Genesis Of The Union Gunboats

During the American Civil War, the need for a shallow draft vessel that could navigate the waterways and bring the fight to the doorstep of the Confederacy became apparent to the Lincoln administration.

Union General-in-Chief Winfield Scott, pressed Congress for $1 million to support his ambition to conduct naval operations on the Mississippi River.  This was a large weapons procurement for the day and proposals for competitive bids to build ironclads went out to several boat builders in the Midwest.  James Buchanan Eads, an industrious and well-connected boat builder, successfully networked with friends in the Lincoln Administration, landed the lucrative contract. (Note 1)

Eads’s was an acclaimed engineer-inventor.  He won the contract because he boldly proposed that he could build the state-of-the-art gunboats in only sixty-three days, for $89,000 per boat.  He incentivized the Federal Government by proposing to forfeit $250 for each day he missed the deadline. (Note 2)

Eads ignored a chorus of naysayers who said he couldn’t build gunboats and forged ahead with ingenious and creative solutions to get the boats built on time. The keels of the gunboats were laid in Carondelet, Missouri, outside St. Louis, and Mound City, Illinois, by Cairo. Eads, a master organizer, subcontracted out separate piece work to numerous contractors located in a variety of cities such as Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and St.Louis. Being ahead of his time, Eads networked and coordinated these efforts using telegraph communications.

A taskmaster and a ‘stickler for details,’ Eads pushed his 800 construction workers at a relentless pace day and night. The largest foundries and machine shops in St. Louis were pushed to create a nearly constant stream of parts for his gunboats.

The Union’s new flotilla of gunboats received their ‘baptism of fire,’ in the battles of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, Tennessee and played prominent roles in the Union’s victories and subsequent control of the crucial waterways in the Tennessee River Valley and the Mississippi River. (Note 3)

All totaled, 14 ironclad gunboats and 11 other boats that were converted to be armed for military service were the result of Ead’s Herculean efforts.  His gunboats were characterized as indispensable in the defeat of the Confederacy. (Note 4)

The genesis of the Union gunboats, and a significant factor in the outcome of the Civil War, stemmed from the creative genius and iron-willed determination of James Buchanan Eads.

1. Benjamin Franklin Cooling, Forts Henry and Donelson, The Key To the Confederate Heartland (The University of Tennessee Press Knoxville, 1987), 23.

2. Benjamin Franklin Cooling, Forts Henry and Donelson, The Key To the Confederate Heartland (The University of Tennessee Press Knoxville, 1987), 24.

3. Timothy John Myers, Caged Confederates, Capturing The Heart of the Confederacy (Thornton Publishing, Inc., 2010), 45.

4. James Buchanan Eads: Biography from Answers.com, 7/26/2010.