The Union Navy was the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

(USN) during the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by state ...

, when it fought the Confederate States Navy (CSN). The term is sometimes used carelessly to include vessels of war used on the rivers of the interior while they were under the control of the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...

, also called the

Union Army During the American Civil War, the Union Army, also known as the Federal Army and the Northern Army, referring to the United States Army, was the land force that fought to preserve the Union of the collective states. It proved essential to th ...

Wartime missions

The primary missions of the Union Navy were: :1. Maintain the blockade of Confederate ports by restraining all blockade runners; declared by President Lincoln on April 19, 1861, and continued until the end of the Rebellion. :2. Meet in combat the war vessels of the CSN. :3. Carry the war to places in the seceded states that were inaccessible to the Union Army, but could be reached by water. :4. Support the Army by providing both gunfire support and rapid transport and communications on the rivers of the interior.

Administrative organization

The system of naval bureaus was revised in the summer of 1862. Some of the older bureaus were rearranged or had their names altered. The most radical change was the creation of the Bureau of Steam Engineering. ; Department of the Navy * Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles * Assistant Secretary, Gustavus Vasa Fox ; Bureau of Yards and DocksCallahan, ''op.cit.'' 1901, pp. 4-5. * Bureau Chief,

Joseph Smith Joseph Smith Jr. (December 23, 1805June 27, 1844) was an American religious leader and founder of Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint movement. When he was 24, Smith published the Book of Mormon. By the time of his death, 14 years later, h ...

; Bureau of Equipment and Recruiting * Bureau Chief, Andrew H. Foote,

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; Bureau of Navigation * Bureau Chief, Charles H. Davis ; Bureau of Ordnance *Bureau Chief,

John A. Dahlgren John Adolphus Bernard Dahlgren (November 13, 1809 – July 12, 1870) was a United States Navy officer who founded his service's Ordnance Department and launched significant advances in gunnery. Dahlgren devised a smoothbore howitzer, adaptable ...

, Henry A. Wise ;

Bureau of Construction and Repair The Bureau of Construction and Repair (BuC&R) was the part of the United States Navy which from 1862 to 1940 was responsible for supervising the design, construction, conversion, procurement, maintenance, and repair of ships and other craft for the ...

* Bureau Chief, John Lenthall ; Bureau of Steam Engineering *Bureau Chief,

Benjamin F. Isherwood Benjamin Franklin Isherwood (October 6, 1822 – June 19, 1915) was an engineering officer in the United States Navy during the early days of steam-powered warships. He served as a ship's engineer during the Mexican–American War, and after ...

: Bureau of Provisions and Clothing * Bureau Chief, Horatio Bridge ; Bureau of Medicine and Surgery * Bureau Chief, William Whelan

Transformation

To accomplish its wartime missions, the Union Navy had to undergo a profound transformation, both technical and institutional. During the war, sailing vessels were completely supplanted by ships propelled by steam for purposes of combat. Vessels of widely differing character were built from the keel up in response to peculiar problems they would encounter. Wooden hulls were at first protected by armor plating, and soon were replaced by iron or steel throughout. Guns were reduced in number, but increased in size and range; the reduction in number was partially compensated by mounting the guns in rotating turrets or by pivoting the gun on a curved deck track so they could be turned to fire in any direction. The institutional changes that were introduced during the war were equally significant. The Bureau of Steam Engineering was added to the bureau system, testimony to the U.S. Navy's conversion from sail to steam. Most important from the standpoint of Army-Navy cooperation in joint operations, the set of officer ranks was redefined so that each rank in the U.S. Army had its equivalent in the U.S. Navy. The establishment of the ranks of admirals implied also a change of naval doctrine, from one favoring single-ship operations to that of employing whole fleets. A doctrinal shift took place at the same time. Prior to the war, the United States Navy emphasized single-ship operations, but the nature of the conflict soon made use of whole fleets necessary. Already at the Battle of Port Royal (7 November 1861), 77 vessels, including 19 warships, were employed. This was the largest naval expedition that had ever sailed under the U.S. flag, but the record did not stand for long. Subsequent operations at New Orleans, Mobile, and several positions in the interior confirmed the importance of large fleets in modern naval operations.

Ships

At the start of the war, the Union Navy had 42 ships in commission. Another 48 were laid up and listed as available for service as soon as crews could be assembled and trained, but few were appropriate for the task at hand. Most were sailing vessels, some were hopelessly outdated, and one () served on Lake Erie and could not be moved to the ocean. During the course of the war, the number in commission was increased by more than a factor 15, so that at the end the U.S. Navy had 671 vessels. Even more significant than the increase in raw numbers was the variety of ship types that were represented, some of forms that had not been seen previously in naval war anywhere. The nature of the conflict, much of which took place in the interior of the continent or in rather shallow harbors along the coast, meant that vessels designed for use on the open seas were less useful than more specialized ships. To confront the forms of combat that came about, the federal government developed a new type of warship, the monitor, based on the original, USS ''Monitor''. The U.S. Navy took over a class of armored river gunboats created for the U.S. Army, but designed by naval personnel, the Eads gunboats. So-called double-enders were produced to maneuver in the confined waters of the rivers and harbors. The Union Navy experimented with submarines before the Confederacy produced its famed CSS ''Hunley''; the result, USS ''Alligator'' failed primarily because of lack of suitable targets. Building on Confederate designs, the Union Navy produced and used torpedo boats, small vessels that mounted spar torpedoes and were forerunners of both the modern torpedo and destroyer type of warship. Because of haste in their design and construction, most of the vessels taken into the U.S. Navy in this period of rapid expansion incorporated flaws that would make them unsuitable for use in a permanent system of defense. Accordingly, at the end of the war, most of them were soon stricken from the service rather than being mothballed. The number of ships at sea fell back to its prewar level.

Personnel

During the war the Union Navy had a total of 84,415 personnel. The Union Navy suffered 6,233 total casualties with 4,523 deaths from all causes. 2,112 Union sailors were killed by enemy action and 2,411 died by disease or injury. The Union Navy suffered at least 1,710 personnel wounded in action, injured, or disabled by disease. The Union Navy started the war with 8,000 men, 7,600 enlisted men of all ratings and some 1,200 commissioned officers. The number of hands in the Union Navy grew five times its original strength at the war's outbreak. Most of these new hands were volunteers who desired to serve in the navy temporarily rather than make the navy a career as with many of the pre-war sailors. Most of these volunteers were rated as "Land's Men" by recruiters meaning they had little or no experience at sea in their civilian lives, although many sailors from the United States pre-war merchant marine joined the navy and they were often given higher ratings due to their background and experience. A key part of the Union Navy's recruiting efforts was the offer of higher pay than a volunteer for the Union Army would receive and the promise of greater freedom or the opportunity to see more of the country and world. When the Draft was introduced the Navy tried to recruit volunteers by offering service at sea as a better paying alternative to being drafted into the Army, this incentive was especially meant to attract professional sailors who could be drafted the same as any other civilian and would rather see combat in an environment they were more familiar with.

Sailors

USS Hunchback crewmen in the American Civil War

Union sailors differed from their counterparts on land, soldiers. The sailors were typically unemployed, working-class men from urban areas, including recent immigrants. Unlike soldiers, few were farmers. They seldom enlisted to preserve the Union, end slavery, or display their courage; instead, many were coerced into joining. According to Michael Bennett: :The typical Union sailor was a hard, pragmatic, and cynical man who bore little patience for patriotism, reform, and religion. He drank too much, fought too much, and prayed too little. He preferred adventure to stability and went for quick and lucrative jobs rather than steady and slow employ under the tightening strictures of the new market economy. He was rough, dirty, and profane. Out of date before his time, he was aggressively masculine in a Northern society bent on gentling men. Overall, Union sailors proved less committed to emerging Northern values and were less ideological than soldiers for whom the broader issues of freedom, market success, and constitutional government proved constant touchstones during the war. Nevertheless, Union navy sailors and marines were awarded 325 Medals of Honor for Civil War valor with immigrants receiving 39 percent of the awards: Ireland (50), England (25) and Scotland (13). Before the Civil War, the US Navy had never prohibited African Americans from serving, though regulations in place since 1840 had required them to be limited to no more than 5% of all enlisted personnel. Thus unlike the army, the Union navy did not prohibit African Americans from serving at the start of the war and was racially integrated. Approximately 10,000, or around 17%, of Union Navy sailors were black; seven of them were awarded the Medal of Honor. The tension between white and "contraband" (black) sailors was high and remained serious during the war. Bennett argues: :For the most part, white sailors rejected contrabands as sailors. They did so owing to a tangled mix of racial prejudices, unflattering stereotypes that equated sailors with slaves, and working-class people's fears of blacks as labor competition. The combination of all of these tensions eventually triggered a social war—referred to as "frictions" by sailors—as whites racially harassed, sometimes violently, former slaves serving alongside them.

Blockade

The blockade of all ports in the seceded states was proclaimed by President

Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation thro ...

on 19 April 1861, one of the first acts of his administration following the bombardment of Fort Sumter. It existed mostly on paper in the early days of the conflict, but became increasingly tighter as it continued. Although the blockade was never perfect, Southern exports of cotton fell 95 percent. As a result, the South had to restructure itself to emphasize the production of food and munitions for internal use. This also contributed to the isolation of the South and hastened the devaluation of its currency. For administration of the blockade, the Navy was divided into four squadrons: the North Atlantic,

South Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the "Old World" of Africa, Europe an ...

, East Gulf, and West Gulf Blockading Squadrons. (A fifth squadron, the

Mississippi River Squadron The Mississippi River Squadron was the Union brown-water naval squadron that operated on the western rivers during the American Civil War. It was initially created as a part of the Union Army, although it was commanded by naval officers, and ...

, was created in late 1862 to operate in the

Vicksburg campaign The Vicksburg campaign was a series of maneuvers and battles in the Western Theater of the American Civil War directed against Vicksburg, Mississippi, a fortress city that dominated the last Confederate-controlled section of the Mississippi R ...

and its consequences; it was not involved with the blockade.)

Invasion

Two early invasions of the South were meant primarily to improve the blockade, and then led to further actions. Following the capture of Cape Hatteras, much of eastern North Carolina was soon occupied by the Union Army. The easy success in North Carolina was not repeated after the seizure of Port Royal in South Carolina, as determined resistance prevented significant expansion of the beachhead there. Charleston did not fall until the last days of the war. The later capture of

Fernandina, Florida Fernandina Beach is a city in northeastern Florida and the county seat of Nassau County, Florida, United States. It is the northernmost city on Florida's Atlantic coast, situated on Amelia Island, and is one of the principal municipalities c ...

, was intended from the start to provide a southern anchor for the Atlantic blockade. It led to the capture of Jacksonville and the southern sounds of Georgia, but this was not part of a larger scheme of conquest. It reflected mostly a decision by the Confederate government to retire from the coast, with the exception of a few major ports. Late in the war, Mobile Bay was taken by fleet action, but there was no immediate attempt to take Mobile itself. The

capture of New Orleans The capture of New Orleans (April 25 – May 1, 1862) during the American Civil War was a turning point in the war, which precipitated the capture of the Mississippi River. Having fought past Forts Jackson and St. Philip, the Union was ...

was only marginally connected with the blockade, as New Orleans was already well sealed off. It was important, however, for several other reasons. The passage of the forts below the city by Farragut's fleet showed that fixed fortifications could not defend against a fleet that was powered by steam, so it was crucial for the emergence of the Navy as equal to the Army in national defense. It also demonstrated the possibility of attacking the Confederacy along the line of the Mississippi River, and thus was an important, even vital, predecessor of the campaign that ultimately split the Confederacy. Finally, it cast doubt on the ability of the Confederacy to defend itself, and thus gave European nations reason not to grant diplomatic recognition. The final important naval action of the war was the second assault on Fort Fisher, at the mouth of the

Cape Fear River The Cape Fear River is a long blackwater river in east central North Carolina. It flows into the Atlantic Ocean near Cape Fear, from which it takes its name. The river is formed at the confluence of the Haw River and the Deep River (North Ca ...

in North Carolina. It was one of the few actions of the war on the coast in which the Army and Navy cooperated fully. The capture of the fort sealed off Wilmington, the last Confederate port to remain open. The death of the Confederacy followed in a little more than three months.

Battles

Coastal and ocean

: Hatteras Inlet : Port Royal : Burnside Expedition: Battle of Roanoke Island :: Battle of Elizabeth City :: Battle of New Bern ::

Siege of Fort Macon The siege of Fort Macon took place from March 23 to April 26, 1862, on the Outer Banks of Carteret County, North Carolina. It was part of Union Army General Ambrose E. Burnside's North Carolina Expedition during the American Civil War. In late ...

Hampton Roads Hampton Roads is the name of both a body of water in the United States that serves as a wide channel for the James River, James, Nansemond River, Nansemond and Elizabeth River (Virginia), Elizabeth rivers between Old Point Comfort and Sewell's ...

: New Orleans (Forts Jackson and St. Philip) : Drewry's Bluff : Galveston Harbor :

Charleston Harbor The Charleston Harbor is an inlet (8 sq mi/20.7 km²) of the Atlantic Ocean at Charleston, South Carolina. The inlet is formed by the junction of Ashley and Cooper rivers at . Morris and Sullivan's Islands shelter the entrance. Charleston ...

: Fort Wagner (Morris Island) : Albemarle Sound : Sinking of CSS ''Alabama'' by the USS ''Kearsarge'' : Mobile Bay : First Battle of Fort Fisher : Second Battle of Fort Fisher : Trent's Reach There were numerous small or one-to-one battles far away from the coasts between ocean-going Union vessels and blockade runners, often in the Caribbean but also in the Atlantic, the Battle of Cherbourg being the most famous example.

Inland waters

: Forts Henry and Donelson :

Island No. 10 Island Number Ten was an island in the Mississippi River near Tiptonville, Tennessee and the site of a major eponymous battle in the American Civil War. In the mid-19th century the United States Government began to adopt a uniform numbering plan ...

: Plum Point Bend : Memphis : St. Charles, Arkansas (White River expedition) :

:: Arkansas Post (Fort Hindman) :: Yazoo Pass Expedition :: Steele's Bayou Expedition :: Battle of Grand Gulf : Red River expedition Not included in this list are several incidents in which the Navy took part more or less incidentally. These include Shiloh and Malvern Hill. They are not put on the list because naval personnel were not involved in planning or preparation for the battle.

Ranks and rank insignia

The highest rank available to an U.S. naval officer when the war began was that of Commodore. This created problems when many ships had to operate together, with no clearly established

chain of command A command hierarchy is a group of people who carry out orders based on others' authority within the group. It can be viewed as part of a power structure, in which it is usually seen as the most vulnerable and also the most powerful part. Mili ...

. Even worse, when the Navy worked with the Army in joint operations, the customary rank equivalency between the two services meant that the naval captain, equivalent to an army colonel, would always be inferior to every army general present. After the existing arrangement had been used for the first year of the war, the case was made that the interests of the nation would be better served by organizing the Navy along lines more like that of the Royal Navy of Great Britain. A set of officer ranks was established in the summer of 1862 that precisely matched the set of Army ranks. The most visible change was that henceforth some individuals would be designated commodore, rear admiral, vice admiral, and finally admiral, all new formal ranks, and equivalent to, respectively, brigadier general, major general, lieutenant general, and general.

1861–62

1862–64

1864–66

;Petty Officers ''Chief Petty Officer'' Master-at-Arms of the ship he serves in.Secretary of the Navy (1865), ''op.cit.'', p. 7. ''Petty Officers of the Line'' Rank and succession to command:Secretary of the Navy (1865), ''op.cit.'', p. 6. # Boatswain's Mate # Gunner's Mate # Signal Quartermaster # Coxswain to Commander-in-Chief # Captain of Forecastle # Coxswain # Captain of Main- top # Captain of Fore- top # Captain of Mizzen- top # Captain of Afterguard # Quarter Gunner # 2nd Captain of Forecastle # 2nd Captain of Main- top # 2nd Captain of Fore- top # 2nd Captain of Mizzen- top ''Petty Officers of the Staff'' Rank next after Master-at-Arms: # Yeoman # Surgeon's Steward # Paymaster's Steward # Master of the Band # Schoolmaster # Ship's Writer Rank next after Gunner's Mate: # Carpenter's Mate # Armorer # Sailmaker's Mate Rank next after Captain of the Afterguard: # Painter # Cooper # Armorer's Mate Rank next after Quarter-Gunner: # Ship's Corporal # Captain of the Hold # Ship's Cook # Baker ;Enlisted Pay Ratings # Able Seaman (three years experience at sea and able to work aloft) # Seaman (one years experience at sea) # Landsman (no previous sea experience)