Combat· American Civil War
CSS Atlanta capture at Wassaw Sound
A Union ironclad victory that cost the Confederate Marines a whole detachment.
The CSS Atlanta, the former British blockade-runner Fingal rebuilt at Savannah into an ironclad ram, carried a Confederate Marine guard under Lieutenant James Thurston. On 17 June 1863 she came down into Wassaw Sound, Georgia, intending to attack the Union blockaders, but the affair went disastrously wrong: coming into the channel she ran aground, and when freed she would not answer her helm. The Union monitor Weehawken closed and poured her heavy fire into the helpless ram, knocking out her guns and taking mounting casualties, until the Atlanta surrendered. Aboard at her capture were, by the muster roll, twenty-one officers and a hundred and twenty-four men, including twenty-eight Marines, all taken prisoner. The loss of the ironclad and her entire Marine guard was a serious blow to the small Confederate Corps.
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Record no. 432