Return to Naval Historical Center home page. Return to Online Library listing

DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY -- NAVAL HISTORICAL CENTER
805 KIDDER BREESE SE -- WASHINGTON NAVY YARD
WASHINGTON DC 20374-5060

Photo # NH 57820:  USS Galena.  Wash drawing by R.G. Skerrett, showing the ship as she appeared circa mid-1862

Online Library of Selected Images:
-- U.S. NAVY SHIPS --

USS Galena (1862-1872)

USS Galena, a 950-ton ironclad gunboat, was built at Mystic, Connecticut. Commissioned in April 1862 as the second of the U.S. Navy's first three armored warships, she was immediately sent to Hampton Roads, Virginia, to join the Navy's pioneer ironclad Monitor in containing CSS Virginia. On 8 May, Galena attacked enemy shore batteries on the James River, part of an intended drive up the river to take Richmond, the Confederate capital city.

After the Virginia was destroyed, Galena and other Union warships steamed up the James on 15 May to bombard Fort Darling, located at Drewry's Bluff about eight miles below Richmond. In a sharp action, Confederate gunners badly damaged Galena, killing twelve of her crew and demonstrating the inadequacy of her relatively thin iron armor. Despite her injuries, the ship remained in the James River area through the next four months, shelling enemy shore positions on several occasions in support of General McClellan's army during the flow and ebb of its campaign on the Virginia Peninsula. After Galena left the James in September 1862, she was stationed in Hampton Roads until May 1863, when she went to Philadelphia for repairs and alterations.

Recommissioned in February 1864, Galena had been stripped of her iron plating, given a heavier gun battery and enlarged sail rig. Now a conventional unarmored steam warship, in May she joined the West Gulf Blockading Squadron's pending assault on Mobile Bay, Alabama. She was one of the ships that ran past the Bay's defending Fort Morgan on the morning of 5 August 1864. During that action, she assisted USS Oneida to safety after that ship was disabled by Confederate gunfire. Later in the month, Galena took part in the siege that led to Fort Morgan's surrender.

Galena served in the East Gulf Blockading Squadron in September-November 1864. After four months of shipyard repairs, she served on Virginia's James and Nansemond Rivers through the end of the Civil War. She decommissioned in June 1865 and was thereafter inactive except for a brief time in the spring of 1869. USS Galena was broken up in 1872 at the Norfolk Navy Yard, where a new and somewhat larger Galena was built under the administrative fiction of repairing the original.

This page features, or provides links to, all our views of USS Galena (1862-1872).

For pictures of USS Galena in action, see:

  • USS Galena -- Actions & Activities.


    If you want higher resolution reproductions than the digital images presented here, see: "How to Obtain Photographic Reproductions."

    Click on the small photograph to prompt a larger view of the same image.

    Photo #: NH 58863

    USS Galena
    (1862-1872)

    Line engraving, published in "Harper's Weekly", 1862, depicting the ship as she appeared when first completed, with a two-masted schooner rig.

    U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph.

    Online Image: 129KB; 740 x 510 pixels

     
    Photo #: NH 59305

    USS Galena
    (1862-1872)

    Line engraving published in "Harper's Weekly", July-December 1861, page 669, while the ship was under construction at Mystic, Connecticut.
    Details of this depiction are inaccurate, especially the elongated gun ports shown fore and aft of the smokestack.

    U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph.

    Online Image: 153KB; 740 x 575 pixels

     
    Photo #: NH 57820

    USS Galena
    (1862-1872)

    Wash drawing by R.G. Skerrett, 1898, depicting the ship as she appeared while serving on the James River, Virginia, circa mid-1862.

    Courtesy of the U.S. Navy Art Collection, Washington, D.C.

    U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph.

    Online Image: 69KB; 740 x 400 pixels

     
    Photo #: NH 59541

    USS Galena
    (1862-1872)

    Watercolor by Oscar Parkes, depicting the ship as she appeared in mid-1862, while serving on the James River, Virginia.

    Courtesy of Dr. Oscar Parkes, 1936.

    U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph.

    Online Image: 57KB; 740 x 450 pixels

     
    Photo #: NH 58752

    U.S. Navy Warships, 1862


    Line engraving published in "Harper's Weekly", 1862, depicting several contemporary U.S. Navy ironclad and conventional warships. They are (from left to right: Puritan (in the original twin-turret design); Catskill; Montauk, Keokuk (citing her original name, "Woodna"); Passaic; Galena (behind Roanoke, with name not cited); Roanoke; Winona; New Ironsides; Naugatuck; Brooklyn and Monitor.

    U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph.

    Online Image: 59KB; 740 x 250 pixels

     
    Photo #: NH 58864

    USS Galena
    (1862-1872)

    Line engraving, published in "Harper's Weekly", 1862, depicting the ship's gun deck as it appeared when she was first completed.

    U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph.

    Online Image: 124KB; 740 x 450 pixels

     
    Photo #: NH 53984

    USS Galena
    (1862-1872)

    Photograph looking forward along the ship's port side, shortly after her 15 May 1862 action with Confederate batteries at Drewry's Bluff, on the James River, Virginia.
    Among the items visible are the muzzles of two of Galena's IX-inch Dahlgren smoothbore guns; her unique horizontally-laid interlocking iron side armor; armored gunport shutters; boat davits; members of her crew; and at least one plugged hole from enemy shot (near the waterline in bottom left center).

    U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph.

    Online Image: 133KB; 670 x 675 pixels

     
    Photo #: LC-B8171-652

    USS Galena (1862-1872)


    Photograph taken on board by Matthew Brady, shortly after the 15 May 1862 action with Confederate batteries at Drewry's Bluff, Virginia.
    This view looks forward on the starboard side of the spar deck, and shows holes in Galena's smokestack (in left center) made by Confederate cannon fire. Among the other items seen are boat davits, canvas windsails, the elevated wooden conning platform and the lookout position on the foremast.

    Collections of the Library of Congress.

    Online Image: 109KB; 740 x 610 pixels

     
    Photo #: NH 58862

    USS Galena
    (1862-1872)

    Line engraving, published in "Harper's Weekly", 1862, depicting the ship's midship's hull section, the arrangement of her horizontally-laid interlocking side armor, and one of her armored gun ports.

    U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph.

    Online Image: 65KB; 740 x 275 pixels

     
    Photo #: NH 59306

    USS Galena
    (1862-1872)

    Line engraving published in "Harper's Weekly", July-December 1861, page 670, depicting the ship's hull section amidships. She was then under construction at Mystic, Connecticut.

    U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph.

    Online Image: 103KB; 665 x 675 pixels

     

    For pictures of USS Galena in action, see:

  • USS Galena -- Actions & Activities.


    If you want higher resolution reproductions than the digital images presented here, see: "How to Obtain Photographic Reproductions."


    Return to Naval Historical Center home page.

    Page made 10 July 2001
    Image added 31 August 2001