Confederate States Navy

Confederate States Navy (CSN), the navy of the southern states of the USA, when those states seceded from the Union and brought on the American Civil War (1861–5). With few resources and little industry, and only a few damaged units of the US Navy, acquired when southern bases fell, the Confederacy sought to create a naval force emphasizing the then cutting edge of technology: armoured ships, ‘Davids’, submarines, mines, and modern guns to offset the extant Union Navy (see navy: united states navy). In March 1862 the CSN employed an ironclad, CSS Virginia, fashioned from a captured Union frigate, USS Merrimac, to destroy two Union sailing men-of-war, and then fought to a draw USS Monitor, the precursor of the monitor warship, in the world's first battle between ironclads. In February 1864, the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley used a spar torpedo to sink USS Housatonic off Charleston, another ‘first’. In October 1864 the Union Navy got its revenge when its improvised torpedo boat sank the CSS Albemarle with a spar torpedo.

Aside from the actions of the Virginia and the Hunley, the only successful Confederate operation was with its commerce raiders, when the CSS Florida, Alabama, and Shenandoah led the Union to divert many resources to bring them to bay. The last named never was stopped, and, after virtually destroying the American whaling industry in the Pacific, finally returned to Great Britain and hauled down her flag in the summer of 1865, months after the Confederacy had ceased to exist.

Tyrone G. Martin