Shiloh I (Monitor)
1874
The first U.S. Navy ship named for a battle in the American Civil War. The Confederate Army of Mississippi, led by Gen. Albert S. Johnston, CSA, attacked the Union Army of the Tennessee, Maj. Gen. of Volunteers Ulysses S. Grant, as the Federals lay encamped at Pittsburg Landing on the west bank of the Tennessee River (6–7 April 1862).
The bloody fighting seesawed back and forth, and the men who fought there named one area of the battlefield the “Hornet’s Nest” because of the savagery of the action. Johnston fell valiantly leading his troops in the fighting, and many Confederate leaders considered his death a grievous blow to their cause. Gen. P. [Pierre] G. T. Beauregard, CSA, assumed command of the Confederates and continued the battle. Both sides fed men into their lines as the Confederates gradually pressed the Federals back but the Northerners finally held their positions, the men on the embattled Federal left flank near Pittsburg Landing aided by naval gunfire from Union gunboats Lexington and Tyler on the river. Union soldiers including those of the Army of the Ohio, Maj. Gen. of Volunteers Don C. Buell, also reinforced Grant and on the second day the Federals repelled the Southerners and pushed them back. Beauregard reluctantly conceded the field to Grant, which is usually called the Battle of Shiloh because of nearby Shiloh Church.
I
(Monitor: displacement 1,175; length 225'; beam 45'; draft 6'4"; speed 9 knots; complement 60; armament 2 11-inch Dahlgren smoothbores; class Casco)
A contract for the construction of the first Shiloh, a Casco-class light draft monitor, was awarded on 24 June 1863, to George C. Bestor of Peoria, Ill.; and her keel was laid down later that year at the yard of Charles W. McCordat at St. Louis, Mo. While Shiloh was still under construction, however, Chimo, the first of the Casco-class monitors to be launched, was found to be unseaworthy.
On 25 June 1864, the Navy ordered Shiloh's builder to raise her deck 22 inches to give her sufficient freeboard. On 17 June 1865, following the end of the Civil War and the subsequent American naval retrenchment, the service ordered the work on Shiloh suspended. Planners nevertheless decided to proceed with her launching; and an unsuccessful attempt to get her off the ways was made on 3 July 1865. Eleven days later and after much labor the ship finally entered the water.
Shiloh saw no service before being laid up at Mound City, Ill., in 1866. On 15 June 1869, she was renamed Iris. In the same year the Navy moved her to New Orleans, La., where she was laid up there. The monitor was commissioned on 17 September 1874; but did not see significant service before she was again laid up at New Orleans on 15 October 1874, and sold later that year.
Mark L. Evans
1 July 2020
