"...decisive naval battles do not always end a war, like Actium or Yaeyama - sometimes, as at Trafalgar, they merely make a strategic disadvantage insurmountable. With the assets in place between the two fleets at hand in the western Atlantic waters off the coast of South Carolina in the first days of May of 1915, these thoughts were plainly on everybody's mind. A defeat for the United States would erase in an instant all their gains over the previous year and threaten once again their access to Nicaragua and force a white peace or ugly settlement that would suggest the war had been worth the trouble for Dixie in the first place; conversely, if the Confederacy lost, that effectively spelled the end of the country as a naval force, and made the course of the war from then on more or less inevitable. The stakes could not have been higher.
The emotions on both sides ran high as well. Hobson's journal on the evening of May 4th suggested that he felt tremendous angst at what could be waiting at Port Royal when his fleet returned from Bermuda, as if he somehow sensed that something earth-shattering awaited him the following morning. The attempts to force the Yankee fleet away from Dixie shores had been successful, but his goal to force a decisive battle on the high seas had not, and now he needed to restock his fuel and other supplies for what he anticipated would be a second lengthy game of cat-and-mouse with his quarry.
Belknap's fleet had followed Hobson back to the coast from a northeasterly position, just within telescope range, but submarines had been deployed to fan out on either side of it in order to rapidly break off if needed, and late at night on the 4th, with the Combined Fleet's guide lights all that was visible on the black of sea beneath the stars, one of the American submarines did just so, heading away so as to not give away its position before sending a coded message via radio telegraphy. The Confederates had been more or less aware that there were submarines present in the vicinity besides their own, but had not wanted to give away the position of their own Seawolves and thus had not engaged; they also knew that there were signals being broadcast between Belknap's vessels, but until the night of the 4th there could not have been another fleet close enough for them to be broadcasting
to. With Port Royal approaching, that was no longer the case, and the broadcast was heard - the Confederate fleet was back, its course appeared to be directing it straight for its supply facilities at Port Royal Roads, and the United States would never have a better chance to gain her
coup de main.
Task Force C was divided into three squadrons, or "columns" as Admiral Rodgers referred to them as in his memoirs, and these squadrons were to form a semicircle to box in the Confederate fleet while Belknap blocked their avenues of escape. The Battle of Yaeyama where an entire Spanish fleet had been sunk had demonstrated the advantage of battleships being able to fire upon an approaching enemy broadside, and Murdock intended to create a cauldron at sea in which the Confederate vessels would have fire rained down upon them to the point that their operational discipline broke and they attempted to escape. The success of a similar strategy at Desventuradas influenced this thinking; as good as the Chilean fleet had been, and as capable of a commander as the late Admiral Prat had been, the Combined Fleet was much more formidable, and something similar and more overwhelming would be needed to permanently end its threat to American shipping both across the Atlantic and via the Caribbean.
The morning of May 5th, 1915 was a sunny, brisk day, with only a few clouds and an ominously calm sea. The shore was partially visible on the far western horizon to Confederate spotters, augmented by a handful of seagulls swirling ahead. Hobson would in later years recall feeling strangely at ease in the first hour after sunrise as the South Carolina coast became visible to the naked eye, and he enjoyed a dawn breakfast with his senior officers aboard the
Virginia where they debated where they would attempt to force Belknap. Again, Hobson's journals reveal his line of thinking - he was jotting out a plan of resupply where vessels would enter Port Royal two at a time for a quick turnaround while the rest of the fleet anchored defensively off Hilton Head in case Belknap's squadron attempted to trap them within the harbor, and planned to spend no more than two days restocking. Within minutes, that plan was completely shot to pieces.
As he finished his breakfast, Hobson and his immediate subordinate Captain John Reynolds were summoned hurriedly to come up to the bridge - there was an urgent problem, two in fact. The first was that Belknap's fleet had apparently split in two, with half of his squadron now sailing slightly southwards to the rear of their fleet. The second was that there were ships on the horizon, west and southwest of the Confederates, the smoke of their boilers visible against the pale blue morning sky, cutting ahead of Hobson's fleet that had the sun to its back, which meant they'd seen him well before he had seen them. The trap was sprung - the Battle of Hilton Head was beginning..."
-
Hell at Sea: The Naval Campaigns of the Great American War
"...for Murdock, the task now that the two fleets had spotted one another was to cut off all of the Confederate routes of escape. He assumed, correctly, that if Hobson could not sail into Port Royal Roads as intended then he was likelier to break for the closer and better-equipped naval facilities of Savannah. It was for that reason that Roosevelt and his C Squadron had been positioned the most southerly, to arrest any movement towards Savannah. Meanwhile, A and B Squadrons continued to shift into a line immediately west and northwest of the Combined Fleet, approximately twelve kilometers off the coast of Hilton Head Island and the mouth of the Roads, just barely out of coastal artillery range but sufficient to assess any Confederate routes. The T, as it were, had been successfully crossed, as Hobson and Noronha realized to their mounting horror. With Belknap's squadron split in half on their rear, the "cauldron at sea" had been nearly perfectly formed.
The question for Hobson then became where exactly to press next - did he attempt to direct his fleet to make a break for safety in Charleston or Savannah, or did he try to force his way through the line to Port Royal? The former would still sustain tremendous damage to his fleet, while simply delaying the inevitable deciding battle when he elected to leave either of those harbors. No, the battle needed to be fought now, he decided, and with that Hobson sent the signal for his fleet to form two triangular wedge-shaped squadrons to better defend one another in cross-firing and sail for relative gaps between A and B Squadrons, hoping to scramble the Yankee formations and then sweep around to pick off the various squadrons in detail once the breach occurred.
As the fleets entered firing range, Murdock sent out his final broadcast - "Leave no enemy afloat, gentlemen!" - and the battle was on. The A Squadron opened up with a violent broadside aimed straight for the middle of Hobson's nearer squadron, peppering repeatedly with all guns. The
Baton Rouge exploded immediately from a direct strike to its boiler, and a magazine explosion aboard the aging
Wilmington tore through much of the vessel and it went up within minutes, both ships with all hands. Hobson's frantic radio signals commanded his ships to maintain discipline and fire at whatever was in range that they could "put more than two guns on."
This meant that the C Squadron, positioned to the side of the southern squadron, was the most exposed of Task Force C. Two deck guns of its lead ship,
Montana, were blown clear off, one of them slamming into the bridge and breaking Commander Roosevelt's leg while pinning him to the bulkhead, leaving the leg badly injured and barely usable for the rest of his life.
[1] The pre-dreadnought
Maine, meanwhile, took three torpedoes beneath its waterline and it broke away from the line to get as close to land as possible before her captain Joseph Ward elected to scuttle her, thus probably rescuing most of her crew of five hundred men from a watery grave (though many of them would be captured by horrified Confederate soldiers watching the engagement from shore), and the
Duluth went up in a fiery ball from a direct magazine strike that ignited all the ammunition aboard. Seeing success in attacking this point in the line, Hobson ordered both his squadrons start to swing southwards to attack C Squadron outright, identifying this southern approach as his point of attack to break out.
This was what Murdock had anticipated, but as he made the order for his and Rodgers' squadrons to start turning around, a shell clipped the top of the bridge of the
Vermont and it nearly caved in on itself; two long shards of glass passed through his back and throat, killing him nearly instantly. "Admiral down!" came the frantic message from the
Vermont to the rest of the fleet, and with that Rodgers was now in command, and Murdock's trusty lieutenant elected to continue tightening the coil, bringing his B Squadron in particular around so it could flank Hobson's northernly squadron.
As all this was ongoing closer to the shore, Belknap was speeding his boats up to their maximum cruising ability, getting them pointed two-and-two towards the back of Hobson's fleet. The nearest vessels to him, were the Brazilian squadron under the command of Noronha, and III Squadron found itself in something unexpected - a dreadnought battle, with
Pennsylvania and
Connecticut exchanging duel of shells and torpedoes with the
Rio de Janeiro at ever-closing distances. The
Rio was the pride of the Brazilian fleet, their most advanced and sophisticated vessel, much like
Ol' Penn was for Belknap and the Americans; the two dreadnoughts increasingly split themselves off from their support squadrons as Belknap's and Noronha's escort cruisers tore into each other to their rear. The dance of the dreadnoughts was almost its own separate battle, moving southeastwards (historians have debated if Noronha was attempting to flee and leave the Confederates to their fate, something Noronha would until his death deny) but despite his flagship taking severe damage, the
Pennsylvania was bigger, faster, and better equipped, and after nearly three hours finally could break off as the
Rio began to lilt on its side, with too many strikes having flooded her portside boiler and punctured her waterline. Most of the Brazilian crew was able to evacuate, and Noronha himself was pulled out of a lifeboat, humiliated, to surrender his sword to Belknap on the deck of the
Pennsylvania as they steamed towards the rest of the ongoing battle..."
-
The Fourth Branch: A Comprehensive History of the United States Navy
"...as morning turned to afternoon, all that could be smelled was smoke and melting metal; decks were strewn with dismembered limbs from sailors torn apart from direct strikes and pieces of their ships tearing through them. The fires were so hot men scampered about shirtless trying to put them out, the smoke so thick and black that crew could barely see two feet ahead of them, and hundreds of men on the Confederate vessels are believed to have asphyxiated rather than drowned.
The attempt to punch south to Savannah through the C Squadron of the Yankee fleet was a bad gamble by Hobson; unbeknownst to him, it had been what the American Admiral Murdock, mere moments before he had been martyred by a direct strike on his flagship's bridge, had planned for, and the other squadrons of the Yankee fleet circled around to successfully encircle Hobson from behind as the fleet he had pursue to the Bahamas came to strike from the east. Committed to his decision, Hobson had no choice but to continue to attempt to run the gauntlet and break through at the weakest link in the American chain.
This is not to say that he did not have some success; the
Milwaukee went down from two direct hits from
Virginia and
Texas, and the scout cruisers
Marblehead and
Salem were blown out of the water, the latter briefly appearing airborne with flailing bodies of sailors spinning through the air from the force of the blast. The casualties taken by the American fleet were disproportionately concentrated in her C Squadron, and Hobson's dogged attempt to break through there were a reason why.
But it became quickly clear that the Americans had no intention to let him escape, and the A and B Squadrons were by early afternoon able to isolate Hobson's northern squadron, already depleted by Belknap isolating and destroying the Brazilians to their east. Here, the superior quality of the Yankee ships reigned supreme; the battlecruisers
Lexington and
Constellation were of better quality than the Confederate battleship
Georgia and close to the dreadnought
Tennessee, and these two vessels became their prime target as
California with her escorts sought to pick apart the cruisers and destroyers of the Confederate fleet, successfully sinking one after the other
Pensacola, Nashville and
Tallahassee. Hobson thus had a fateful choice to make - did he attempt to turn around and rescue his rear squadron just as he punched through American line, or did he leave them? He elected to leave them, and at 2 o' clock the first Confederate dreadnought,
Tennessee, took its fatal hit starboard midships and sank in fifteen minutes, with most of her crew of eight hundred unable to evacuate in time. Minutes later,
Georgia's magazine detonated, breaking the ship in two and taking all hands with her.
Belknap's second squadron, led by the
Minnesota and battlecruiser
Ranger, at this point slammed into Hobson's southern squadron, with the dead Murdock's A Squadron catching her from the rear. The
Beaumont and
Durham were sunk within minutes of each other, and the badly-damaged
Montana, with her commanding officer Franklin Roosevelt - cousin of the famed American press baron Theodore - barking orders despite being trapped against a bulkhead with his leg broken, was able to get up behind
Alabama and blast her deck guns off with several well-timed broadsides before sending a shell straight through her bridge, rendering her nearly inoperable and drifting out to sea a smoking, flaming husk rapidly being abandoned by her men until she sank mercifully half an hour later. Hobson brought his
Virginia around to duel with the
Vermont, correctly identifying the dreadnoughts as his biggest opponent at sea, running down to the deck himself to bark commands at the gunners with his torn coat sleeve wrapped around his face as a makeshift mask, his face drenched in sweat and blood.
From that vantage point, he was able to watch
Charleston start to sink from the aft, her nose pointing into the sky before snapping in half and plunging into the depths with her crew helplessly bobbing in the sea around her. A shell struck the side of the
Virginia and Hobson was thrown from the deck; how he survived is a minor miracle, but when the battle was over he was pulled from the sea aboard the
Omaha, dangling from a piece of debris. The
Missoula erupted in a ball of flame, raining its shrapnel down on the screaming survivors flailing to survive in the flame-strewn water as oil caught fire around them, but that would be the last American vessel sunk on the day. Bobbing in the water, Hobson watched with horror as the
Virginia took direct hits from submarines and destroyers along with the
Vermont and started to show signs that it was done for; the dreadnought would take on water just as she breached the American lines and rolled over on her side. Despite taking nearly an hour to sink, only a hundred and twenty of her crew of nine hundred survived the wreckage and the bloody terror that awaited them in the burning ocean outside.
The
Texas, the unlucky pre-dreadnought nicknamed "Ol Hoodo," was the only boat to escape the gauntlet, taking several severe hits but managing to steam aggressively out of gun range and the American fleet commander Rodgers electing instead to sink whatever was left in his cauldron rather than pursue. The "cursed ship" of the Confederate fleet was, somehow, the only vessel that day that was not sunk besides four Seawolf submarines. That meant that, in all, three irreplaceable dreadnoughts, one battleship, ten cruisers, and over a dozen Seawolves had been lost, along with one Brazilian dreadnought and three cruisers. It was one of the most devastating defeats at sea possibly in the history of naval warfare, all within spitting distance of the fleet's chief wartime port. It was perhaps not an exaggeration when American Admiral William Sims, who had helped plan the strategy that led to the Battle of Hilton Head, described it as "an Actium of the Americas" - it is hard to think of another battle that so decisively defined the course of a war to come..."
-
To the Knife: The Confederacy at War 1914-15
[1] Sorry to Team "Olympic Sprinter FDR", but the parallelism/dark humor here was too good to pass up
End of Part IX: Landfall
