Ship Island has played an important role in the history and settlement of the Gulf Coast. The island was named in 1699 by French explorers who were impressed with the protected, deep-water anchorage it offered their ships. The island soon became an important port for French Louisiana. Many colonists took their first steps on American soil at Ship Island and it is considered the "Plymouth Rock" of the Gulf Coast
During the war of 1812, 60 British ships, with nearly 10,000 troops, rendezvoused near the island prior to their unsuccessful attempt to capture New Orleans. In 1862 Ship Island served as the base from which Admiral David Farragut's Union fleet sailed to attack and capture the ports New Orleans and Mobile.
| The Island also became a prison for Confederate P.O.W.s, and a base for the 2nd Louisiana Native Guard Volunteers, one of the first black U.S. combat units to fight in the Civil War. The National Park Service provides history lectures and tours of Fort Massachusetts March through October. You can learn more about the Louisiana Native Guard from a special feature by Pulitzer Prize winning poet Natasha Tretheway on SouthernSpaces.com andNPR.org. Click HERE for books on the Native Guard and other black union soldiers. |
UNION SOLDIERS ON SHIP ISLAND DURING THE CIVIL WAR
James G. Hollandsworth, Jr.
During the Civil War, twenty-seven Union infantry regiments saw service on Ship Island. In addition to these regiments, six batteries of light artillery and a battalion of cavalry spent time on the sandy outpost.
Union troop strength on Ship Island peaked in April 1862 when more than 15,000 men assembled for the final assault on New Orleans. As soon as the city fell, the Union garrison on Ship island was reduced to one regiment of infantry, the 13th Maine. Three months later, eight companies of this regiment were transferred to the forts below New Orleans, leaving two companies to hold the island by themselves until December, when troops from a new expedition, this one commanded by Major General Nathaniel P. Banks, began to arrive.
Even though Banks's expedition was larger than Butler's, only seven regiments actually disembarked on Ship Island because most of the ships carrying Banks’s men continued on to New Orleans. Furthermore, that portion of Banks’s expedition that landed on Ship Island stayed for only a few days, leaving the two companies of the 13th Maine on their own. Finally, on January 12, 1863, seven companies from a new regiment of African Americans, the 2nd Louisiana Native Guards, arrived for garrison duty.
The mixture of black and white troops created an explosive atmosphere, and a racial dispute between the men from Maine and the black soldiers from Louisiana broke out within a week. Banks quickly decided to withdraw the two companies of white soldiers, and the 2nd Regiment of the Louisiana Native Guards remained as the primary garrison for Ship Island until the end of the war.
Life on Ship island for soldiers during the Civil War was a boring, uncomfortable, and often deadly experience. In fact, 232 Union soldiers died and were buried on Ship Island during the war. They were mainly from New England--Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Connecticut, with a few boys from New York, Michigan, Indiana, and Wisconsin mixed in. A dozen or more black men from Louisiana who served for almost three years on that desolate stretch of sand complete the list.
Col. Daniels and Officer Dumas
Photo courtersy C.P. Weaver "Thank God My Regiment and African One"
Ship Island Lighthouse 1858 Ship Island Lighthouse 1886
Ship Island Lighthouse, Mississippi at Lighthousefriends.com Ship Island, MS With the only deep-water harbor between Mobile Bay and the Mississippi River, Ship Island was used by early explorers as a base for further explorations along the Gulf Coast. The fact that large vessels could find anchorage there led to its name – Isle des Vasseaux or Ship Island. Even with its fine harbor, it was still several years after the United States gained control of the region that a lighthouse was finally proposed for the island. Part of future Confederate president Jefferson Davis’ platform during his successful campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives was the establishment of lighthouses and fortifications along Mississippi's coastline.
Two years later, Davis was appointed to the U.S. Senate and funds were finally allocated for lighthouses at Ship Island, Biloxi, and Chandeleur Island. Although funds were available in 1847, a Spanish land grant on Ship Island delayed the start of construction on the lighthouse until 1853. A forty-five foot brick tower was completed by November of that year, and it was lit for the first time on Christmas Day by Keeper Edward Havens. The lantern room originally housed lamps and reflectors, but was upgraded to a fourth-order Fresnel lens in 1856. Havens served as keeper until his accidental death eighteen months later. Mary Havens succeeded her husband as keeper and served until her death sixteen months later. After Jefferson Davis was appointed Secretary of War in 1853, he succeeded at convincing Congress and President Pierce to build a fort on Ship Island. Construction began in 1859, but due to storms and an outbreak of yellow fever, only eight feet of the outer walls were completed in two years of work. On January 13, 1861, four days after Mississippi seceded from the United States, the incomplete fort was taken over by Confederate forces, who built up the fort with timbers and sand bags. In July of 1861, Union forces aboard the USS Massachusetts approached the island. A brief exchange of cannon fire ensued, until the Massachusetts retreated. The Confederates declared the skirmish a victory, but by September of that year, they had left the island. The Fresnel lens was removed from the tower, boxed up, and taken away with them. The last remaining Confederate soldiers on the island packed the base of the tower with flammable material and set it ablaze. A large force of Union soldiers soon occupied the island shortly thereafter, and work continued on the fort, which they named Fort Massachusetts after their flagship.
This certainly was not the use that Jefferson Davis, now President of the Confederate States, envisioned for the fort. Restoration work soon began on the charred lighthouse. A mast from a seized Confederate schooner was used as the newel for a new circular staircase. A captured fourth-order Fresnel lens and the old lantern room from the Bayou St. John Lighthouse, found in a Confederate warehouse on Lake Pontchartain, were used to complete the tower. The light was reactivated on November 14, 1862 and served throughout the remainder of the Civil War. Dan McColl began his lighthouse career as an assistant at Ship Island in 1875. McColl had worked for a railroad in New Orleans following the Civil War and lost his right leg at the hip in a train accident. In 1877, McColl was promoted to Head Keeper and served in that capacity until 1899. With his one good leg, McColl would regularly make the trip up the circular stairway and then continue up the iron ladder into the lantern room to care for the light. During his tenure, the brick lighthouse was condemned as unsafe in 1886. A replacement square, open-frame wooden lighthouse topped with a lantern room was built 300 feet from the brick tower in September of that year. The lower portion of the tower was enclosed the next year. When the brick tower finally collapsed in 1901, the rubble was used to curb erosion around the new lighthouse. The Coast Guard employed keepers at the lighthouse until 1947, when the station was automated. In 1959, a special-use permit for the lighthouse was granted by the Coast Guard to Philip M. Duvic “for private use and general recreational purposes”. In the following years, Duvic converted the bottom floor of the lighthouses into a kitchen and bathroom, the second floor into a sleeping area for women, the third floor into a men’s dormitory, and the top floor into a honeymoon suite.
The Coast Guard put the lighthouses up for sale in 1965 with the stipulation that the owner must remove the lighthouse from the island within 90 days of receiving ownership. Duvic was the sole bidder, and for $250 the lighthouse was officially his. For some reason, Duvic was not required to remove the lighthouse from the island. Then, on August 17, 1969, devastating Hurricane Camille struck the Mississippi Gulf Coast. With winds in excess of 200 miles per hour, Camille cut the island in two, creating West and East Ship Island. The hurricane damaged the lighthouse, and Duvic, whose mainland home was lost in the hurricane, decided to not repair the structure.
A modern steel skeleton tower was built next to the wooden tower in 1971. In June of 1972, two young campers lit a campfire near the lighthouse to cook their dinner. High winds spread the fire to the lighthouse, which quickly erupted in a volcano of flames. The lighthouse was a total loss. A group of citizens, known as Friends of Gulf Islands National Seashore, was formed in 1999 to rebuild the lighthouse. The U.S. Forest Service provided the massive 64-foot long and 12-inch wide corner beams, along with other lumber needed for the project. In 2000, the U.S. Navy SeaBees built the framework for the replica lighthouse on a pier in Gulfport, then barged it to the island and completed the tower on the foundation of the 1886 lighthouse. The lighthouse replica stood until 2005, when Hurricane Katrina destroyed the tower along with a few other historic lighthouses of the Gulf Coast. Today, Ship Island can easily be visited via ferry from Gulfport. A fourth-order Fresnel lens used in the Ship Island Lighthouse was displayed at the Maritime and Seafood Industry Museum in Biloxi, however, the museum was heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 as was the lens. All the pieces of the lens were recovered, crated up, and shipped to the St. Augustine Lighthouse, where the lens will be repaired at an estimated cost of $132,000.
See our List of Lighthouses in Mississippi Copyright 2001-2009 Lighthousefriends.com Send us an e-mail - please note that lighthousefriends.com is not affiliated with any lighthouse Pictures on this page copyright Kraig Anderson, used by permission.
Travel to Fort Massachusetts
By NORMAN ROY Springfield Massachusetts "Republican" 5-17-09
The last project in America's Third System of coastal defenses, the brick-and-mortar walls of Fort Massachusetts rise 30 feet above the shifting sands of West Ship Island, a link in the chain that forms Gulf Islands National Seashore.
"It's more than just a building," said Stacy Speas, 39, of Mobile, Ala. Fort Massachusetts, she said, stands as a monument to the "untold stories" of former slaves who became Union soldiers; stories of 153 Confederate prisoners of war and 260 Union soldiers who died here, due largely to poor sanitation, crowded conditions and a yellow fever epidemic.
It holds the story of Eugenia Phillips, a proper Southern lady imprisoned for insulting a Union officer in New Orleans. Phillips brought her maid to prison with her to ensure comfort while doing time.
It is the story of a fort that was obsolete in 1859 when construction began, was never finished and never fired a shot. But, Speas defends, "If a fort never does battle, it has done its job."
Speas' job is to tell some of those stories. She is an interpretive park ranger with the park service, which operates Fort Massachusetts, visitor centers and hundreds of miles of some of America's most beautiful beaches from Mississippi to Florida.
Gulf Islands National Seashore was established in 1971 to preserve the barrier islands, salt marshes, wildlife, historic structures and archeological sites along the Gulf of Mexico. It is our largest National Seashore with 12 separate units stretching 160 miles from Cat Island, Miss., to the eastern tip of Santa Rosa Island, Fla.
But it wasn't so beautiful in the mid-1800s when one defender wrote that Ship Island was a "God-forsaken strip of sand."
The Third System consisted of 42 forts built between 1816 and 1870 to guard principal harbors, rivers and naval yards. The reasons Third System forts were obsolete, Speas explained, included the advent of the rifled cannon and hollow casting. Rifling put grooves in cannon barrels, which caused projectiles to spin, increasing accuracy and delivering the power to destroy even the thick brick walls of new forts. Hollow casting allowed barrels of freshly cast cannons to cool from the inside, which increased durability and the capability to withstand more powerful charges of gunpowder.
Prior to the Battle of New Orleans in 1814, some 10,000 British troops and 60 ships amassed in the deep-water anchorage off Ship Island to mount the unsuccessful attempt to capture the city.
When Mississippi seceded in January 1861, brick walls of the fort had been built six to eight feet above the sand. Units of the Mississippi militia captured the island and stacked sandbags and laid timber to strengthen the unfinished fort. In early July, several Confederate cannons on the beach outside the walls engaged in a 20-minute exchange with the Union ship Massachusetts, which resulted in few injuries and little damage. It was to be the only combat on Ship Island but it led to the Union reclaiming the island.
Which brings us to the ship named for the Bay State.
Originally a civilian steamship, USS Massachusetts was built at Boston in 1860, purchased by the Navy in 1861, and dispatched to the Gulf of Mexico to enforce the blockade of Confederate ports. The steamer was involved in the capture of several sailing vessels and reclaiming Ship Island. She carried supplies and personnel between Northern ports and blockade forces along the Atlantic Coast and Gulf of Mexico. The steamer was decommissioned at New York in 1865, sold in 1867 and put into commercial service in 1868 under the name Crescent City. She remained in use until 1892.
In 1862, a Union invasion fleet used Ship Island as a staging area so Adm. David Farragut could damn the torpedoes and capture Mobile, Ala., and New Orleans. Throughout the war, Union ships stopped for repairs and supplies. A hospital, barracks, mess hall and bakery were among nearly 40 buildings that sheltered as many as 18,000 Union troops. Among units that served here were the 22nd Massachusetts and 9th Connecticut regiments.
It was during the Civil War the fort was first called "Massachusetts" probably in honor of the Union ship. But the structure was never officially named and was referred to in most records as the "Fort on Ship Island."
Today, the name Fort Massachusetts is clearly accepted by the National Park Service and vendors who make a living serving and ferrying passengers to and from the island.
It was not the first fort called Massachusetts. The original was a stockade built in 1774 in North Adams, Mass., to defend the frontier during the French and Indian War. It was demolished in the late 1930s.
Circa 1950's
After the Civil War, the Army Corps of Engineers continued work on the fort on Ship Island. When work was halted in 1866, the fort was turned over to a civilian keeper, then to an army ordnance sergeant, the last relieved of duty in 1903. At that time, the keeper of Ship Island lighthouse became caretaker.
The fort has withstood the twin enemies of time and neglect but today is threatened by the sea. The foundation, 500 feet from shore when poured, is now at the water's edge because storms and tides have changed the shape of the island. The park service and Army Corps of Engineers are working to halt erosion.
Hurricane Camille in 1969 cut Ship Island in half, forming East and West Ship islands. The 35-foot high storm surge of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 washed over and through the fort but failed to significantly undermine the structure. But other buildings - a replica lighthouse, exhibits and bathrooms - were simply swept away. Restoration began in the fall of 2008; a small village of travel trailers has been set up to accommodate employees of the construction company hired to make repairs.
History buffs touring Fort Massachusetts today are a small minority of visitors who take the hour-long boat trip to West Ship Island. Excursion boats largely accommodate fishermen, hikers, birdwatchers, swimmers, sunbathers, picnickers and beachcombers. Within its ring of beaches, the island is a mix of sand dunes and swamp.
Prior to Hurricane Katrina, Ship Island Excursions hauled more than 60,000 visitors a year. Today, the number is about half that but improving, according to a spokesman for the excursion company.
Named in 1699 by French explorers, Ship Island became an important port of French Louisiana. Many colonists took their first steps on American soil here on what has come to be called the "Plymouth Rock" of the Gulf Coast.
Historic Fort Massachusetts, operated by the National Park Service, is on West Ship Island 11 miles off the Mississippi coast. The fort is accessible by private boat or passenger ferry
15 -inch Rodman on Ship Island at Fort Massachusetts
Our government purchased 322 of the model 1861 15-inch Columbiads, known as the Rodman Gun, between 1861 and 1871. These mammoth, 25 ton pieces were the primary weapon of our coast defense system for over thirty years. They also represent the beginning of a new era of ordnance and metal manufacturing in the United States. One of Fort Washington’s 15-inch Rodman cannons was removed to make way for rapid-fire guns at Battery White and the other two were taken down in the early 1900s. When rifled steel guns replaced the smoothbores, the old cannons were considered junk. At Fort Taylor engineers used 15-inch cannons to reinforce concrete for new gun emplacements. Today only 25 of the 15-inch Rodman guns survive. You can see these mammoth guns at our military parks such as Forts McHenry, Foote, and Massachusetts.
For more information about the historic and natural resources of Ship Island and Gulf Islands National Seashore, please go to nps.gov/guis, call (228) 875-9057, or write to: GUINS District Superintendent, 3500 Park Road, Ocean Springs, MS 39564
A FEW SCENES FROM SI EXCURSIONS and the 85 YEAR OLD SKRMETTA FAMILY BUSINESS
Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College C.C. “Tex” Hamill Down South Magazine Collection.
Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College C.C. “Tex” Hamill Down South Magazine Collection. 
Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College C.C. “Tex” Hamill Down South Magazine Collection.
1954 Radio Interview....Click HereMississippi Gulf Coast Community College C.C. “Tex” Hamill Down South Magazine of the Air radio broadcast of Sunday, May 2, 1954, from the
WVMI studio in the Broadwater Beach Hotel Beach House. Illustrated with photos from the
Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College C.C. “Tex” Hamill Down South Magazine Collection.
Click Here for Island Sons Story
