us navy photo, nhhc
courtesy of the author
After the Hartford sank at the dock in 1956, numerous pieces of the ship and her equipment were salvaged and sent to historic sites, museums, and places of honor around the country. The ship’s bell is displayed in Hartford, Connecticut. Her three anchors are on display in Connecticut and, seen below, at Fort Gaines, Dauphin Island, Alabama. Mobile Bay, yielded to time, rot, and marine worms. And all the Navy’s pumps couldn’t save her.” The paper concluded “the probable cause of death” to “deterioration…so great that the water got ahead of the pumps.” Until that day, USS Hartford was the US Navy’s last Civil War combat vessel still afloat. Hartford lives on today only through the various remnants that were saved and scattered across the nation she fought so hard to save. Her wheel and fife rail are in
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asked Congress for permission to scrap the ship. By then Hartford was on life support. The series of pumps and hoses now ran 24 hours a day to keep the water out of her leaky, rotted hull. She had not been drydocked in nearly twenty years. Personnel checked on her every two hours. Mast-less, paint-less, gun-less—she was a barely discernible shell of a once-mighty warship. At 12:30 AM on 20 November 1956, one of the Navy’s night patrols noticed something wrong with Hartford. One of her pump hoses had ruptured and she was taking on water fast. Base firefighters rushed over to her berth to fix the hose, but the rate of water coming in did not lessen. They added two more pumps…not enough. Three more pumps…not enough. She started to list. At 4:32 AM water started gushing through portholes and openings on the gun deck where John Lawson had earned his Medal of Honor. The men aboard leapt off. Hartford was sinking. Where Confederate torpedoes and war failed, time and decay succeeded. USS Hartford slipped beneath the surface in thirty feet of water and settled in the mud of the Virginia riverbed. “I am writing to advise you of the sinking of the USS Hartford,” wrote Rear Admiral A. G. Mumma on 20 November to Representative Carl Vinson, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. He added, “salvage does not appear practicable.” The Hartford Courant wrote her obituary the same day: “The USS Hartford, pride of the Yankee fleet, died of old age in this Rebel port today…Her stout timbers, that stood under a pounding from the guns of the Confederate Ironclad Tennessee at
Washington, DC. A rowboat is in Georgia. Some of her guns stand in Connecticut, New York, Michigan, and California. One of her hatch covers is now a table at the US Naval Academy in Maryland. Her anchors are in Connecticut and Alabama. The city of Hartford has her bell. With pieces spread across the nation, Hartford’s memory belongs to everyone. If only the ship itself still did as well. Todd Jones, whose fascination with the sea began after childhood visits to Mystic Seaport Museum, is a historic preservationist in Washington, DC.
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