Smokestack, CSS Virginia II,
Richmond, 1865
The Confederate Navy tried again on the next high tide, the night of January 24, but found a
spotlight supporting the U.S. guns. Blinded by the light, a steam leak, and smoke
gushing from these holes in the Virginia II's
smokestack, they cancelled “the enterprise.”
In hindsight, calling back the Fredericksburg to assist
her sister ships after she had
breached the gap proved a fateful decision. She had nothing in
front of her—except an open river
and the Onondaga stuck on a mudflat.
Gen. Grant later wrote that the
attack was "providentially prevented from proving fatal."
Exhibiting bloodless calculation, he said, "It would have been better
to obstruct the channel of the river with sunken gunboats than
that a rebel ram should reach City Point."