Civil War Ironclad USS ST. LOUIS by thorn21g - 1:24 - POF - Gateway Model Shipcrafter's Guild

[johnhoward]

Brian,

Best wishes on your scratch build USS Cairo. Unfortunately, during my research, I didn't find very much reliable information on coloring for the 7 Ead's built gunboats, except "black hull exterior and whitewash interior" and for "stripes on the smokestacks" to differentiate them.  Contemporary B&W photographs appear to show a very dark shadow under the chine which is only slightly above the waterline and I doubt there would be any vivid red hull marine paint in this area which could be visible to the enemy from the river shoreline during covert missions. The side casement iron armor plating also extends several feet below the chines. The lifetime of these gunboats, especially the Cairo, was very short and I never found any record, in various personal crew diaries of beaching them for hull repainting, which would have been necessary in the muddy, sand-barred, log and debris strewn Mississippi Bayou Rivers. Unfortunately, modelers license has been applied to enhance or distinguish many USS Cairo models, which simply serves to confuse the facts.

 

Johnhoward

 

 

 

[mbp521]

Johnhoward,

 

I appreciate the input on this very much and kinda figured that would be the answer. Coloring determination on many older ships, especially those that didn’t have much of a history before going down to the depths make it difficult on us builders that are doing our best to faithfully replicate the original ships. I see a lot of this issue on other builds where builder liberties have to be used when the information is just not there. One such example would be Vasa. She didn’t make it past her maiden voyage before being lost for 400 years. 
 

During my research on the coloring, I have run across model after model of ironclads, not just the City Class ones, where the builders have used the red color scheme for the hulls. There is even a life size replica of the Monitor that has the hull painted red. I agree that the bright red was most likely not used, but that a more muted red iron oxide could have been a possibility. However, since there is no documentation or information that can prove otherwise, and like you said, I will go with my own personal preference and color the hull to my liking. I have been playing with a few color schemes that I like and I believe I have settled on a reddish-brown rust color that is close to an iron oxide that I think will break up the otherwise all black paint on the casemates. I guess that if somewhere down the line a discovery is made the confirms the true hull color, I can pull my model out of its case and fix the error. Until then I think I’ll be happy with what I have now. 
 

Again, thank you so much for your input. Really looking forward to more updates on the St. Louis build. 

-Brian

[mtaylor]

2 hours ago, mbp521 said:

Johnhoward,

 

I appreciate the input on this very much and kinda figured that would be the answer. Coloring determination on many older ships, especially those that didn’t have much of a history before going down to the depths make it difficult on us builders that are doing our best to faithfully replicate the original ships. I see a lot of this issue on other builds where builder liberties have to be used when the information is just not there. One such example would be Vasa. She didn’t make it past her maiden voyage before being lost for 400 years. 

 

I do tend to agree with this statement.  The one catch here is that researchers have discovered the colors used in the Vasa, especially the carvings and they are full of life and not the mono-color that many build.  Sadly, it's only been in recent years that the colors have been discovered and very few, if any, of the kit makers have upgraded their instructions.  

[kurtvd19]

1 hour ago, mtaylor said:

Sadly, it's only been in recent years that the colors have been discovered and very few, if any, of the kit makers have upgraded their instructions.  

At the 2003 NRG Conference here near Chicago Fred Hocker the Vasa curator was talking about their studies of the colors it was painted.  He said that he was aware that Vasa builders would argue that the blue used on their model was more accurate than the other guy's paint.  He conclude it with a scientific explanation of how the polluted waters of the harbor had chemically changed the original paint and that the studies showed that it was RED not blue!

[Caiella]

Perhaps I've missed this in your build log, but what type/size anchors would have been carried by the City-class gunboats? Also where would the anchor davits be placed? Thanks.

[Joseph A. Rose]

JohnHoward,

 

That's beautiful work that you have done, of course. Where will the model reside when she's finished?

 

May I ask where the logbook of the U.S.S. St. Louis can be found? It would be of great importance to my research.

 

Thanks,

Joseph A. Rose

[mbp521]

Johnhoward,

 

Just popping in to see if you guys have made any progress on the St. Louis. Sure would love to see some updated pictures of this beautiful build.

 

-Brian

[johnhoward]

Joesph A. Rose 

Regarding the log book for the "U.S.S. St. Louis" when launched in 1861 by Eads was  renamed "Baron De Kalb" on September 8, 1862 when it was transferred from Army to Navy control because the Navy already had a  ship named "USS St. Louis" in commission at that time. Note: we retained the "USS St. Louis" name and armament configuration for our model because our customer, the St Louis Civil War Museum at Jefferson Barracks is an Army facility. 

The resulting log was titled " Memorandum Book of the U. S. Str. "BARRON DE KALB" and  "LA FAYETTE" (A Steam Ram)

 

This document was located by Scott, one of our original team of modelers, thru his diligent pursuit several years ago and we believe it was found at  the Louisiana State University(LSU) although he is still trying to verify this fact. We possess a PDF file of the complete 188 page document which is a type written version made in 1935 from the hand written original log. 

 

I am sorry this response took so long but I only very recently discovered your inquiry on the NRG Forum. We are still assembling the research material that we uncovered during the past 8 years. Unfortunately the recovery of the "USS Cairo"  in 1963 which provided a treasure of information was far from the ideal process and left many questions unanswered. Our original goal was to scratch build the most accurate model to date of a "City Class Ironclad" at a large 1:24 scale and to document data errors for future modelers. We were later astounded by the enormity of this effort.

We would be very interested in any aspect of your own research activity which may relate to this goal.

 

JOHNHOWARD

 

 

 

 

 

 

[johnhoward]

Recently I replied directly to Caiella on a question as to the types of anchors and anchor davits carried on the "City Class Ironclads" that based on my research as follows:

Attached are the most representative image of the anchors, generally referred to as an Admiralty Type that I believe, four of which, were carried on the "City Class Ironclads" for use on the Mississippi River and the swampy back-waters during the Civil War. Its shank was about 5 feet long and probably weighed less than 500 pounds. The sliding "T"crossbar permitted the anchor to lay flat on the deck when not in use. There is no evidence of any type of davit to raise or drop the anchors but both fore and aft deck gunwales include roller guides for anchor chains or heavy hawsers attached to the anchor shank rings. The anchor itself was probably manhandled over the deck gunwales upon entry or retrieval and possibly deployed away from the ironclad via one of the ironclads small boats. The bow anchor chains fed thru tubes in the bow casement armor to the steam powered capstan and then down to the floor of the hull for storage. The stern anchors probably were simply manhandled for deployment and retrieval. These ironclads were not designed for deep water where heavy anchoring would be mandatory. Most contemporary Civil War photographs depict the ironclads secured by numerous small ropes to posts or trees along the shores of the rivers and I think the main purpose of the anchors and steam powered capstan may have been to help freeing the ironclad after being grounded on sandbars or mud flats or by quick rise and fall of the rivers via thunderstorms during the hot Summers of the lower Mississippi River area.  

 

JOHNHOWARD

[mbp521]

Johnhoward,

 

Thank you for the useful information on the anchors. I had purchased a couple of 19th century anchors with the wooden stocks for my build to modify as needed to get the correct style carried by the City Class ironclads. I haven't yet started any research on them, so this definitely helps a lot. Of the journals that have been made available from the sailors present at the time of the Cairo's sinking, almost all of the make reference of seeing the port anchor going airborne at the time of the torpedo explosion. This would explain the reason for it's absence.

 

It's been about 7.5 years since I last visited Vicksburg NMP and my memory is a little fuzzy, but I want to remember that they had an anchor on display inside the museum. Not sure if this would have been one of the other anchors the Cairo carried or not, but if they were secured to the anchor chains that were recovered during the salvage operation, one would believe that they would have displayed this as well. I still have some digging to do on this one though.

 

I have recently started work on the Hurricane deck structures on my Cairo build I am curious to see the status of your St. Louis build, especially the hammock racks. This is a feature that I am still researching and struggling to find any viable information on. Most of the pictures that I have found show different iterations of them and most likely modified from their original design, if they are even in place at all. I am wanting to do a wooden hard wall on the outboard side with a netting structure on the inboard side, but I want to research a little more to make sure.

 

Thanks again for the info on the anchors.

 

-Brian

[johnhoward]

Brian,

Attached are a few more anchor photos I found when researching for the City Class Ironclads. Only the last one was labeled as an "artifact"  coming from the USS Cairo and it is just the broken "Palm" portion. I believe it was described by the "Joiner Sisters" and is likely to be on display at Vicksburg.

Regarding the hammock racks, my research concluded that they consisted of individual "H"-shaped metal stanchions with netting on the outside, bottom and inside to contain the hammocks and a canvas rain cover over the top. In many of the contemporary photographs you can see the lower portions of the sailors, standing along the rails, only occasionally blocked by the stowed hammocks and or the canvas rain cover. The closely packed stored hammocks created a measure of protection against rifle fire for crewmen working on the Hurricane deck.  The netting would allow the hammocks to dry out during good weather. A light wooden wall would be dangerously splintered by rifle fire in wartime but might have been used after the Civil War on some of the survivor City Class ironclads for enhanced appearance. Cotton and hay bales were also stacked on the decks to provide additional protection. I somewhere have some photos of this netting type of hammock racks on contemporary gunboats and will hopefully add them later. The "USS Cairo" was only in service for a few months before it was sunk in October 1862 so it didn't survive long enough for many improvements to be made from wartime experience.

 

JOHNHOWARD

[johnhoward]

Brian,  Here are photos of our rolled up hammocks and some of the "H" shaped stanchions which will eventually line the Hurricane Deck USS St Louis 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brian,

Attached are photos of the rolled up hammocks  and some of the "H" shaped stanchions that will eventually line the Hurricane Deck at about scale 6-foot increments of our USS St Louis Ironclad. Netting will line the inside of the stations and a canvas rain cover top. Similar Hammock racks were used on the main decks of sailing warships for hundreds of years. There are also numerous discussions of these hammock racks already posted on the NRG Forum. with good photographs. For some reason some of these files failed to load. 

 

JOHNHOWARD

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[johnhoward]

Brian,

I'm going to try again to add photos on the hammock rails and netting that I found during research for the "City Class Ironclads". The first 2 show contemporary Civil War era fully netted racks similar to the racks we plan to install on the USS St. Louis ironclad which will not include any wood paneling. Some drawings of Hammock Rails in the 1830-1850 peacetime years do specify use of exterior wood panelling on sailing ships, probably for the aesthetics. A canvas top cover and netting, attached on the inside of the rack frames which clears the deck to allow Hurricane Deck scupper rain water to go under the hammocks and down the casement, without getting them too wet. I believe the single horizontal wooden rail in the first photo is just a peacetime convenience for visiting passengers and would have been removed during wartime to minimize the risk of splintering from enemy gunfire.

. The third photo of the USS Cairo clearly shows the legs of the crewmen through the empty hammock rack netting, indicating no external wood panelling. The last two photos show the thin slices of aluminum tubing extrusions I used to make the "H" shaped rack supports and a preliminary dry-fit of them on the Hurricane Deck.  

 

JOHNHOWARD

[mbp521]

Johnhoward,

 

Thanks so much for the additional photos, they are extremely useful.

 

Over the past few weeks, I have been researching and studying photographs of the Cairo and her sister ships and I was able to locate a high resolution .tif file of the Cairo. In looking at several areas of this photo, I can see where it looks like one the crewman's legs are visible through the hammock netting in the forwardmost station between the first two stationaries (I'm not sure of the proper terminology for these). However, when I zoom in on them, there appears to me, to be several evenly spaced vertical lines that look to be individual boards along this space. Also, if you look further aft, closer to the workboats (between stationaries 5 & 6), these vertical lines are more defined especially at the bottom where is looks like either the paint is washed out or the sun is reflecting off the shiny surface. The counterpoint I came up with in this area, was that the tarp covering the hammocks was not pulled all the way down to the deck and that the lighter area showing is the hammocks themselves. But I don't see the horizontal lines of the net. The first picture that you have would make sense with the netting running horizontal and vertical, but the spacing of the grid on this net would seem to let a lot more show through if they were indeed empty. It's an endless cycle.

 

There are also two crew members sitting on these hammock nets in both of these areas and neither of the sections they are seated in are bowed. This looks like it would take into account what you stated above, that there could have been a temporary horizontal rail installed to support them or some other solid surface. I wouldn't think that given the size of the stationaries, that they could pull a rope taught enough between them to support a full grown man without bowing just a little bit. I am just struggling with the evenly spaced vertical lines that look like planks, being netting.

 

 

 

 

 

Another thing that I discovered while going cross-eyed staring at this photograph, goes back to a discussion that your group had about how supplies were loaded onto the boats (post #74). In looking closely, it appears that there may have been a companionway located on the Hurricane deck just aft of the rear funnel and outboard of the forward hog chain support post. In the closeup snippit below, you can see what appears to be an open hatch cover with  long windows. The reason I believe that this would be a hatchway is because of the white paint on the hatch itself as well as the inside walls. This seems to match the paint scheme of the open windows on the forward skylight (second picture below). Best I can tell, this companion way would come out just behind the aft most side guns and allow the crew to load supplies to the gun deck and hold without having to move the cannons out of the way and load everything through the gun ports. I truly could be off base with this theory, but it definitely looks like this is some sort of access way to the deck below.

 

 

 

One final item that I found is what looks to be a skylight on the roof of the forward side structure built around the paddlewheel house. If you look at the snippit below, there appears to be a white rectangular shape on the roof of this structure. It would make sense that this could be a skylight, since the only other window in this area is located on the forward wall of the same structure. I just thought that I would throw this out there to possibly spur more discussion on what it could possibly be. I will also post these last two questions on my build as well to see what other feedback I can get.

 

Please don't think that I am trying to debunk you and your teams extensive research on the hammock nets, and I do realize that we are building two different boats, I just want to offer up some thoughts of mine and give a different perspective of these boats. All of the research that you and your group have done has been a tremendous help in getting me to where I am now with my build, and is greatly appreciated. I just hope that some of my suggestions will help in some way with your build as well.

 

-Brian

 

[johnhoward]

Brian, 

Thankyou very much for the high definition photographs of the USS Cairo which are much better than those I have previously seen and which should help us in making a more accurate assessment of how the hammock racks and Hurricane deck access hatches actually appeared. Contemporary Civil War photography is one of the things that make researching and modeling of Civil War ships so interesting compared to earlier eras when accurate data was scarce and difficult to substantiate or refute.

I will eagerly try to review each of the issues and conclusions you have raised and I also solicit any additional opinions on this subject from other NRG Forum reviewers.

 

JOHNHOWARD

[mbp521]

Johnhoward, 

 

In case you would like to download the pictures, I found them at the link below. The high res ones that I used are the .tif files. Sure hope they help. 
 

https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/our-collections/photography/numerical-list-of-images/nhhc-series/nh-series/NH-61000/NH-61568.html

 

-Brian

[johnhoward]

Brian,

THIS IS A TEST MESSAGE! 

Thanks for the detail photo link. I do plan to access them directly.

Last night I tried to send you the first installment of my research data on the Hammock Rail research but it was rejected by the "I am a Robot" check.

 

I spent several hours creating it and now assume it is lost.

If this message goes through I'll try again with a shorter version.

 

JOHNHOWARD

[mbp521]

47 minutes ago, johnhoward said:

THIS IS A TEST MESSAGE! 

Got your test message.

 

-Brian

[johnhoward]

Brian,

To begin a response to your assessment of the high definition photos of the USS Cairo Hammock Rails I decided to review my original research data which was conducted between 2014 and 2019 and now resides in at least 17 large three-ring binders which were created chronologically and sorted primarily by our USS St. Louis model fabrication requirements as they occurred. The original intent of this research was to identify specific details on the USS St. Louis aka Baron De Kalb which differentiated it from the other 6 City Class Ironclads (We naively assumed that the Published National Park Service Drawings for the USS Cairo must be correct since they had recovered its wreck in 1963/4.) This research quickly evolved into a process of trying to validate all published data on City-Class Ironclads to determine what to include on our model. 

The first entry found  related to the Hammock Rails came from the Historic Structural Report (HSR) , CAIRO-hsr.PDF which included Appendix "A" Samuel M. Poohs' original  "Specifications for building a gunboat". This document was used by the US Government to compete the contract for the 7 City Class Ironclads eventually awarded to James Eads of Carondelet, Missouri. In Appendix "A" page 151 it reads: "To have stanchions fitted all around the upper deck with an eye in the top, two and one-half feet above the deck to receive the ridge rope."

This description closely agrees with the second of six Hammock Rail photos that I posted on 29 January 2022 and also some of your enhanced photos.

This was the only reference to "Railings" in Pooks' specifications however the HSR also includes footnotes indicating any exceptions that Eads made in his fabrication of the contracted Ironclads, of which there were none for railings. Eads was a competent contractor and master builder especially for iron works and is famous for his bridges.  At this point in my research I began looking more closely at the current military practices for Hammock Rails. An interesting point in the ironclad construction is that they were under US ARMY Jurisdiction, General McClellan in particular, for some reason.  

 

To be continued, 

JOHNHOWARD

 

 

[johnhoward]

Brian,

In a followup to my initial message on Hammock Rails which identified Samuel M. Poohs' specification for the Hurricane Deck railings, the following quotation from Howard I. Chapelle's "The American Sailing Navy" ,page 477 entitled "The Last Years of Sail" was one of the main sources I used to determine that we should utilize the screen netting type Hammock Rails for our model of the City Class Ironclad "USS St. Louis": "The closing in of the hammock rails and the substitution of staving and wooden rails for netting and rope were peacetime maintenance developments; but wooden hammock rails and staving would also be sources of danger from splinters or fire in action, as was often discovered during the Civil War. The wooden rails, with their staving and panels, were neater than the old nettings, weather cloths, and rope support, but were far less practical. The peacetime urge for neatness and easy maintenance often runs afoul of war requirements."   (Peacetime here refers to the years between the War of 1812 and the US Civil War}

 

Since the Civil War started in early 1861, before contracts were even issued for the City- Class Ironclads, let alone built , I believe it is reasonable to believe that this safety upgrade (If known) would have been incorporated in the USS St. Louis before she was declared battle-ready or at least before our specified model configuration date of October 1862 just before she was renamed the USS Baron DeKalb and transferred to the US Navy jurisdiction. The purpose for this distinction is that our customer for this model is the "Missouri Civil War Museum" at the Army Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis. The only reliable differences we found between the USS St. Louis and the USS Cairo were the color of the identification stripes on the smoke-stacks, and one more 30 pounder Parrott Riifle and one less 32-lbr Smoothbore Cannon in the stern than the USS Cairo. (Since the USS Cairo was mined and sunk in December 1862 we were fortunate enough to be able to regard the USS Cairo recovery data as also reliable for our model.)

 

However, I believe it is also reasonable for you to ascertain that your USS Cairo model configuration still possibly maintained some peacetime features such as the wood-paneled Hurricane Deck Hammock Rails at the time of the apparent celebration depicted in its famous photograph you have referenced. Some of the City Class Ironclads probably did become subjected to enough Hammock Rail damage for it to be reported. We have a copy of the Log for the USS St. Louis in which damage from enemy action which was severe, is recorded, but no mention is made of the Hammock Rails. It is also important to remember that the City Class Ironclads were built in an amazingly short timespan.

 

 

[Roger Pellett]

I’m not sure that splinter protection would gave much of a concern with the crew fighting behind the iron casemate.  Lumber was cheap and readily available.

 

Roger

[mtaylor]

1 hour ago, Roger Pellett said:

I’m not sure that splinter protection would gave much of a concern with the crew fighting behind the iron casemate.  Lumber was cheap and readily available.

 

Roger

Would "repair time" be a factor then?  I think it might be faster for repairs to replace the rope on the Hammock Rails than all the wood.

[johnhoward]

Roger,

The Hammock Racks on the City Class Ironclads are only on the Hurricane Deck (Exposed Upper Deck) which has no armor plate protection.

JOHNHOWARD

[johnhoward]

Roger,

One more comment , according to the USS St. Louis Logbook the ironclad's carpenters were consistently working on additional wood and iron barricades inside of the gun deck casements to add protection the boilers and engines since the exterior iron plating only covered a portion of the slanted side casement armor and the gunports themselves appear to only be covered by thin oak shutters not capable of sustaining cannon or even rifle fire. The only ironclad armor, as built,  considered  by itself to safely protect the crew and boats' machinery was that which extended approximately 5 feet below some portions of the waterline.   The bow and stern casements were covered by much thicker wood layers (6" to 24") and the 2.5" thick armor plating but again not for the gunports themselves. The most dangerous portion of these ironclads was from plunging fire on the hurricane deck which had no armor at all. They also resorted to adding bales of cotton or straw on the main & hurricane decks for extra protection. Even the pilot house was only covered by i.5" thick armor backed by wood. After one ironclad pilot was killed at his wheel, the USS Cairo added additional layers of wood and plating up to about 19" in thickness to the front of the wheelhouse. 

 

JOHNHOWARD

 

 

 

[mbp521]

Johnhoward,

 

I believe that this is definitely going to be one of those mysteries that will probably be next to impossible to solve.

 

I have concluded that the photograph of the Cairo had to have been taken between the time of her commissioning in January 1862 and April 1862. This conclusion was made on the fact that Cairo was commissioned in January just after the completion of the armor plating on her port and starboard casemates, and the pilot house has not yet been upgraded with the forward three panels being reinforced. The extra protection on the pilot house was added after Flag Officer Foote was injured at the battle of Fort Donelson aboard the St. Louis and another pilot was killed aboard the Louisville in February 1862.

 

According to research documents, Cairo was on patrol on the Cumberland & Tennessee rivers, taking part in the capture of Nashville, for the first part of her career. In early April 1862 she was ordered back to Cairo Naval Station due to the falling waters on the Tennessee river. During this time is when the pilot house was reinforced. There are no other details of other work done to her during the six days she was tied up at Cairo, IL. So the assumption is made that the wooden hammock racks were still in place.

 

The photograph also shows that the railroad irons are not in place on the forward casemates. These were added in late April after the Mound City and Cincinnati were sunk by Confederate rams in a skirmish off Plum Point. Again, there is no mention of any other work performed other than the armor upgrade.

 

Another modification documented on the Cairo took place in June 1862 after the surrender of Memphis. Cairo was ordered back to Fort Pillow for guard duty. During her time there the crews fortified the structures around the boilers and engines with timbers and railroad iron found in and around the fort. This was done in response to the Mound City boiler explosion from a well placed shot during a skirmish at St. Charles, AR.

 

Other information on repairs that I was able to dig up were in late October 1862, the replacement of the fire linings after several small incidents of the old ones catching fire. The fire bricks, fire boxes and gratings were also replaced. In November 1862 many of the gun deck planks were replaced due to extreme wear from the gun carriage trucks. There are also writings of where cotton bales and other available materials were put in place as fortifications on the Hurricane deck as you mentioned above as well as extra protection on the pilot house.

 

I would assume that hammock netting was a menial upgrade/task that most likely would not have warranted documenting, and so far I have not been able to locate any info on the ships logs from Lieutenant Bryant to find out if they contain any other information on repairs. Unfortunately, the ships logbook from Lt. Cdr. Selfridge and the ships official papers were lost when the Cairo sank, so we will most likely never know what was written in them.

 

All in all this is a great discussion and has given me more inspiration to further my research. 

 

-Brian

[Keith Black]

Johnhoward and Brian, thank you both for sharing this bit of history. 

[mtaylor]

The battle at Fort Donelson pointed out quite a few issues with the ironclads.  Plunging fire from the fort and not able to return fire since the guns couldn't be elevated enough were the two biggest ones.  Followed by the width and depth of the river as well as the tight curves below the fort and within cannon range.  I believe that the officers involved figured the ironclads could get the fort to surrender just by being there.  But the river being rather narrow and the terrain were not in their favor.  

[johnhoward]

Brian,

Thanks for your excellent assessment of the probable time frame for the ironclad photograph in question, which is obviously also the source of your excellent high resolution versions. I was just about ready to ask you if you had found such information since we had never attempted to resolve it. We did spend a lot of time reviewing the relatively few original ironclad photos and the multitude of retouched versions and renamed versions of the same basic photograph. I believe I read some place that James Eads may have actually commissioned someone to retouch an original photo to represent each of the seven City Class ironclads which he sent to the original captain of each as a personal momento of the occasion. I personally doubt this account but someone may have engaged in this activity for personal or commercial reasons. According to Donald L. Canney's "The Old Steam Navy" Volume Two, " The first of the city-class vessels launched was the St. Louis, on 12 October 1861...The first commissioned was the Carondelet on 15 January1862... and the last commissioned was the St. Louis on 31 January 1862."  The only way to differentiate between the "City Class" Ironclads at this stage on black and white photographs, where the stack color stripes weren't decernible, was by the Symbols  on the cross bars between the stacks and none were yet installed, if they ever were.  Stock photograph glass plates of the Ironclads were apparently continually retouched to include these identification symbols (a Star, Masons Symbol, etc) depending upon the desired use of the photo. Apparently there were no photograph copyright laws enforced during this era. We extensively researched the possibility that the "Masonic Symbol" which was added (Retouched) on some ironclad photos to identify the USS St. Louis, aka Baron DeKalb such that it was called the "Masonic Ironclad" in contemporary newspaper reports, but could find no such evidence. I believe there are solid reasons to believe that all contemporary photos identifying only a single City Class Ironclad may mis-identified.

Since all of the "City Class Ironclads" were initially nearly identical, it probably doesn't really make any difference regarding our Hammock Netting Configuration photographic review, but it certainly adds a level of the frustration to the research.

 

JOHNHOWARD

[mbp521]

Johnhoward,

 

It is funny that you mention that. While researching the ironclads, I have pulled down many pictures off the internet for study, and I am sure you have probably seen these as well. One such photo was what looked like a newspaper clipping of the St. Louis. It's hard to tell for sure, but this one looks like an original, un-doctored photo. Without the color bands it make it hard to tell, but the heading and picture file both have it listed as the St. Louis. But it goes with what you were saying about the builder gifting the photos.

 

However, a couple of other photographs that I found were of the St. Louis looking eerily familiar. The next photos are clearly the same picture as above, but one is titled Baron DeKalb and the other is titled Carondelet. Looks like some serious photoshopping has been done to doctor these up. The main difference on these two is that the crossbar symbols have been altered to reflect the two different ships. It's information like this that definitely make it challenging to distinguish the different boats.

 

Baron DeKalb 

 

Carondelet

 

 

-Brian

Edited March 3, 2022 by mbp521

[johnhoward]

Brian, 

Thanks for the photos, and I too agree with your conclusions, but I believe they are probably all retouches, some more cleverly done than others. You can find similar versions identified for about all seven City Class names, but the give away is that background trees seem  to be untouched in all of them. There are also many similar drawings, like etchings, obviously made from these photos.

Have you ever tried to find a professional photographer who is familiar with 19th century glass plate retouching methods and who may be able to detect other chicanery in these photos. We did find a photographer who showed us evidence of some possible alterations but results were inconclusive.

The 2 photos I enclosed are the only versions that I have any confidence in believing they are actually the USS St. Louis aka USS Baron Dekalb. Unfortunately neither helps us much on the Hammock Rails, however the second clearly shows the main gun deck & hurricane deck cambers as well as the deck house roof cambers that are drawn as flat on the Vicksburg National Park Service drawings. 

 

JOHNHOWARD