butler's big booby trap
biggest blast in history up to that time* was
sot off iii attonipl to wrook old fort fisher
hi/ frank a. montgomery, jr.
Plon of the Butler lioi«o — the powder ihip, showing fuse Iroins leoding to oil ports of the
deadly corgo.
On the night before Christmas Eve.
1S64. there occurred just offshore
from the sandy ramparts of Fort
Fisher, one of the biggest man-made
explosions in history up to that time.
For at 1:40 a.m., on the night of
December 23. the 215 tons of black
powder so hopefully loaded on the
“Louisiana" by Northern forces, let go
with an car-splitting roar. With the ex¬
plosion not only did the "Louisiana"
blow up but also the fond hopes of
the North to subdue mighty Fort
Fisher in one full swoop.
Many months of careful planning
among top-level Union brass had gone
on in preparation for the boastfully-
conceived plan of General Benjamin
Butler to destroy Fort Fisher, and in¬
finite pains had been taken to assure
the success of the venture. But, as one
indifferent rebel soldier said when he
was captured after the final assault on
the fort in January and questioned:
“Yep, something woke me up; must
of been a Yankee gunboat blowed up.
but 1 never thought nothin' of it."
The report of the commandant of
the fort merely mentioned that a ship
had blown up. A Wilmington news¬
paper. some 20 miles away, did say
that a tremendous explosion had oc¬
curred somewhere down the Cape
Fear, rattling windows in town, but
that was about all.
It was such a complete fiasco that
the event has gone down in the history
books as "Butler's Folly," and Gen.
Butler, the chief architect of the plot,
was not long after relieved of his com¬
mand and sent posthaste into retire¬
ment.
Butler was one of the most
thoroughly disliked of all Union of¬
ficers, and had properly earned the
nickname, “Beast" Butler, because of
his arrogant and cruel tactics at New
Orleans and Norfolk. As a matter of
fact, he was not loo highly regarded
by some of his own associates in
arms.
The general got it into his head that
a tremendous explosion close in to
the seaward face of Fort Fisher would
completely level the sandy walls, and
lay it open to easy capture.
First off. a joint board of navy and
army officers was convened to sol¬
emnly arrange details of the opera¬
tion. After much debate, a flat-
bottom, light-draft, worn-out steamer,
the "Louisiana." once engaged in the
Gulf cotton trade, was chosen to be
the powder-boat. She was in early No¬
vember. 1864, turned over jointly to
Comm. Jeffers. USN, and Maj. Rod-
man. of the army, at Hampton Roads.
Va.. to be readied for her strange and
fateful mission.
To make her as light as possible, and
roomy, for her tricky cargo on her
final voyage on the briny deep, the
"Louisiana” w’as stripped to her cor¬
set stays. Scarcely more than the hull,
decks, and engines remained at the
finish. Forty tons of coal were stored
in the after part of the vessel. Amid¬
ships, extending from rail to rail, a
seventy-foot shelter was built and
covered with waterproof canvas to pro¬
tect the powder to be stored there.
The berth deck was loaded with
100 tons of black powder, packed in
sacks, 50 pounds to the sack. In the
hold, two tiers of powder barrels,
with the heads knocked out. were
stacked in orderly rows.
They weren't through with the old
ship yet. however. When she left
Hampton Roads she held in all 185
tons of black powder, but when she
put in at Beaufort. N. C., on her way
down the Carolina coast to rendezvous
with destiny off Fort Fisher, they shoe¬
horned another 30 tons aboard. So
the “Louisiana" set out on the last leg
of her last voyage with a grand total
of 215 tons of explosive aboard, the
stuff occupying every nook and
cranny. She was a regular floating
powder magazine, and there is little
wonder that it is recorded that the
other ships in the convoy avoided the
evil little ship as they would the plague.
An efficient but simple means of
setting off the powder charge had been
perfected while the ship lay berthed
at Hampton Roads. Comm. Jeffers
and Maj. Rodman had discarded an
electrical device because of the un¬
predictability of the medium then, and
had, instead, adopted a mechanism
worked out by Jeffers. Countless tests
THE STATE. JULY 2B. 1956
9
