Special Operations

They arrived sometime before midnight on 29th of February 1864. The target was more than two miles behind enemy lines. Leaving three pickets in the street the raiders began to reconnoitre the headquarters building. Suddenly there was a commotion on the ground floor, and in a moment the chief staff engineer was a prisoner and headquarters documents seized. In fact, the adjutant general only narrowly escaped after jumping through a window wearing only his nightclothes. The mission completed, the raiders disappeared into the night with their trophies.

The action above was not one of the famous exploits of the Confederates J.H. Morgan, or N. B. Forrest but rather of Lieutenant William Cushing of the Federal Navy. While it is true that elite special operations were conducted by the dashing (if somewhat infamous) Rebel cavalry, the real trophy for special ops rests with the U. S. Navy.

Naval units operating on the coasts and inland rivers of the South were able to and did conduct regular missions into the Confederate heartland. They ambushed guerrillas and detained Southern politicians and military officers often from the "safety" of their own homes.

Similarly, the USS CRICKET captured Confederate troops from the Trans-Mississippi on their way eastward, and the USS ANACOSTIA detained several Marylanders who were trying to cross the Potomac into Virginia to join the Rebel Army.

In several occasions "surprise" attacks quieted Secessionist batteries and even captured forts with little loss of life, but huge consequences to the Southern cause.

USS Cricket

On one raid, a party from the ANACOSTIA struck several miles inland to recapture the reflector lenses which had been taken from one of the Chesapeake Bay light boats by retreating secessionists.

Railroad bridges and salt-works again indispensable to the Southern war effort, not to mention the morale of local inhabitants, were regularly destroyed by naval raiding parties. In one such raid in October 1862, Cushing in command of the ELLIS destroyed a large Confederate salt-works at New Topsail Inlet, North Carolina.

In July 1864, ANACOSTIA in Herring Creek, Maryland caught and destroyed a canoe and captured the men who had just crossed the Potomac in it to purchase supplies needed by the South. In another operation in November near Aquia Creek, ANACOSTIA’s crew destroyed two wagons which carried blockade goods to the Rebel army. Two days later, another group of her sailors ascended Chopawamsic Creek where they burned the supply sloop BUCKSKIN.

The large storage capacity of naval vessels also allowed Confederate war supplies to be "liberated" for the union, cotton essential for paying Confederate war debts to European creditors was a favoured target.

In October of 1864, in what was one of the most daring actions of the war, Cushing volunteered to lead an attack on the ironclad CSS Albemarle in the Roanoke River at Plymouth, N.C. With only fifteen men in a small boat, Cushing sank the powerful ram with a spar torpedo. The explosion sank his own craft and despite being under heavy enemy fire, Cushing avoided capture. This brave act won Cushing the thanks of Congress and promotion to lieutenant commander.

All in all the exploits of the Union Navy are as exciting, and in balance more strategically important than those of more colourful Southern Horse-soldiers.

Ray Mitchell, Federal Staff

The above article first appeared in the ACWS Newsletter, Summer 2006