April 25, 1862 - Union Blockade: C. S. S. Mississippi Burned to Avoid Capture; Union blockade from Key West, FL; Dismal Swap Canal

April 25, 1862

C. S. S. Mississippi Burned to Avoid Capture 

New Orleans, LA

* It's not that I haven't been to New Orleans. But for this date, I am using Ernest Hemingway's house and Key West. Seems weird, but true. Hemingway's home in Florida was originally owned by Asa Tift. He and his brother Nelson built some ironclads for the Confederacy: the Mississippi and the Louisiana. Both got burned when the Union steamed into New Orleans.    

* Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen R. Mallory was also a Key West guy. Mallory Square is now where everyone goes to see the sunsets. Tift and Mallory were on the same page with armoroing ships. 

* As we know from Fort Taylor, Key West stayed in Union hands the whole time. So Tift was allegedly expelled from Key West for refusing to fuel a Union ship, returning to die in 1889. 

* Anyway, here's the fountain that Tift designed to replicate his ironclad.

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=246967

Asa Tift Designs Fountain to Replicate Ironclad Warship

Notice the design of the fountain below. It was built by Asa Tift in 1862 and replicates the cutting edge warship design he and his brother, Nelson, developed for the Confederacy—the Ironclad Warship.

The Confederate Secretary of Navy, a friend of Asa Tift, sought his help to build a naval force quickly and economically. He wrote to Tift:

"The Department trusts to your patriotism, judgment, and discretion to produce the ship designed in the shortest time at the lowest price and to act in the premises generally as if you were building for yourselves and had to pay the money out of your own pockets." 

-Stephen Mallory, 1861

Because the Confederacy had no shipyards and only a few skilled shipwrights, the Tift brothers designed their warships to be built by carpenters using basic house-building techniques. The CSS Mississippi, CSS Louisiana, and three other ironclad warships gave the Confederacy a credible Naval presence.

The Tift brothers were not paid for their design or their labor. 

Asa Tift designed, built, and moved his family into this home in 1851, but their enjoyment was short lived. His wife and children died tragically from yellow fever between 1854-1855.

The Ironclad incorporated flat sides, square corners, and pointed sterns and bows attached to rectangular hulls.

The ill-fated ironclad CSS Mississippi was burned by Confederate troops before it was finished to avoid its capture when New Orleans fell to the Union troops in April 1862.

 

Erected by The Hemingway Home and Museum.

Asa Tift on the wall of Hemingway's house/tour/museum. And tiny view of the house on the original oceanfront 

Hemingway's house and some of the 60 remaining cats, mostly descendants of his original 6-toed Snowball. 

Cat on a 300-year old table; the accompanying chairs have spots for one's sword. 

Tangentially: a lighthouse [not pictured] is right across the street from the Hemingway home because this spot used to be the edge of town and the beach. But the island grew so much (mostly from military dredging and adding), it's now in the middle.

In 1823, the U.S. Navy established a base in Key West and the need for a lighthouse became evident. Erecting a warning beacon was essential to reduce shipwrecks on the treacherous shoals surrounding the island. By the mid- 1800s there was an average of a wreck per week. The first lighthouse was constructed in 1825 and was washed out to sea by the 1846 Hurricane. The current structure, first lit in 1848, stands half a mile inland, with the Keeper's Quarters added in 1887.

Not too far from Hemingway's home and fountain, is this monument in Clinton Square, where the Naval Depot was. And right behind that monument, guess whose house [site] that is?! (It was crowded when we visited Key West; I jumped out of and into a moving vehicle to get these next two pics- and missed others. You can hardly tell!)

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=85331

Navy Club of Key West Monument

Erected 1866

by the Navy Club of Key West

To the Memory of the

Officers, Sailors & Soldiers

of the

Army, Navy & Marine Corps

of the

United States

who lost their lives in their

Country's service upon this station

from 1861 to 1865.

 

Erected 1866 by Navy Club of Key West.

[not pictured]

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=85270

This monument represents two perspectives on how the Civil War affected the residents of Key West. The obelisk in the center of the memorial plot was erected by the Navy Club of Key West for the Union soldiers who lost their lives in Key West during the Civil War. The metal fence surrounding the obelisk was erected by R. Vining Harris, a staunch Confederate and the father of the builder of the Southernmost House, to memorialize the loss of Confederate soldiers.

-Circa 1866-

Erected by Florida Department of State, Division of Historical Resources. (Marker Number 48.)

[not pictured re: Naval Depot]

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=223008

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=128058

... During the Civil War, the Union's West Indies Blockade Squadron was headquartered here. The Blockade shortened the war saving lives on both sides of the conflict...

On September 13, 1833, the United States government purchased this harbor-front lot. The Naval Depot was authorized by an Act of Congress on July 21, 1852. Capt. J.M. Scarritt and Lt. J.J. Philbrick supervised the construction of this building. By 1856 the brick walls were laid in common bond pattern, and the roof was completed in 1861. During the Civil War, the Union’s West Indies Blockade Squadron was headquartered here. Distinguished by a buttressed brick pier arcade of 17 bays, the Naval Depot retains its original lookout cupola, masonry exterior, gable roof, and interior loft space. Known as Building Number One, it served as the Naval Administration Building until 1932. On December 15, 1932, the offices of the 7th Lighthouse District opened in this building. By 1939 the Lighthouse Service, as part of the U.S. Coast Guard, continued to use the Naval Depot as its Key West Station headquarters. In recognition of its significance in America’s military history through the Civil War, Spanish-American War and two world wars, the Naval Depot and Storehouse was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973 and remains Key West’s oldest brick structure.

 

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=84721

Mallory Homesite

The home of Stephen Russell Mallory (1812-1873) stood near this site from 1839 to 1895 when it became U.S. Navy property. U.S. Senator from Florida from 1851 to 1861 and Chairman of the Naval Affairs Committee after 1853. As Secretary of the Navy in the Confederate States Cabinet (1861-1865) he pioneered the use of submarines and ironclad warships in naval warfare.

A son Stephen R. Mallory, Jr. grew up in and later owned this house. He represented Florida in the United States Senate (1897-1908).

 

Erected 1966 by Historical Association of Southern Florida.

And finally, your moment of Zen: the view of sunset from Mallory Square:

*    *    *

And while we are discussing the blockade, now would be an excellent time to discuss some contemporaneous and vaguely related actions in far away coastal North Carolina. Part of my second trip to NC [Feb. 2026] to complete the Burnside Invasion and more, I saw the Battle of South Mills and Dismal Swamp Canal last time, but somehow missed this stop on the Canal. Sorry Wallaceton - not sure what you've got going on, but it will surely be awhile before I return to this area a third time.

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=165286

Village of Deep Creek

"The den of the Rebels"

This is the Deep Creek Lock of the Dismal Swamp Canal, the northern end of the waterway linking the North Carolina sounds with Hampton Roads and the Chesapeake Bay. Deep Creek village evolved on the canal to serve workers, boatmen, and the surrounding area. By 1850, there were about fifty houses here. This was the main depot for lumber taken from the Great Dismal Swamp.

When the Civil War began, the residents of present-day Chesapeake largely supported secession. The canal and its competitor six miles to the east, the Albemarle & Chesapeake Canal, were strategically important to both Union and Confederate forces for the transportation of men and supplies. After the Federal capture of Norfolk on May 10, 1862, this area lay between the city and Union-controlled eastern North Carolina. Confederate sympathizers used the canal to smuggle supplies, and guerillas hid in the Great Dismal Swamp—previously the reserve of escaped slaves—to raid Union picket posts. Lt. Richard M. Goldwaite, 99th New York Infantry, called the area "the den of the Rebels." Periodic clashes continued until the end of the war.

The Deep Creek Rangers, a militia company formed in 1856, occupied Portsmouth in 1861 and then mustered into Confederate service as Co. A, 3rd Virginia Infantry. It constructed batteries in Portsmouth and Norfolk, and also manned fortifications elsewhere. The Rangers later fought at Glendale, the Second Battle of Manassas, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and in battles around Petersburg and in the retreat to Appomattox Court House. Two members of the unit survived to surrender there on April 9, 1865.

Edenborough G. Corprew, an African American born in Deep Creek village about 1830, may have been enslaved in 1862 when Federal forces occupied the area. In October 1864, he and four other freedmen attended the National Convention of Colored Men in Syracuse New York. He returned to Virginia and enlisted in Co. C, 1st U.S. Colored Cavalry, then stationed nearby, under the alias of Edward Sparrow. The regiment served at Fort Pocahontas and after the war sailed to Texas, where Corprew suffered from "overheat" and was discharged on Feb. 1, 1866. He became pastor of Zion Baptist Church in Portsmouth and worked to unite black Baptists in a statewide convention. He died in 1881.