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The charge of the Iron Fleet
Charleston, 7 April 1863. It was the place where the American Civil War had started. Two years on, with a revolution in naval warfare far advanced, a fleet of Union ironclads attacked Confederate defences at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. Michael Laramie describes the action.
In late December 1862, the US Navy began considering plans to strike at Charleston, South Carolina. The genesis of the idea came from the commissioning of the 18-gun armoured cruiser New Ironsides, and the recent completion of a squadron of four monitor-style ironclads. In this force, naval planners saw an opportunity.
Fort Sumter, the primary obstacle to entering the harbour, was an old masonry work, and thus far in the conflict none of the old masonry forts had been able to withstand a barrage of heavy cannon. Fort Macon, Fort Pulaski, and even Fort Sumter itself at the start of the conflict had fallen to the power of modern artillery.
Thus, it was thought that if the monitors, with
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