USS Little Rebel (1859) - Confederate Service

Confederate Service

Little Rebel was built as R. E. and A. N. Watson at Belle Vernon, Pennsylvania, in 1859. She was acquired at New Orleans, Louisiana, by the Confederate Army in January 1862, and selected by Captain James E. Montgomery, a Mississippi River boatman, to be part of his River Defense Fleet. On January 25, 1862, Montgomery began her conversion to a cotton-clad ram by placing a 4-inch oak sheath with a 1-inch iron covering on her bow, and by installing double pine bulkheads filled with compressed cotton bales to protect her engines.

On April 11, Little Rebel's conversion was completed and she steamed from New Orleans to Fort Pillow, Tennessee, where she operated in defense of the river approaches to Memphis. On May 10, 1862, off Fort Pillow, Little Rebel, in company with seven other vessels under Captain Montgomery, attacked the ironclad gunboats of the Federal Western Gunboat Flotilla. The action of Plum Point Bend was marked by successful ramming tactics by the Confederates, but Little Rebel, under Captain J. White Fowler, serving as Montgomery's flagship, was unable to get into the battle except with her guns. Brigadier General M. Jeff Thompson, CSA, who witnessed the battle said that Little Rebel, under a shower of enemy missiles, "ran amid the storm as heedlessly as if charmed." Meanwhile her guns supported Montgomery's other vessels which were ramming Union boats.

Later Montgomery's force held off the Federal rams and gunboats until Fort Pillow was evacuated on 1 June. Then the Confederate vessels fell back on Memphis to take on coal. Following the Federal capture of Fort Pillow, Flag Officer Charles Henry Davis, USN, commanding the Western Flotilla, pressed on without delay and appeared off Memphis with a superior force on June 6, 1862. The flotilla was accompanied by the Ellet rams, a separate group of vessels commanded by Col. Charles Ellet, Jr. Montgomery, unable to retreat to Vicksburg because of his shortage of fuel and unwilling to destroy his boats, determined to fight. In the ensuing Battle of Memphis, Little Rebel attacked the ram USS Monarch, one of the two rams to participate in the battle. The Confederate vessel was hit in her boilers by fire from USS Carondelet and then was struck by Monarch and driven ashore by the blow. Her surviving crew fled to safety, abandoning Little Rebel.