CSS Selma (1856) - Service As Florida

Service As Florida

Although much of Florida's time was spent blockaded in Mobile, she made some forays into Mississippi Sound, two of which alarmed the United States Navy's entire Gulf command. On October 19, Florida convoyed a merchantman outside. Fortunately for her, the coast was clear of Union ships and batteries, for Florida fouled the area's main military telegraph line with her anchor, and had no sooner repaired the damage than she went aground for 36 hours. Luck returning, she tried out her guns on USS Massachusetts, "a large three-masted propeller" she mistook for the faster R. R. Cuyler. Being of shallower draft and greater speed, she successfully dodged Massachusetts in shoal water off Ship Island. The havoc caused by one well-placed shot with her rifled pivot gun is described by Commander Melancton Smith, USN, commanding Massachusetts;

"It entered the starboard side abaft the engine five feet above the water line, cutting entirely through 18 planks of the main deck, carried away the table, sofas, eight sections of iron steam pipe, and exploded in the stateroom on the port side, stripping the bulkheads of four rooms, and setting fire to the vessel ... 12 pieces of the fragments have been collected and weigh 58 pounds."

The first sortie by Florida caused consternation. Captain L. M. Powell, USN, in command at Ship Island — soon to be main advance base for the New Orleans campaign — wrote to Flag Officer William McKean, October 22;

"The first of the reported gun steamers made her experimental trial trip on the Massachusetts, and, if she be a sample of the rest, you may perhaps consider that Ship Island and the adjacent waters will require a force of a special kind in order to hold them to our use. The caliber and long range of the rifled cannon from which the shell that exploded in the Massachusetts was fired established the ability of these fast steam gunboats to keep out of the range of all broadside guns, and enables them to disregard the armament or magnitude of all ships thus armed, or indeed any number of them, when sheltered by shoal water."

Protecting CSS Pamilico, in contrasting white dress and laden with some 400 troops, "the black rebel steamer" Florida on December 4 had a brush with USS Montgomery in Horn Island Pass that caused jubilation in the Southern press. Commander T. Darrah Shaw of Montgomery, finding his 10-inch shell gun no match for Florida's long-range rifles, signaled Commander Melancton Smith for assistance, and when it was not forthcoming, ran back to safety under the guns of Ship Island. Shaw saved Montgomery and lost his command for fleeing from the enemy. Commodore McKean promptly sent Lieutenant James Edward Jouett to relieve him and forwarded Shaw's action report to United States Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, noting, "It needs no comment." Crowed Richmond Dispatch on December 14, quoting Mobile Evening News, "The Florida fought at great disadvantage in one respect, owing to her steering apparatus being out of order, but showed a decided superiority in the effectiveness of her armament. That gun which scared the Massachusetts so badly, and had nearly proved fatal to her, is evidently a better piece or must be better handled than any which the enemy have."