War likewise named for the great Ottawa Indian chief, this Pontiac was destined in a special way to make a place for herself in our history. She was one of the first group of American warships designed and built for Army and Navy cooperation. Her name has a familiar sound to modern ears; her fame, however, rests on the fact that she was commanded in that war by Lieutenant Commander, later Rear Admiral, Stephen B. Luce and that she was the means of bringing together Luce and General William T. Sherman, two of the keenest military thinkers in American history. Their meeting was to make a lasting mark on the U. S. military professions.

The Pontiac was a “double-ender” gunboat. Popular belief to the contrary, it was the gunboat and not the monitor that made the biggest naval contribution to settling the issues of the Civil War. A gunboat is a floating artillery battery that finds its proper use when land and sea forces work together. After the Civil War the Navy Department gave the name gunboat to a type of small flag-showing cruiser, but the true gunboat came back into its own in the great amphibious operations of World War II.

The double-enders were a type as peculiar to the Civil War as the LSTs were to World War II. In fact, they had many of the characteristics of our present amphibious ships. They could go almost anywhere there was water, “wherever the ground was wet,” and they became the all-purpose warships of the rivers and inlets. They were popular with the soldiers, for they often provided artillery fire for Union forces or covered one of the flanks.

Known as a double-ender because of its identical bow and stern, this type of ship had two rudders and two pilot houses. Large paddle-wheels amidships were capable of equal driving power in either direction, and it was never necessary to turn the ship around in narrow waters or when withdrawing under fire. The idea came from the ferry boat, but the double-ender resembled that type in no other way, for it had all of the lines of a conventional ship.

The side-wheel double-ender was built of wood even though iron construction and propeller propulsion of ships had proved their worth by 1861. It was a throwback for good reasons—the purpose of the double- enders was not to settle the issues of naval control of the coastal and inland waters but to use that control after the issues were no longer in doubt. It did its job with the support of ironclads as naval ships now do their jobs under the cover of aircraft. Its design was also influenced by the availability of skills and materials. The North had many shipyards that could build wooden ships but not many that were capable of building them of iron. Toward the end of the war when the demand for monitors decreased, however, eight iron double-enders were built. One of these, the Monocacy, served in the Asiatic Squadron on the rivers of China for more than thirty years.

The maximum draft of these ships was eight feet. For shallow water, side-wheels were better than screw propellers. Groundings were frequent in rivers where channels changed often. Side-wheels could be placed high enough to avoid damage on such occasions but still deep enough to back the ship off the shoal or force it over. As transports, the double-enders could be grounded purposely to embark or debark troops and their wagons. They had ample deck space, and on one occasion the Pontiac carried twelve ambulances and wagons, not an unfavorable comparison with some of today’s amphibious types.

The double-ender’s armament was two rifled guns mounted fore and aft on the center line plus four lighter smooth bores in each broadside. All were on the main deck behind sectional bulwarks which were lowered for firing. In addition there were four howitzers on wheeled carriages. These could be used ashore and were twelve-pounders, about the same size as the heavier guns of the field artillery. A comparison of a double-ender’s firepower with that of a horse-drawn battery will show why soldiers always liked to have a gunboat around. In the next eighty years, American soldiers were to forget the power of naval artillery. They happily rediscovered it in World War II.

The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion state that the Pontiac was built at the shipyard of Hillman & Streaker in Philadelphia, was 240 feet long, and had a beam of 35 feet. The engine was inclined and double-acting with only one cylinder, which had a bore of 58 inches and a stroke of eight feet, nine inches! Two boilers, using anthracite coal, furnished steam at a pressure of thirty pounds per square inch. The inclined engine without a walking beam could be set low in the ship and thereby have some protection from gunfire. Being scalded by escaping steam was a dread of sailors in the early steam navy.

The outstanding military feature of the double-enders was their speed, which was usually about eleven knots, but in some ships was as high as fourteen. They could successfully chase blockade-runners, and it was intended to use them to hunt Confederate cruisers. These ships were not designed for the high seas but they were found to stand up reasonably well on such duty. Their main drawback was a tendency to roll and be wet in bad weather. For sailing the double-enders were rigged as schooners, but their sails were almost never used.

Being of wood, double-enders were comparatively comfortable to live in. Iron and steel ships in hot weather are very uncomfortable as naval veterans of the South Pacific know. Duty in monitors was also hazardous. The low freeboard of these ships left them little reserve buoyancy. When this was lost through water getting into the ship by torpedoing, collision, or bad weather, a monitor would sink in a matter of minutes with the crew trapped below. To make up for these discomforts and dangers, enlisted men serving in monitors were given twenty- five per cent additional pay, the same received today for service in submarines. The double-enders, on the other hand, were popular with their crews. Besides being livable, they offered a chance for action instead of the boredom of blockade duty, and in addition there might even be prize money.

The Pontiac was among the last of the thirty-nine wooden double-enders. She was commissioned in July, 1864, and after a short search for the Confederate cruiser Florida, joined the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron. The Pontiac proved an excellent addition to the blockading fleet with her speed, shallow draft, and good sea-keeping qualities. Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren, the commander of that Squadron, pleaded for more like her.

The Pontiac performed blockading duty until the arrival of Sherman’s Army at Savannah, Georgia, in December, 1864, after its march to the sea. This great strategic movement was possible because the Navy was already in possession of the coast so that a base for the Army could be established there. The character of the Navy’s work now changed. Blockading was finished and Sherman, after spending Christmas in Savannah, moved the right wing of his Army, consisting of two corps, to Beaufort, South Carolina. Dahlgren made a number of ships available for this purpose. The Pontiac was one of these and she made several trips carrying Midwestern regiments together with a number of ambulances and wagons. Sherman in his Memoirs tells of this movement: “I was really amused at the effect of this short sea voyage on our men, most of whom had never before looked upon the ocean. Of course, they were fit subjects for sea-sickness, and afterwards they begged me never again to send them to sea, saying they would rather march a thousand miles on the worst roads of the South than spend a single night on the ocean.”

The most significant fact in this single cruise of the Pontiac was that her captain was Stephen B. Luce, one of the “greats” of the U. S. Navy. Ten years after he was in the Pontiac he contributed the lead article in the first issue of the U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings. He was President of the U. S. Naval Institute for eleven years from 1887 to 1898. Luce is best known as the founder of the Naval War College, but his accomplishments far exceed this. He was the man who started Alfred Thayer Mahan on a distinguished career, for he invited Mahan to give the series of lectures that evolved into the famous Influence of Sea Power on History, 1660-1783 and the other books of the sea power series.

Luce had already edited in 186.3 the first comprehensive work on seamanship published in the United States. This book went into many editions and not until 1901 was it replaced by the present Knight’s Seamanship. Luce realized the need for training officers and men during peacetime, so after the war he promoted legislation that brought the creation of the state maritime colleges and he himself set up the first one in New York in 1874. He later started the system for training enlisted men which is still in use in the Navy today. Luce, however, should be best known for his part in creating the present organization of the Navy Department which has stood the test of two great wars. For thirty years from 1887 to 1911, the period of the modern Navy’s growth, he strove for a Department organized to direct as well as provide the fleets. His efforts were rewarded with the establishment of the office of Chief of Naval Operations in 1915, two years before he died.

Luce spent a lifetime urging officers to think about the primary purpose of their profession—war—and to train their men for it. He taught the Navy to think of itself as a whole. He saw strategy as clearly as most men see a material object, and he defined better than anyone has since the relations that ought to exist between the central government and the officers of the armed services. Luce lived for more than fifty years following the Civil War and in that long period he was able to bring about a revolution in professional naval thought.

Many of these ideas had their beginnings when Luce was in the Pontiac. His whole service in the Civil War, except for a period at the Naval Academy, was with the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron around Charleston, South Carolina. The campaign of the Union forces against that city was a long drawn-out failure. The Confederate defense was skillful and courageous. On the other hand, Army authorities in Washington felt that they could not spare the troops to do a large scale assault job, and the Navy’s efforts to do it alone were unsound and doomed to failure despite belief in the invincibility of the monitors. Luce was already a serious thinker about his profession, and the loneliness of command gave him much time to dwell on this.

It was his meeting with Sherman that crystallized Luce’s thinking on naval strategy. In January, 1865, Sherman was ready for the march north, the last stage of the great encircling movement of his Western armies. His right wing had been moved by sea and his left wing, also of two corps, was to cross into South Carolina from Georgia at a point about forty miles up the Savannah River. Sherman wanted this crossing protected by a gunboat, and fortunately Dahlgren picked Luce and his Pontiac for the job.

The log of the Pontiac for January 15, 1865, laconically records the meeting: “2 p.m. Captain Luce went ashore to report to General Sherman.” Almost forty years later Luce told the story of this meeting in a lecture at the Naval War College. “On reporting to headquarters, General Sherman indicated in a few short, pithy sentences, and by the aid of a map, his plan of Campaign from Savannah to the north. . . . And he added, in the pleasant style of banter, with which he was accustomed to talk to naval officers: ‘You navy fellows have been hammering away at Charleston for the past three years. ... I will cut her communications and Charleston will fall into your hands like a ripe pear.’ And that is just what actually came to pass.”

Luce continued, “After hearing General Sherman’s clear exposition of the military situation the scales seemed to fall from my eyes. ‘Here,’ I said to myself, ‘is a soldier who knows his business!’ It dawned on me that there were certain fundamental principles underlying military operations which it is well to look into; principles of general application whether the operations were conducted on land or at sea. . . . There was then, I learned, such a thing as a military problem, and there was a way of solving it; or what is equally important, a way of determining whether or not it is susceptible of solution.”¹

After this conference the Pontiac proceeded against a strong current up the winding Savannah River. She ran aground several times. A boat and other gear were lost as the current swept the ship in among the trees on the river bank. Nevertheless, she arrived several days ahead of the troops who were delayed by severe rains. While waiting, the multifarious duties of a gunboat included putting a small landing force ashore on the bluffs overlooking the crossing point; sending out a reconnaissance party which succeeded in getting itself captured; stretching a torpedo net across the river; sending a picket boat up the river each night; and dispatching a detail of marines to make contact with the advancing army forces.

The two corps finally arrived and after much difficulty crossed over a pontoon bridge to the Carolina side. The Pontiac’s duty done, she returned to Savannah to furnish naval protection for the forces occupying that city. Her last offensive action was patrolling the coast of Florida to prevent the escape of Jefferson Davis to Cuba.

The Federal government was almost bankrupt by the end of the war, and to reduce expenditure, ships were decommissioned as fast as possible. The Pontiac went north for this purpose in late May, 1865, but not before performing one more important duty. The Confederacy, in defending its ports, had employed the “torpedo” or underwater explosive charge extensively and with much success. Submarine torpedo boats, known as “Davids” and manned by brave and resourceful crews, had sunk one large Union warship off Charleston and had also seriously injured the best ship of the Union Navy, the frigate New Ironsides. Two monitors and Dahlgren’s own flagship with him on board were sunk by what would be called moored mines today. Specimens of “torpedoes” of all types were found in Charleston at the end of the war and Dahlgren sent “several memorials of rebel warfare at this place” to the Naval Academy. Knowing Luce’s interest in the Academy he chose the Pontiac to transport these specimens, including a fifty-foot submarine, to Newport, R. I., where the Academy was located at the time. Following this the Pontiac proceeded to New York to go out of commission at the navy yard there on June 21, 1865. She was sold in 1876 to John Roach, the shipbuilder, who scrapped her for material.

The Pontiac was fortunate in having a well-known and easily pronounced name. Most of the names given to ships of the Union Navy were of Indian origin. The New York Journal of Commerce commented on this practice at the time. “Some of the Indian names selected by the christening bureau of the Navy Department for the new war vessels are harmonious and pretty, some are rough and unpronounceable, all are unquestionably original if not to say aboriginal. . . . No human being but a native Indian with extensive knowledge of the dialects of all the extinct tribes could recollect the names of vessels christened within the past two years.” The difficulty with ships’ names may be one reason for historical neglect of the naval side of our Civil War. As an example, the defeat and repulse of the Confederate ironclad Albemarle by three wooden double-enders is almost unknown today, possibly because the names of these three ships were Mattabesett, Wyalusing, and Sassacus. On the other hand, divisions and corps of the armies on both sides are easily remembered because of the practice of identifying them by the surnames of the men who led them.

Historically, the Pontiac was what sailors call a “lucky ship.” She had a great man for a commanding officer and a name that was to become well-known in American life in the twentieth century.