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

[Roger Pellett]

I supposedly had a great great uncle, who served on the Baron De Kalb.  If you have a crew muster, his last name was Speer.  He was from Cincinnati, Ohio.  His brother, my great grandfather served in the 7th Ohio Cavalry.

[mtaylor]

You are probably correct in assuming the photos with the common background that never changes or moves from ship photo to ship photo are altered photos.   As for actually knowing for certain on a given photo, that's a tough call without having the glass negatives or even the original print.   My grandfather did a lot of glass negative photos and from the print, it would be hard to see that they were retouched such as removing blemishes from faces.  You would need the negative to see where that work had been done.   We may think their efforts were crude compared to modern retouching but they were, for the most part, pretty clever and darn good at it.

[mbp521]

16 hours ago, johnhoward said:

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, 

 

It was the similarities of the photos that first raised my suspicions on the the validity of the boat names. Since it has been well documented that the photo of the Cairo is the only known picture of this particular ship I took that one as gospel and the remaining pictures I have just been using as reference for different parts of the construction, since they were so similarly built. 
 

I had found the first picture you show a while back, but the version that I found was a lot more grainy, and looked more like a lithograph than an actual picture. Later on in my research I found a clearer copy that helped clear things up a bit. Especially the ship in the front. From my first picture it looked as though the aft deck had been extended, but the clearer picture identifies it as one of the ships boats in tow. 
 

I have never actually sought a professional photographer to look at the pictures to verify if they have been retouched or not, I’m kinda new at this research thing and it had never crossed my mind. I am however glad to know that at least there are a couple of  unaltered pictures out there for reference. 
 

As for your comment on the HSR showing the deck house roof as flat, this was another area that stumped me in my build. The high-res photo of the Cairo is not clear enough to make out the roofline of this structure, and it seems that the majority of the other boats had the cambered roof, so I relied on the photos of the other boats to make the decision to go with the cambered roof instead of following the plans. There are a few other smaller areas that I made the same decision on as well. 
 

-Brian

[johnhoward]

Thanks for all of your comments, every bit helps us to get closer to the truth.

 

Roger,

 Regarding the USS DeKalb crew . It's very intriguing that you may have had a relative by the name of Speer among its crew. Unfortunately, the USS St. Louis/Baron DeKalb log doesn't include a crew roster so we only know the names of its captains and a few crew members who were reported killed, wounded  or disciplined onboard as the log was being written. We also have two very good photos of un-named crew members with "USS St. Louis" on their hats.  The actual log was hand written and later a typed copy was made in about 1937 for preservation at the LSU Library. More information may have survived at the library. 

 

Mark, 

We were given similar  advice from the one professional photographer that we contacted but she admittedly didn't know much about glass plate photo retouching. I was hoping that a study of the six higher resolution photos that Brian recently discovered may be worthy of another expert review, especially in the area of the hammock rails. 

 

Brian,

How was the identity of the USS Cairo photo documented? I believe I have seen this same photo with other retouches and possibly identification, but this may have only been for the obviously recent colorized version. The only really conclusive identifier would be "gray" stripes on the stacks, but could they also be "Yellow" ?  I will review my research in response to your other question on limited access to the Hurricane Deck, next.

 

JOHNHOWARD

[mtaylor]

2 hours ago, johnhoward said:

Mark, 

We were given similar  advice from the one professional photographer that we contacted but she admittedly didn't know much about glass plate photo retouching. I was hoping that a study of the six higher resolution photos that Brian recently discovered may be worthy of another expert review, especially in the area of the hammock rails. 

 

Looking at the photos you've posted, there's a couple with a "give away".  The biggest one is that the items between the stacks aren't the same tones as the stacks themselves.   Too black, too sharp, and the supporting lines between the stacks holding up the symbols are not the same.

 

As far as "help" on this, I'm not sure if any of the museums in St Louis have any photo experts.  I would think one of them would since as I recall from when I lived there they did have lots of old photos about.  But those folks have probably long since retired.   You might try reaching out to the Smithsonian.  A long shot but they might have someone who could take a look and help.  

[mbp521]

3 hours ago, johnhoward said:

How was the identity of the USS Cairo photo documented?

Johnhoward,

 

I can go back through some of the reading material to verify where I read about this picture being the Cairo. I’m pretty sure Edwin Bearss mentions it in his book Hardluck Ironclad.  Also, it has been almost eight years since I visited the Cairo museum, but I am almost positive that they mention something about the photograph on a plaque by the huge mural they have on the wall of the museum with this same picture. Not to mention the Vicksburg NMP website also verifies it here. I know this doesn’t give very many details about the validity of the photograph or where they arrived at this claim, but one would hope the museum personnel would have done their research before posting this information. 
 

-Brian

Edited March 6, 2022 by mbp521

[johnhoward]

Brian,

I have no reason to believe that this is not the USS Cairo and even if it isn't, it's a  moot point since James Eads supposedly built all seven City Class Ironclads as identical sister ships except for the color of the stripes on the smoke stacks. I also agree that this is one of the best photos of this class ironclad ever taken. However the photo plate itself is not actually marked with any name and at least one issue of this photo includes the caption reading: " In January 1862, seven impressive creations were lined up along the river at Cairo, Illinois. The looked like something out of a Jules Verne fantasy. ..."  The river boats behind it don't resemble "City Class Ironclads" or even if they existed, so  the caption authenticity is even in doubt. I'm also not sure about Cairo as the city location, but my copy of the picture appeared in the National Park Service, " Vicksburg" flyer advertising the Park featuring their one surviving City Class Ironclad.  I think it would be fair to conclude that this could be any of the City Class ironclads unless someone can determine the color of the Smoke Stack Stripes on a black and white photo. There were some subsequent changes made to most of the "Sisters"which can minimize confusion.

 

I'll Just add an interesting story that I became part of when first starting the research for our USS St. Louis model in 2014. Our "Gateway Model Shipcrafters Guild" knew virtually nothing about Civil War Ironclads although we had a number of very proficient senior scratch build members who primarily concentrated on 17th and 18th century sailing vessels who served as our mentors and were very hard to please task masters. I have previously related how we managed to take on the task of building a "City Class" Iron Clad for the St. Louis Civil War Museum as a club effort using a set of plans that they provided but to a larger scale than the plans to one-half inch to the foot. We had never seen such good looking plans and coming coming from a reliable source, the National Park Service, and not immediately realizing the model would be over 7-Feet long, we immediately accepted and estimated a completion date of 3 or 4 years using or team of about 8 model builders. Having personally previously scratch built several sailing ship models primarily using using plans made from models in Maritime museums such as the French LaFlore frigate and Boudriot's 74-Gun ship, I soon became suspicious of the NPS plans which showed no Deck or Deck house cambers.  I had been communicating with Simon Schuster,Secretary of the Tampa Bay Ship Modelers Club who happened to have a team led by Bob Hill about 2 years ahead of us working on a build of the USS Cairo and had already visited Vicksburg and was in the process of digitizing the NPS drawings and using a Laser Saw to cut out wooden parts to build the hull to a scale of 1:48. Bob didn't know anything about the lack of deck camber but we thought that perhaps simple river boats might be built like barges or scows without these refinements, so he suggested I contact Vicksburg for answers. I contacted Elizabeth Joyner who was the current museum curator for the USS Cairo reconstruction and tried to set up a trip to discuss our issues with her local technical. She immediately responded favorably to our trip but added that she had no maritime experts at Vicksburg to answer our questions and that the USS Cairo was being managed from their Denver, Colorado office, which she put me in contact with. The Denver office also denied any real maritime expertise but said they would relay my questions to James P. Delgado who was their consulting maritime archeologist, explorer. His answer came back that "Yes" the decks and deck house roofs actually all had camber to shed water and ice necessary to maintain boat stability. We discovered that the NPS drawings for the USS Cairo were commissioned to a very good historical draftsman with little or no maritime background. The purpose of the drawings and a model was to acquire state and Congressional support and funding for the reconstruction. This effort was obviously successful and we owe a great deal to those who made it possible to save the last "City Class" Ironclad! Needless to say that 8 years later I am still researching for the real version.

 

JOHNHOWARD

[mbp521]

1 hour ago, johnhoward said:

I think it would be fair to conclude that this could be any of the City Class ironclads unless someone can determine the color of the Smoke Stack Stripes on a black and white photo. There were some subsequent changes made to most of the "Sisters"which can minimize confusion.

Johnhoward,

 

I agree 100% with that assessment. What I wouldn’t give to have a time machine to go back and have a look at these boats, not only in action, but to also see their construction.
 

As stated before, I am a novice at best, at maritime research, and to be honest, I have relied heavily on the information that you and your group have found along the way and have presented in your build log. Needles to to say there is no way that I could thank you guys enough for putting that info out there for myself and others that decide to take on the challenge of building these unique boats. 
 

While my research is nowhere near as extensive as your group, I feel that given my lack of experience, I can still say that I have put forth my best effort to make as true a representation of this boat as I can, and I will always be more than happy to contribute in any way to help you guys (and others) as well. This is one of the things that I love most about the MSW community, the willingness to share all sorts of information, tips, tricks and other data that will help each modeler be successful in their builds. Not to mention, what my old boss used to call “learning opportunities “ to improve. 

I am anxious to see if you are able to uncover any additional information on the deck hatches. I think this will go a long way in uncovering the mystery of how they were resupplied efficiently. Over the weekend, after another couple of hours of staring at the Cairo photograph, I believe I have uncovered another discrepancy in the placement of the aft funnels. From the looks of it, I believe they were mounted a little more inboard than the plans are showing to put them more in line with the forward funnels. I also think that they may have had a little more forward placement to put them between the third and fourth guns. This may be a point of perspective, but given that the starboard aft funnel is actually showing to be in front of the aft starboard hog chain post, I believe my theory may hold water. I want to look into this a bit more before going in and cutting new holes I my deck. The good thing is that if I do have to move my funnels, the newly found hatches may be end up being located over the holes that I currently have for the aft funnel location. We’ll have to see. Thanks again for all of your groups efforts and for putting up with my endless questions. 

-Brian

[johnhoward]

Brian,

Thanks for the nice compliments, but in truth I am also just an amateur at maritime research. By profession I was a mechanical systems engineer in the aircraft industry for 45 years and spent a lot of time trying to identify and resolve the cause of engineering design failures. I was also always a model builder and like to consider my first scratch built ship, when as a 7 year old Cub Scout I made a model of the USS Constitution from a $1.00 kit consisting of a 1" x 1" x 6" balsa wood block,  a thin imprinted balsa wood sheet of ship parts and a couple of dowels in 1947, when balsa wood had just come off the WW II Strategic Material's list. (It was used for Life Rafts) The Internet and organizations like the NRG have made maritime research infinitely easier. A few years ago I began attending the Annual NRG conventions and took the opportunity to privately ask the various officers of the NRG, " Who was responsible for the "Research" portion of the "NRG"? We never found a particular individual with that title assignment but concluded that the real answer was that the entire group of NRG enrollment really serve as a world wide  research " Jury" by their interaction on  projects like these "Model Forums" and their free expression of opinions for debate.

 

JOHNHOWARD

[kurtvd19]

John:

As to research all such articles printed in the Journal are peer reviewed.  The names in the masthead of the Journal shown as the EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD are experts in the world of maritime research and education - the majority are PhD's. 

How to build and tech tips are not subjected to peer review by this board but the NRG membership as you noted are the experts who review the printed Journal and let us know if and when they find errors - or better ways to do things.  We appreciate and welcome the feedback and want more writers to publish articles on modeling and shop notes.

Kurt

 

[johnhoward]

Brian,

We originally expected find evidence for additional access between the Hurricane Deck and the Gundeck but primarily for the 175 crewmen rather than provisioning and we are now hoping that your new high resolution photos will help confirm or refute this idea. When we had reached the stage of our large scale 1:24 model with all basic structure, decks and deck houses in place and with the starboard side planked but the port side intentionally left open we had a perfect 3-D viewpoint that is hard to achieve using drawings alone. Your comment on ventilation funnel locations is very valid and we tried to locate them where they would actually function.You may notice the ventilation funnels appear to be embedded in the wall on the left side of photo 2 . You probably realized they both raise & lower and rotate. Lower deck temperature control was a difficult issue.

I had just completed a rather extensive update of my original #74 posting regarding our Hatch Research and recent evidence, but lost it while trying to add enclosures. I'll try to recreate some of this later but wii just attach 3 photos and a brief summary of each for now.

Photo 1 shows the USS Essex being recoaled via a temporary ramp and wheelbarrows  through open gunport, which apparently was a common practice. Photo 2 shows a poor sketch of the gundeck below the area of your newly expected access hatch, made by Captain Walke of the USS Carondelet after the war in which he apparently doesn't recall a stairwell. Photo 3 shows a nice open reverse view of the suspected access hatch on Sister ship USS Baron DeKalb but we didn't detect any access hatch. We did think there may have been one inside the deck house.

Every time I start writing this story, I remember more details, so I need to stop now.

 

JOHNHOWARD

 

 

[johnhoward]

Brian,

Attached is a better copy of Captain Walke's sketch which includes some of my original notes on the contents of the photo of the Ventilation Funnel Exhaust embedded in the left hand, wall possibly directly into the fire-room..  Since the gun deck was only 50-feet wide, casement to casement, his attempt at perspective drawing, as he remembers the USS Carondelet, is greatly distorted and would have been only half this wide in the fore-ground. In our model reconstruction, the open iron ventilation grate on the ceiling was really on the centerline of the ironclad, directly above the boilers behind the wall on the left. This was the primary path for boiler heat exhaust. The "apparent skylight" would have been directly above the center of the "Fire-room" which contained an iron floor, fireboxes, and access doors to the coal bins on the hull floor and its ceiling at the Hurricane Deck level. The sliding hatch on the floor would also be above the "Fire-Room"  and probably contained steel ladders for crew entry and emergency exit from the fire-room, similar to that shown partway down the left hand wall for engine or boiler room entry. This interpretation still doesn't find evidence of an internal gun deck stairway to the Hurricane deck. The main cook stove (not shown) was immediately forward of the fire-room wall on the gun deck centerline and its exhaust chimney extended thru the fire room forward wall and up thru its ceiling, the Hurricane Deck. 

The most important aspect of this reconstruction is that we could find no good way of safely removing the ashes and slag  from the Fire-Room following consumption of about a ton of coal on a daily basis except possibly winching an iron bucket directly up thru a hatch on the Hurricane Deck. Contemporary photos do indicate some activity in the area between the pilothouse and smoke stacks but so far nothing conclusive. As previously reviewed on this forum, Roger Pellett & others identified post war iron dreadnaught inventions for ash & slag removal but we found no evidence of its use during the Civil War.

 

JOHNHOWARD

[mbp521]

Johnhoward,

 

Thank you for sharing the sketch. This really opens up a ton of new questions.

 

You are definitely correct when you said that the perspective is way off, without delving too deep into scaling and math, this representations would have the area between the casement and the boiler room wall at well over 25' which would only leave another 26' for the starboard side of the gun deck and the boiler room. It just doesn't add up. The quarters were much closer than that. Given that the 8" Smoothbore(?) in the second port was almost 10' long and about half of it is still sitting inside the casement, measuring that across the floor level would make it well over 25' (just rough math).

 

The other thing that gets me about the sketch is the funnel imbedded in the wall. The Cairo plans and all photographs that I have seen of the sister ships, show the forward funnels directly forward of the chimneys. Given that the chimneys were at least twice as wide as the funnels, wouldn't they, along with the flume, protrude through the boiler room wall as well? I guess that this sketch could have been drawn after a modification where they moved the funnels outboard some, or they were damaged after a battle and adjusted for more efficiency. I'm just spit balling here. 

 

A few things that I really noticed from the sketch that stick in my brain are:

1) the drawing looks to show, in my opinion, what seems like hard walled Jr. officers quarters with doors and framing. This would coincide with other drawings, models and the HSR plans. But I am taking this sketch with a grain of salt due to the other irregularities, and they quite possibly could just be tent walled structures.

 

2) I noticed that in the back by the boiler wall where the sketch calls out a stairway, would this not actually be the engines? If the boiler walls were built around the boiler and with it's dimensions, if I remember correctly, the boiler was wide enough to where it sat between the outer two keels and the engines were mounted on the outboard sides of the outer keels. Placement of the "stairway" in this area would not really be feasible.

 

3) In the back, by the aft gun there seems to be a lot of daylight, especially over the gun itself. I am just wondering. I took another look at the photograph you sent of the backside of the Baron DeKalb and I noticed a structure on the starboard deck behind the crewman. At first glance I thought that it might just be a crate, but after staring at it for a bit, it almost looks as if there were windows on top that match that of the hatch and forward skylight that I found on the Cairo photograph. It also has the angles that would allow water to shed off, if it were indeed a hatch. That could explain the reason the sketch shows the lighting over the aft gun. Just speculation, and a may be trying put things there that don't actually exist.

 

One other thought is that there were not actually stairwells down though these hatches but ladders that could be easily removed and stowed to keep the areas clear for the crew. There had to be some sort of this method for access to the pilot house, since the only way to get there was from the gun deck, so this would be a possible method, and this is how I incorporated access into my build. These are just some of the thoughts that popped into my head, so please forgive me if I am rambling, but this is definitely interesting to see new material and I'm sure it will spawn even more questions and thoughts.

 

-Brian

[johnhoward]

Thanks Brian,

Your review of these photos is exactly what I hoped they would inspire. By combining them with our large scale model of the USS St. Louis with open decking layer upon layer, it was relative easy to identify drawing inconsistencies and possible reinterpretations of how the the ironclads were actually operated. We made numerous notes at the time of construction on theories for future research follow up but had to make some initial decisions to continue model construction. The ventilation funnels are a good example. We found some of them were either in impossible locations or the lower deck drawings were incorrect. I tend to believe that Captain Walke did actually witness and remember one such funnel protruding out of a wall as he sketched, but maybe not this wall!   Regarding the deck view photo of the USS DeKalb, we believe  it was taken during a periodic refurbishing clean-up so some of the items on the deck like the skylights and crew heads are probably shown in temporary storage locations. Regarding your comment on access to the pilot house, one of the early NPS(I believe from the Philadelphia Office) surveys of the USS Cairo shortly after its recovery depicts the outline of a simple extension ladder from the gun deck up to the hatch in the pilot house floor. With no external pilot house doors, this would have been a risky way for the 3 occupants to escape in an emergency!  There was also an iron ventilation grate in the top of the pilot house, but not much good for daily access.The best evidence we have found for tent type junior officers cabins in aft corners of the gun deck are photos of mock-up exhibits taken by Bob Hill's Tampa bay Boat Club in about 2012 on his team's visit to the Vicksburg Museum. He later couldn't remember the story context that went with these photos but they matched perfectly with earlier sailing ship practices of lightweight structures which were disassembled in preparation for battle.. Most of the information that I accumulated from Vicksburg came from Elizabeth Joyner who was the Cairo Museum Curator at the time. Although she claimed to have no maritime experts at Vicksburg, she and her sister did a fine job of recording the artifacts they accumulated during the salvage operations. Unfortunately, after she retired, I was no longer able to identify her successor. Our primary evidence for the lack of hard-walled junior officers cabins is the lack of wall structure outlines on the rear corners of the relatively undamaged Gun Deck Photos when it was in storage during reconstruction. Pook's specifications didn't specify how the cabins were to be constructed and there were no spec deviations recorded by the contractor James Eads in the Historical Structural Report which identified the species of wood and stock sizes for almost everything else.

 

Isn't this fun?

JOHNHOWARD

 

[johnhoward]

Brian, 

I just realized that Captian Walke's sketch represents the exact path he must have taken many times daily between his stern cabin and  the forward end of the gun deck mezzanine leading up a simple ladder/hatch into the pilot house. This adds a lot of credibility to his memory and his sketch details on my previous post. It would have been a very dark and dangerous place to walk with the gunport hatches closed and no skylights. One possibility could be use of the large  diamond shaped glass deck inserts embedded into upper woking decks of whaling ships, during  this period, which also couldn't risk fires from use of fragile kerosene lamps and barrels of whale oil. The only other thought I have on the bright ceiling areas is that they may represent reflection from sun off the river and thru the open gun ports. The stairway on the left could also possibly lead to the munitions magazine below the gundeck.

The two photos added with post come from NPS Dwg VICK 306-410002  dated 5-12-69(unfortunately inverted but I can't seem to rotate them) contracted by the Philadelphia NPS Office rather than Denver! Also note the Block in the Captains Cabin drawing titled "Transom" which is usually associated with a ventilation window above a door- way but this one would open forward into the paddlewheel house rather than a possible stairway up to the aft deck house on the Hurricane Deck.  

 

JOHNHOWARD

 

[Keith Black]

Rotated

 

 

[mbp521]

19 hours ago, johnhoward said:

Isn't this fun?

Johnhoward, I am loving this! So much information to process, but so worth it. 

 

I have not seen those NPS drawings that you just posted, if you don't mind me asking, would they be a file that you would be willing to share? I can PM you my email address if you are willing to. They look like something that I would love to peruse on a larger scale. 

 

22 hours ago, johnhoward said:

The ventilation funnels are a good example. We found some of them were either in impossible locations or the lower deck drawings were incorrect. I tend to believe that Captain Walke did actually witness and remember one such funnel protruding out of a wall as he sketched, but maybe not this wall!

Seems like every time that I start looking at these old photographs I see something different. Last night I was doing a stare and compare whit the Cairo and St. Louis photos and noticed that there is definitely a difference in the placement of the aft funnels between the two ships. The ones on the St. Louis are located almost in the middle of the forward and aft hog chain posts and outboard of them, while the ones on Cairo are in front of the forward hog chain post and inboard of them. This is just one of the subtle differences that I have come across in the photos, but its hard to tell if these were alterations over time or just differences that were done between the two shipyards. I also wonder as the builds progressed that they didn't tweak certain features on the later ones to make building them easier. 

 

2 hours ago, johnhoward said:

The stairway on the left could also possibly lead to the munitions magazine below the gundeck.

This is a topic that I am struggling with. There were several hatches along the gun deck recovered with the Cairo, and all seemed to be pretty much the same size, roughly 24" x 24". This wouldn't seem big enough to incorporate a stairway into, but a ladder would make perfect sense to gain access to the hold. However, I can't help but ask myself, could they be referring to a ladder as a stairway?

 

This one goes back to our conversation on resupply. I had noticed in this picture of the Cincinnati that the three starboard guns are not in place. I didn't think too much of it at the time, I just thought that maybe they were doing some routine maintenance on them while they were tied up. It wasn't until this afternoon that I was looking at it that it occurred to me that they could have been moved out of the way to allow them to load supplies or coal through the gun ports. Although there is no ramp from the boat to the ship, and it does seem a long ways from the shoreline, I thought that maybe they used the ships boats to transfer the coal. But then I noticed the rope going from the shore to the third gun port and again my brain started to wonder if they didn't have some sort of transfer line they used to swing goods over to the ship from the shore, kind of like an old clothes line. They were known to bag the coal up for loading, so they could have done it that way. Just another random thought.

 

 

-Brian

[johnhoward]

Brian,

I have a CD with a hand marked title of "Cairo IPS Drawings & Reports dated 1/16/2015" which was given to me by a member of our local Missouri Civil War Historical Society  when we participated in their Annual Meeting several years ago, which focused on the USS Cairo.. The CD contains numerous reports & drawings on the USS Cairo reconstruction/preservation project, apparently created for or by NPS Vicksburg including the Philadelphia drawings and the  Vicksburg cannon carriage reconstruction program in the 1990's which corrected most of their original drawing errors that certainly may be of interest you.

Only recently have I unsuccessfully searched for this information by Drawing or Report numbers on the internet, which I had always assumed was available to anyone directly from NPS Vicksburg. When Elizabeth Joyner was the Cairo Museum Curator in 2014/5, she facilitated us in acquiring this type data freely with a few phone calls, however. after she retired, we could never locate an equivalent replacement for her. 

 

I have no problem sharing this data but you'll have to guide me thru the process of doing so. 

 

JOHNHOWARD

 

 

 

[johnhoward]

Brian, 

Just a brief thought on step ladders and small access hatches: There were 175 crewmen on these ironclads. My understanding is that, weather permitting,  they generally cooked and ate their meals in shifts of small groups, either cold or around portable coal fired grills scattered around the decks, hopefully near their battle stations. Many crewmen would have inevitably slept on any open the deck space available.  This would be OK in non-hostile territory but an ambush on the river is a constant threat, exactly when their personal reaction time is vital. The path up and down open external ladders on the forward and stern casements and then thru open gun ports would be congested enough, without on & off duty crewmen, queuing up to climb or descend a step ladder through a small access hatch between the Hurricane Deck and the Gun Deck-"Pure Panic!".. The only other ladders/hatches combinations we have detected are from the gun deck to the pilot house for the captain, pilot and steersman, the escape ladders from the fire-room to the gun deck and  the multiple single person access hatches between the gun deck into the hold. There were short wider stairways in the engine and boiler rooms for their relatively small crew numbers.  "MY PROOF":   Somehow the USS Cairo was sunk after striking a mine in something like 13 minutes without losing a single crewman!                                                                                   "No small hatch ladders for general access."

 

JOHNHOWARD

[mbp521]

4 hours ago, johnhoward said:

I have no problem sharing this data but you'll have to guide me thru the process of doing so

Johnhoward, I just sent you a PM to discuss the process. I'll keep an eye out for your response.

 

-Brian

[johnhoward]

Followers of the "USS St. Louis" Ironclad Scratch Build Forum,

This project was The Gateway Model Shipcrafters first  group attempt at managing a scratch build model and simultaneous tracking of progress on a daily Forum. Today for the first time  in years that I went back and reread the entire Forum Log and realized to my horror that we continually left excessively long gaps in our progress reporting. The first was between March 2015 and April 2017 when after completing the upright lower hull framing, we inverted it 

and planked the bottom of the hull.  At the time we planned to bring the log up to date while continuing the structural build so we maintained separate photographic log books that were never incorporated into the Forum. I don't know if now there is any way to close these gaps and maintain a log in sequential order.

   For example, the attached photos depict how we used "stealers" to plank the stern starboard and port sponsons on the rudder posts.in 2016 with the hull inverted.   I hope this helps fill one of our gaps.

 

JOHNHOWARD

[johnhoward]

Ironclad Forum followers: In relation to our recent search for additional access hatches and stairways:

Upon rereading my Post #192 , I found an error when I mentioned that the City Class Ironclads "burned one Ton of coal per day". This should have read "one ton of coal per hour" and would "have required potentially dangerous slag and ash removal from the fire room on the hull floor, on a daily basis."

This still remains as one of our most perplexing ironclad operating issues and since this activity is never mentioned in the USS St. Louis' log or any other document, it must therefore have been a mundane task like normal house-keeping, not worthy of comment . We still haven't found any evidence of our latest theory for a hatch in the ceiling of the Fireroom which would be thru the Hurricane Deck and a manually operated winch to safely hoist a bucket of slag and ash to dump overboard. This hatch, if it existed would have been roughly aft of the pilot house, near the cook stove chimney exhaust, and between the firebox smoke-stacks. We previously studied, and rejected, more advanced techniques for ash and slag removal, which were only invented after the Civil war. Any other ideas?

Attached are 2 photos of the fire room while being  constructed on our USS St. Louis model which had a steel floor, fireboxes on the aft side, coal bin access doors on the other three sides and an iron escape ladder in the Portside corner leading thru a door forward to the gundeck. The cook stove can be seen thru the open forward wall structure above the shovel storage rack. Eventually the stove exhaust stack extended thru the wall and up thru the Hurricane deck and we added counterbalanced segmented doors to the coal bins.. The steel floor covering for the main keel can be seen in the center of the fire room. We also later switched to bagged coal storage in the coal bins for better stacking efficiency and delivery the fire room by wheelbarrows.

 l 

 

JOHNHOWARD

 

 

 

[johnhoward]

As a continuation of some of our missing but interesting Forum entries between 2015 and 2017, we added counterbalanced, manually opened doors for access to the coal bins from the Fireroom floor, based generally on the designs for similar Civil War era steamboats and shore coal storage bunkers. Initially we were assuming transport of loose coal using wheel-barrows and later added bagged "Steamboat sized" coal which was easier to load & stack in the coal bunkers and then either manually or "wheel-barrowed" into the fireroom. Unfortunately, as the model assembly continued and we added the Hurricane Deck, et al. much of this detail is hidden except by using a bore-scope type instrument, but it was fun to build and we still have some surviving photographs of our build.

 

JOHNHOWARD

[mbp521]

Johnhoward,

 

I wanted to thank you again for speaking with me the other day. I apologize for taking up so much of you time, but I took a great deal of very useful information away from our conversation.

 

 

13 hours ago, johnhoward said:

This still remains as one of our most perplexing ironclad operating issues and since this activity is never mentioned in the USS St. Louis' log or any other document, it must therefore have been a mundane task like normal house-keeping, not worthy of comment . We still haven't found any evidence of our latest theory for a hatch in the ceiling of the Fireroom which would be thru the Hurricane Deck and a manually operated winch to safely hoist a bucket of slag and ash to dump overboard. This hatch, if it existed would have been roughly aft of the pilot house, near the cook stove chimney exhaust, and between the firebox smoke-stacks. We previously studied, and rejected, more advanced techniques for ash and slag removal, which were only invented after the Civil war. Any other ideas?

One theory that I had on the removal of the slag, ash and coals could have been a bucket brigade. The fire men could have simply filled the buckets up from the fireboxes, hoisted them up the ladders, and the crew could have passed them across the Gun Deck and deposited the contents in the river through one of the gun ports. They could have done this on both sides for more efficiency.  Just a thought.

 

 

13 hours ago, johnhoward said:

The steel floor covering for the main keel can be seen in the center of the fire room.

As for the steel floor, was this just placed in front of the fire boxes? From what I have been able to determine, from the HSR pg. 38 (which could be wrong) the fire box was lined with brick. The only other mention of this area that I was able to locate was in Ed Bearss' book Hardluck Ironclad where they describe in the initial plans "Beneath the boilers would be a fire box, with it's bed lined with fire brick, and enclosed in good sheet iron". Neither of these references go into great detail as to how this was actually constructed.

 

This area was surely lost during recovery efforts, since the entire section collapsed when they brought it up as shown in the sad picture below. None of the other info that I have been able to find mentions anything of the boiler floor construction, but it would seem that they would have recovered something, steel or brick, and had it either on display or mentioned in the list of artifacts. However, I was thinking that could they be describing that the floor was lined with brick then a layer of sheet iron placed on top of the brick? The brick would insulate the wooden hull from the heat of the coal fire and the steel would give a smooth surface for cleaning out the fire box. Is this a safe assumption? Either way, I am surprised at the lack of info on this particular area.

 

 

-Brian

 

[kurtvd19]

The two drawings below show how ash and slag was disposed of on riverboats of the era and why wouldn't they have followed what I believe was a routine way of handling the hot ash, etc.  The dumping of the hot ash, slag overboard was done w/o wheelbarrows or buckets.

 

I have permission from Alan Bates prior to his death to use his copyrighted information for educational purposes.

Fig 60 is from his Western Rivers Steamboat Cyclopedium.  The other drawing is from his Western Rivers Engine Room Cyclopedium.

 

[johnhoward]

Brian, 

You pose some good questions and, in time, I think I can give you some good answers. When we started our USS St. Louis model , we thought Doug Ashley's Historical Structural Report drawings must be great coming from the National Park Service and since they had the real USS Cairo remains at hand.  We started the hull structure in 2014 and soon discovered a lot of problematic issues we needed to resolve before we could build anything. By 2016 we started looking at the firebox, boiler' and engine drawings and photos of the USS Cairo remains and realized that Ashley couldn't have made his drawings from the pile of rubble he had access to, probably now on a barge in Pasgacola? Mississippi. But Ashley was pretty clever, he found similar drawings in the US National Archives and just pieced them together to make a conceivable representation of the USS Cairo machinery. He even noted this fact on some of his drawings. As the mechanical engineer on our USS St. Louis Ironclad Model Team, I took on the job of reconstruction of the Firebox, Boilers, Smokestack configuration for our model. The result was the drawing in the photos below dated: Rev A,  22 Oct 2016. (another of ourForum Gap time issues) It will take me a little time to remember all the features of this little drawing but the second from the left shows the Firebox, boiler, steel, and firebrick's relationship. There's a considerable amount of information on the internet steam power plants of the Civil War era that depending on boiler type and fuel source , etc, supports this reconstruction. When you see these drawings let me know if you can read my notes which will make it much easier to answer your questions. On the steel floor issue I believe ii covered the complete fire room flooring and the firebox/ash pit area. The metal boilers are inside a bath-tub of firebrick and supported on iron stands under the"Mud Drum" so the floor in this area would not have been covered with steel. These Mud Drums were periodically flushed with boiler water directly on the deck into the bilges and pumped back into the river.

To Be Continued:

JOHNHOWARD

[mbp521]

1 hour ago, kurtvd19 said:

The two drawings below show how ash and slag was disposed of on riverboats of the era and why wouldn't they have followed what I believe was a routine way of handling the hot ash, etc.  The dumping of the hot ash, slag overboard was done w/o wheelbarrows or buckets.

Kurt, given that the boiler was located in the hold, below the waterline and pretty much on the keel of these boats, wouldn't having the ash well cause a flooding problem?  Seems like that would be no different than having a hole in the bottom. But, that gives me another theory. What if they had some sort of setup like a pipe that extended above the waterline, say like an opening at the level of the Gun Deck that they could shovel the ash and slag into. It could have been close to the Ash pit, or next to the bulkheads that ran along the outboard keels. This would/could have been in the area that was lost during salvage as well and the reason there is no documentation for it. Just a thought, I could just be trying to invent things.

 

-Brian

[johnhoward]

Kurt,

 

Thanks for the input.

Did you ever see a date associated with your "Fig. 60" drawing which shows an "Ash Well"extending thru the bottom of the hull and infers that they had controls to increase pressure to expel the ash and slag automatically. If this system was available in 1861, it could very well be the solution we were looking for. However the fireboxes and ash pits on the City Class Ironclads seem to simply have had doors that open onto the fire room floor so the firemen can rake the residue onto the fire room floor where they would try to hose it down and dispose it overboard- a really messy and dangerous job!

Regardless, I think this is a possibility worth looking into, so I will check the cyclopediums for a date and find out if a US patent was issued for it around 1860. This is also different from the later, post Civil War, successful systems for ash removal, that we did find, which expelled it upwards over the side by air pressure rather than down against the water pressure. This system would also have to have a fool-proof one-way valve to prevent river water entering the hull and extinguishing the firebox fires or possibly sinking the ironclad.

 

JOHNHOWARD

[johnhoward]

Kurt,

Regarding your second message on wheelbarrows or buckets for ash and slag removal, there is no way to get a loaded wheelbarrow out of the fireproof. There is no room in the fireroom for a stair case on any wall and the only entry/exit is via one or two vertical iron wall mounted escape ladders in the forward  corners. These would be very difficult to climb with a heavy bucket load in one hand. (See my recent photos of the fire room on this Forum.) Our latest theory is a manual winch on the Hurricane deck above the center of the fireroom which could be used to hoist a heavy bucket of ash straight up thru a ceiling hatch in the Hurricane deck.. However, to date, we haven't  found any evidence of such a hatch.

 

JOHNHOWARD

[Keith Black]

 An ash well mixing ash with water to pump overboard was ingenious but how did it managed to pump clinkers overboard as well? Seems like the two would have to have separated which begs the question, how were the clinkers removed?