Snapshot from the Collection: "A Man And His Boat: The Civil War Career And Correspondence of Lieutenant Jonathan H. Carter, CSN"

One of the opportunities that these unpredictable gaps between new releases is affording me is the chance to finally get to some far too long neglected titles from the collection. Intrigued at the prospect of what it might have to say about Confederate Trans-Mississippi naval construction and operations, I purchased A Man And His Boat: The Civil War Career And Correspondence of Lieutenant Jonathan H. Carter, CSN (Center for Louisiana Studies, 1996), a now long out of print title edited by Katherine Brash Jeter, probably ten years ago or more. It has sat on the shelf frowning at me ever since, still in its original shrinkwrap. Last week, I finally read it.

Much of what is known about the Shreveport, Louisiana-built and based Confederate ironclad CSS Missouri comes from the official wartime correspondence of the man principally involved in managing its construction (and who later, through default, became its captain), Lt. Jonathan H. Carter. The volume's lengthy preface consists of an edited version of Jeter's 1987 Louisiana History journal article that explores the life and career of Carter, who was an 1846 Annapolis graduate. As one readily recognizes while reading the rest of the book, the research that went into that article relied very heavily upon Carter's (1863-67) correspondence, the edited collection of which follows the Preface and is reproduced in full.

Numerous documents in this compilation, perhaps most of them, are simple two-line administrative notes and personnel requests/orders. The names and dates are valuable to researchers, but on the whole probably of limited interest to general readers. There are many other letters, though, that exemplify the range of challenges faced by every Confederate ironclad construction project, among them shortages of skilled labor, raw and manufactured materials, and modern armaments. Additionally, army-navy disputes hampered (even blocked) timely efforts to build, arm, and man the vessel. Carter's frustration is palpable. He repeatedly points toward lack of cooperation with, and false promises from, the army, which seems to have greatly doubted the ironclad's value. Thus, it was no surprise that the vessel was designed for more but was fitted out with only three cannon (one of those being an antiquated 32-pounder), leaked badly from its green timber construction and insufficient caulking, was slower than promised, and had a glaring vulnerability in that the top of its single paddle wheel (center rear) was completely unprotected at the top. Building and maintaining crew strength proved to be a consistent thorn in Carter's side. Judging from the frequency with which the topic was raised in Carter's letters, when the army did release small groups of enlisted men for transfer to the Missouri's crew complement, many if not most seemed to have promptly deserted.

There are no detailed drawings of the Missouri provided, just two photos of a detailed scale model. The ironclad was described at the time as being vaguely similar in appearance to the CSS Tennessee, but to me it looks more like the child of a union between that vessel and a Pook turtle. That much of the center wheel was exposed is a really striking feature of the model. There's a contemporary watercolor painting that shows the wheel as having been, if not armor-protected, at the very least fully covered, but a close inspection of the vessel by a Union officer in June 1865 confirms that over 8 feet of the wheel was entirely unprotected.

Going by Carter's correspondence, it doesn't appear that the ironclad fired a shot in anger. Through still struggling with crew shortages, the Missouri was, at least in Carter's judgment, fully operational by the time of the 1864 Red River Campaign. However, low water kept it out of action. As we know, those same river conditions hampered Carter's Union naval opponents, too, though it was General Banks's defeat at Mansfield and subsequent retreat that conclusively removed the Union threat to the Missouri's Shreveport base. With no real opportunities to make a difference on either the Red or Mississippi Rivers, the Missouri was basically put into use as a floating battery until its surrender in June 1865, the last Confederate ironclad to lower its flag. In the end, the story of the Missouri provides little in the way of strong challenges to those critics who have argued that the Confederate ironclad fleet was an expensive resource drain that failed to produce enough noteworthy achievements to come even close to matching its exorbitant cost to the Confederate war economy.

Carter had wider responsibilities that those directly attached to the Missouri (for example, he was involved in off and on discussions, debates, and plans in regard to the prospects of building torpedo boats, and even an ironclad, in Texas), and his correspondence has additional value there. Jeter's extensive footnotes, especially those identifying and discussing lesser-known persons mentioned in the letters, are also helpful to other historians. A Man And His Boat has much to recommend it. It explores obscure subject matter such as Confederate naval activities in the Trans-Mississippi, and its central topic, the CSS Missouri, is one of the least known vessels in the Confederate ironclad fleet.