USS Iron Age Search for Clone CSS Tacony

By Joan Wenner, J.D. · Originally published September 2022 · pp. 8

by Joan Wenner, J.D. Historians note that the Confederate Navy demonstrated very well how an inferior naval force could hold off a vastly superior one. One example was the highly successful French shipyard-built raider cruiser CSS Florida that was ‘cloned’ in August 1863 as the CSS Tacony. The USS Iron Age was sent to search for her; each met the same fate off North Carolina’s Holden Beach at Lockwood Folly Inlet where her wreckage remains visible to this day. Union Secretary of Navy Gideon Welles was said to typically name a board of experts to study a problem or situation. This included a Blockade Strategy Board that soon had a planning staff, laying the foundation for the

Union blockading the Southern coast by the Federals applying ‘unendurable pressure.’

CSS Florida

The vessel with her twin funnels and full complement of sails would evade many

Union blockading warships. The Florida was fast, once making 14-1/2 knots, and her low-lying hull was hidden in high waves and rough seas. During Florida’s cruises she captured 24 ships. Using one prize “she cloned herself”

Wreckage of the USS Iron Age.

CSS Florida. according to J. Simson’s Naval Strategies of the Civil War to be the CSS Clarence, subsequently the CSS Tacony. Using the clones, 21 ships were captured and destroyed.

USS Iron Age

A steamer acquired by the Union navy to patrol navigable waterways for preventing the South’s trading with other countries, the USS Iron Age was

CSS Tacony, also called CSS Florida No. 2. built in Maine in 1862, purchased in Boston, and commissioned in June 1863. Lt. Commander E.E. Stone captained the 144-foot screw-propelled vessel armed with three 30-pounder Dahlgren rifles and six 8-inch Dahlgren guns. When sailing from Boston she was on the trail of the commerce raider Tacony which was taking a heavy toll of New England shipping. Both ships headed south. When the Tacony was captured and burned off the North Carolina coast, the Iron Age was reassigned to the Atlantic Blockading Squadron in September 1863. Off Wilmington she assisted two other vessels in destroying the blockade runner Venus. On Christmas Eve the Tacony destroyed a large and desperately needed stockpile of salt at Bear Inlet along with smashing irreplaceable equipment. In January 1864 the Iron Age spotted the blockade runner Bendigo aground on shoals.. After locals had helped salvage what supplies they could, the captain abandoned his ship and set Bendigo afire. Iron Age, together with the USS Daylight, attempted to refloat what was left of the Bendigo but Iron Age ran hard aground. After efforts to lighten her failed, she was ‘put to the torch,’ her magazine soon exploded.

By spring 1865, blockade running was no longer economically viable. As noted in British Blockade Runners in the American Civil War by Joseph McKenna, there is evidence suggesting some 350 steamers from all origins were directly or indirectly involved in supplying the Confederacy. About 80 were built in Northern and Southern states; 200 in Great Britain; and about 10 in other countries. For the British their blockade-runners were ‘just business’ and “that’s all it was.” Of the approximately 300 steamers that attempted to thwart Lincoln’s blockade, roughly 160 were captured, destroyed, or burnt by the Federal navy, many after numerous successful runs through the blockade. In official records some 1,022 steamers, schooners, barks, and brigs were captured or destroyed.

Joan Wenner, J.D. is a longtime contributor to Civil War News and published in numerous history publications with a special interest in naval operations and military courts of inquiry. She presently resides in once-blockaded coastal North Carolina. Comments are welcomed at [email protected].