January 9, 1861

A few months before the Civil War "officially" began, there was a bit of a skirmish in South Carolina....or should I say, off the coast of South Carolina...in Charleston Harbor.

The Star of the West was a civilian ship that was dispatched on Jan. 5, 1861 to carry supplies to Major Robert Anderson at Fort Sumter. The ship was dispatched by President James Buchanan.

While on the way to the fort, the ship was fired upon by batteries on Morris Island and Fort Moutrie. Neither Major Anderson nor the commander of the ship fired back and the ship eventually withdrew out of Charleston Harbor.

On April 18, 1861 the ship was finally captured by the General Earl Van Dorn (CSA) in the Gulf of Mexico. The Confederates changed its name to St. Phillip. It served as a hospital ship until Admiral David Farragut captured New Orleans.

But the ship continued. It carried gold, silver, and currency to Vicksburg. Eventually, the ship was sunk (purposely) near Greenwood, MS in order to block the way for the Federal flotilla coming up the Tallahatchie River.

Its amazing the "little" things that you come across when researching "bigger" events. The Star of the West, although I've known of it, turns out to have played a bigger role in the Civil War than I thought. This is the "Little Ship that Could".

When the war was finally over, the owners of the ship requested repayment from the United States Government for their ship and they were one of the more fortunate ones, they received $175,000.

Fort Popham

I love obscure things. The more obscure, the more I like it. That's why I spend so much time on the battlefield looking for little details. It's an illness....one that I really don't want to cure. I was messing around on the Internet the other day and came across a fort that was built during the Civil War in Maine. It's name is Fort Popham. I'm not sure how I even found this, but there it was and now I need to share the information that I found out about it.

The Colony of Popham was settled in 1607 when George Popham (the colony leader) and about 120 people on the ship "Gift of God" landed in in the area. This was an offshoot of the Plymouth (MA) colony.

Here is what I found on its Civil War history (from Wikipedia - no one else seems to have any info on it at all...except that it was a Civil War site):
Construction of Fort Popham was authorized in 1857, but did not begin until 1861. The fort was built from granite blocks quarried on nearby Fox Island and Dix Island. It had a 30-foot (9 m) - high wall facing the mouth of the Kennebec River and was built in a crescent shape, measuring approximately 500 feet (150 m) in circumference.
Fort Popham's armament consisted of 36 cannons arranged in two tiers of vaulted casements. The back side of Fort Popham was built with a low moated curtain containing a central gate and 20 musket ports.
In 1869 construction at Fort Popham stopped before the fortification was completed. The fort was garrisoned again after additional work was performed during the Spanish-American War and World War I.

What this site doesn't tell us is why the fort was built. One thing that I was able to gleen from looking at about 20 websites was that evidently there was a threat of the Confederates attacking from the north (St. Alban's, VT is a prime example) and this fort was in place just in case such a thing would happen. With the majority of the war being fought below the Mason-Dixon line, who would think to fortify the far northern sections of the North? The United States did.

Although nothing actually took place at Fort Popham, just knowing that the eastern seaboard was fortified up and down the coast, must have been something that the locals would have felt as being comforting. The war never made it to Maine, but at least Maine was ready.