By Berry Craig
NKyTribune columnist
Most old-time Kentucky duels were fought with pistols.
But early in the Civil War, it looked like honor would be settled gunboat-to-gunboat in the Mississippi River near Columbus.
“Some people still saw war in terms of the old code duello,” surmised historian John Kelly Ross of Clinton, near Columbus.
Ross cited a Jan. 27, 1862, New York Times story that claimed Yankee Captain William D. “Dirty Bill” Porter dared Rebel skipper Marsh J. Miller to “show yourself any morning in Prenty’s [probably Puntney’s] bend, and you shall meet with a traitor’s fate.”
The duel never came off, according to Ross. The fact that Porter’s unorthodox challenge grabbed front page headlines in The Times proved “it must have been a slow news day,” the western Kentuckian mused, chuckling.
Two small tugboats approaching Columbus (Berry Craig Photo)
Porter commanded the U.S.S. Essex, “the most powerful ironclad gunboat on the Mississippi River at the time,” Ross said. Miller was captain of the Grampus, a little sternwheeler steamboat. The latter was the former’s menace, Ross added.
The Essex was based near the big Union army-navy base at Cairo, Ill., where the Ohio River merges with the Mississippi.
The Grampus’ home port was heavily-fortified Confederate Columbus, about 18 miles down the Mississippi from Cairo. “The Union gunboats would test the defenses of Columbus,” Ross said. “The Grampus would wait for them a few miles above Columbus and, blowing her steam whistle, the little scout boat would race ahead of the Yankee fleet to warn the Confederates.”
Miller’s vessel had no armor and was armed with only two or three army field guns, according to Ross. Thus, the captain prudently preferred flight to fight. Even so, the plodding Essex almost caught the speedy Grampus one time.
The rebel boat stopped upriver from Columbus so the crew could pick paw-paws, Ross said. “When they saw the Union fleet, the men rushed back to the boat and got away to Columbus.”
Porter demanded a showdown. He sent the challenge to duel, possibly by truce boat, on Jan. 18.
Miller picked up the gauntlet. The Times published his reply: “SIR: The ironclad steamer GRAMPUS will meet the ESSEX at any point and any time your Honor might appoint, and show you that the power is in our hands.”
The 1000-ton Essex, which bristled with a half dozen big guns, would have made kindling out of the Grampus, Ross said. “The Essex was a real ironclad. The Grampus wasn’t. It was just a little wooden boat. But Porter was able to get a little cheap publicity out of the affair.”
the USS Essex (Photo Provided)
Miller managed to keep the Grampus out of the Essex’s range. The boat escaped with the rebels when they abandoned Columbus in early March, 1862.
Dubbed the “Gibraltar of the West,” the strongpoint was studded with large cannons and featured a long, heavy chain the defenders stretched across the river to stop Yankee gunboats. A short section of the chain and the large anchor the Rebels used to fasten it to the Kentucky shore are preserved at Columbus-Belmont State Park.
The park also includes a museum, the largest Civil War-era cannon in Kentucky and some of the deep Confederate trenches.
The Grampus served briefly at Island Number 10, a smaller rebel bastion in the Mississippi near New Madrid, Mo. But it fell to the Yankees on April 8, 1862.
By then, Miller’s luck had run out. Cornered by the Union fleet, the captain ordered the crew to scuttle the Grampus.
Porter couldn’t have exacted revenge anyway. On Feb. 6, 1862, the Essex was badly damaged during Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s army-navy attack on Fort Henry, Tenn., on the Tennessee River, just below the Kentucky line.
The gunboats made quick work of the earthen work and its defenders, who were commanded by Gen. Lloyd Tilghman of Paducah. He surrendered after about an hour.
But a Confederate cannonball sailed through an open gun port and exploded one of the Essex’s boilers. “It must have been a nightmare,” Ross said.
“Live steam killed 14 men and burned 28 more, including Porter. The war was no longer a game for ‘Dirty Bill.’”
Berry Craig of Mayfield is a professor emeritus of history from West Kentucky Community and Technical College in Paducah and the author of six books on Kentucky history, including True Tales of Old-Time Kentucky Politics: Bombast, Bourbon and Burgoo, Kentucky Confederates: Secession, Civil War, and the Jackson Purchase, and, with Dieter Ullrich, Unconditional Unionist: The Hazardous Life of Lucian Anderson, Kentucky Congressman. Reach him at bcraig8960@gmail.com
