USS Hartford

“ No better evidence of the complete demoralization of architectural development in the United States can be found than in the movement made in 1872, in which the Hartford class, after having established thoroughly its great utility, was by the addition of a spar-deck reduced to the plane of the Challenger, with increased draught, reduced speed and steaming capacity, and in fact a reduction of all the qualities which had rendered it superior, notwithstanding the total disappearance of the type not only in the English but in all foreign navies. ”

“ Besides the eleven armed boats known to have been above, there were several unarmed tugs and other steamers, some of which probably shared in this wild confusion. One at least came into conflict with the Hartford.
The second column, led by the flag-ship, was promptly away and after the first; following, indeed, so closely that the head of the one lapped the rear of the other. The Brooklyn and Richmond, close behind the Hartford, formed with her a powerful "body of battle," to use the strong French expression for the center of a fleet. ”

“ On the 1st of July, I left Memphis with the Mississippi flotilla, and arrived above Vicksburg late on the following day. Admiral Farragut's fleet attempted the passage of the batteries on the 28th of June. A portion of the fleet succeeded in the attempt, under a heavy fire, and gained a position above the peninsula. Among the first to effect a passage was the flag-ship Hartford, with the "gallant old salamander" on board. The Richmond, Iroquois, and Oneida were the sloops-of-war that accompanied the Hartford. ”

“ As he thus went by the Brooklyn, a warning cry came from her that there were torpedoes ahead. "Damn the torpedoes!" shouted the admiral; "go ahead, full speed;" and the Hartford and her consort steamed forward. As they passed between the buoys, the cases of the torpedoes were heard knocking against the bottom of the ship; but for some reason they failed to explode, and the Hartford went safely through the gates of Mobile Bay, passing the forts. ”

“ And so it was that a little knot of similar spirits in Hartford was formed, men with fondness for yachting on the Sound or with patriotic pride in the Navy who gravitated together after a nucleus had been developed. ”

“ The Tennessee then made a rush at the Hartford, and Admiral Farragut made the signal to attack with guns and rams. The Monongahela struck the ram first, a square blow, making no impression, but breaking off its own ram. The Lackawanna then struck a fair blow with no impression, but staving its own bow. The Hartford then rammed, striking a glancing blow and swinging alongside, giving a full broadside without effect. The Lackawanna and Hartford then bore down together but collided, the Hartford’s side being cut down almost to the water’s edge by the Lackawanna. ”

“ Contemporaneously with the Duguay-Trouin the Americans introduced a new type which comes nearer a modification of the Raleigh than any other class, although it springs directly from the attempted modification of the Hartford class referred to above by which spar-decks were added to them. The present Hartford, with her spar and main decks, and the development of the type in the Trenton show two ships wherein is well exemplified the absurdity of, as it were, putting new wine into old bottles. ”

“ As the “Hartford” drew into range, the admiral walked over to the main rigging and clambered up into the shrouds; and his men below him at the batteries lovingly watched their “old man” as step by step he mounted to get a clearer view. They knew him for a gallant old sea-dog. They had seen him steam [223] past the batteries at Vicksburg and Port Hudson, and they smiled at his sternness at the capture of New Orleans, for they loved him. But at Mobile they learned that he feared nothing above the ocean or under it, if it stood in the way of the cause of his country. ”

“ On the training ship the boats usually hung outside the rail, but on the cruiser the boats were frequently kept inside the rail. With the ship’s four funnels and her multitudinous skylights and deckhouses her superstructure was unsuitable for “setting up.”
A series of tug-of-war pulls enlivened the trip. The New Haven division won from Bridgeport and Hartford from New Haven. Thus it was for the Hartford team to pull the ship’s team. This contest came and to the astonishment of all, the Hartford men won. And so it was that when the division returned half of the lads were hoarse. ”

“ Talking about them at his dinner-table in New Orleans fifty years later, but a few days before his famous passage of the Mobile forts, he said: "We have no better seamen in the service to-day than those gallant fellows Bainbridge, Decatur, Hull, Perry, Porter, and Charles Stewart; and," he added, "I must not forget to mention McDonough, and poor unlucky Lawrence, as splendid-looking a sailor as I ever saw. If I only had their chance and could lay the Hartford alongside of an English ship, I should like it better than fighting our own people." ”

“ Hartford, Richmond, Monongahela, Mississippi. At eleven, as they drew near the batteries, the lowest of which the Hartford had already passed, the enemy threw up rockets and opened their fire. Prudence, and the fact of the best water being on the starboard hand, led the ships to hug the east shore of the river, passing so close under the Confederate guns that the speech of the gunners and troops could be distinguished. Along the shore, at the foot of the bluffs, powerful reflecting lamps, like those used on locomotives, had been placed, to show the ships to the enemy as they passed ”

“ Still he had men who were fairly proficient when the battalion had its annual tour of duty, at Camp Newton on Fisher’s Island. Tent life was varied by considerable work in pulling boats. It was expected that a cutter race would be rowed between the Hartford racing crew and a crew picked from the New Haven and Bridgeport Division, but the latter did not materialize. That spectators might not be disappointed, two crews were selected from the Hartford oarsmen, Lieutenant Lyman Root acting as coxswain for one and Assistant Surgeon Carroll C. Beach for the other. ”

“ Hartford became every day a better horseman, or rather camelopardist. He in fact rejoiced in opportunities to leap-frog into his saddle, fit his feet and legs into the leather gambadoes, and go hailing off into the hills to recruit men and material. He carried with him the radio he'd salvaged from his safety-suit, and could from time to time pick up First Regiment transmissions. The bitcher from his suit was useful in training large numbers of recruits on the blowgun range, and would be used when the Kansan guerrillas took the field against the troopers. ”

“ There ensued a dreadful time of alternating night and day, with recurrent visions of the flapper, who perfectly knew and said that he had been eating stuff out of the wrong cans.
"'As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he'," affirmed the Hartford person each morning as he shaved.
And a merry party gathered in the adjoining stateroom of afternoons and sang songs of the jolly sailor's life: "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean," and "Sailing, Sailing Over the Bounding Main." ”

“ The wretched little Confederate engines had not been able to drive the ram home.
The Brooklyn was the flagship Hartford's next-astern and the Richmond's next-ahead, these three forming the main body of Farragut's own port column, which followed hard on the heels of the starboard one, so hard, indeed, that there were only twenty minutes between the first shot fired by the forts at the Cayuga and the first shot fired by the Hartford at the forts. Besides the forts there was the Louisiana floating battery that helped to swell the storm of shot and shell ”

“ George A. Fairfield, another Colt foreman, became superintendent of the Weed Sewing Machine factory and later president of the Hartford Machine Screw Company; another workman, A. F. Cushman, of the Cushman Chuck Company, for many years manufactured lathe chucks. In fact, there is hardly a shop in Hartford which dates from the seventies and eighties which does not trace back in some way to the Colt Armory. Its influence is by no means confined to Hartford, for such men as Bullard and Gleason carried its standards and methods to other cities. ”

“ Down in the engine-room I could see, by the hatch near one of my guns, that the engineers were also on the alert, and the indicator showed that we had a heavy pressure of steam on.
Ah! here comes the Hartford, steaming up on our starboard quarter. As she comes abreast of us, our anchor is tripped, hove up, and we fall into place, a cable’s length astern of her, and steam ahead. ”

“ His heroic and merciful errand was not accomplished without the greatest risk, greater than he himself knew; for not only did he pass under the continued and furious fire of the fort and the fleet, but the ensign of the forecastle division of the Hartford, seeing the boat without a flag and knowing nothing of its object, but having torpedoes uppermost in his mind, connected its presence with them, trained one of his hundred-pounders upon it, [33] and was about to pull the lockstring when one of the ship's company caught his arm, saying: "For God's sake, don't fire! it is one of our own boats!" ”

“ Give that rascally little tug a shot, and don't let her go off with a whole coat." But the tug did get away, after all; and no one can feel sorry that men plucky enough to take an unarmed tug into a terrible fight of frigates and iron-clads should escape with their lives. The men on the "Hartford" fought the flames with hose and buckets, and at last got rid of their dangerous neighbor. Then they saw a steamer crowded with men rushing toward the flagship without firing a shot, and evidently intending to board. Capt. Broome, with a crew of marines, was working a bow-gun on the "Hartford." ”

“ Night fell upon the scene; and the ships weighed anchor, and started upon their perilous voyage. To the side of each man-of-war was bound a gunboat to tow the great vessel out of danger in case of disaster. Silently the long string of vessels swept upward towards the batteries; but, as the "Hartford" came into range, the watchful Confederates gave the alarm, and the nearest battery at once opened fire. Then from Porter's mortar-schooners far down the river came an answering roar; and, as ship after ship came up into range, she opened with shot and shell upon the works. ”

“ A people that have no history are the happiest, therefore we may assume that Hartford was a happy and flourishing town during the remainder of the colonial period, and even{521} during the Revolution there is but little to tell of Hartford. Its situation, so far removed from the seacoast, secured it from the attacks of the British troops, and it was for that very reason a safe and desirable place for the meetings of Generals Washington and Rochambeau, when they wished to arrange the plans for the campaigns that ended with the surrender of Yorktown. ”

“ Meanwhile, the second division of the fleet came up, led by the Hartford. This vessel, in attempting to avoid a fire raft, struck on a shoal; then the ram Manassas pushed another blazing raft against her quarter, and in a moment she was on fire. The great excitement thus produced on board the flagship did not for a moment interfere with the discipline. A part of her crew were called to fire quarters and put out the flames, while the rest continued to work the guns with perfect regularity. Then she was backed off into deep water, and continued up stream, firing into every enemy she could reach. ”

“ The flag-ship, leading, had the advantage of pushing often ahead of her own smoke; but those who followed ran into it and incurred a perplexity which increased from van to rear. At the bend of the river the current caught the Hartford on her port bow, sweeping her round with her head toward the batteries and nearly on shore, her stem touching the ground [136] slightly; but by her own efforts and the assistance of the Albatross she was backed clear. ”

“ If ramming was to be done he wanted to do it himself. So all the large vessels steamed head on for the iron-clad, butting her right and left. They hit one another, too, and the Hartford came near being sunk. Then came the monitors, as the first Monitor had come against the Merrimac. There were three of these left, but one did the work, the Chickasaw. She clung like a burr to the Tennessee, pouring in her great iron balls, and doing so much damage that soon the great ship was like a floating hulk. It could not be steered nor its guns fired. ”

“ I managed to get a small loaf of bread and if I remember correctly, I wasn't long devouring it, for we had had nothing but hard-tack and raw salt pork to eat and condensed water to drink since we went aboard the ship at New Orleans. This (Sunday) morning we were allowed to go ashore and were kept penned up till about night when we went aboard the good-looking old boat, City of Hartford. We arrived in Hartford, if my memory serves me correctly, at about 10 o'clock Monday morning, August 18th, 1863, and I guess we were about as tough a looking set of fellows as ever came off the boat. ”

“ Within a few years after the building of the Colt Armory, manufacturing at Hartford had taken a definite character. From that day to this it has centered almost wholly on high-grade products, such as guns, sewing machines, typewriters, bicycles, automobiles and machine tools. Naturally, during the past generation, the skilled mechanics of the city have attracted many new and important industries, only indirectly connected with the armory, which we cannot consider here.
In 1848 Christian Sharps invented his breech-loading rifle, and in 1851 a company was formed at Hartford to manufacture it. ”