The formation of the Confederate Navy is one in which Georgia, and particularly the port of Savannah, played an important part.
    Savannah authorities first seized the revenue cutter “Gallatin.” This foretopsail schooner was a coastal survey vessel.  The Confederacy then assigned three tugs and a steamer to become Georgia’s first official Confederate naval force.
    After expanding the force by adding five gunboats and another steamer, in 1863 the port of Savannah was declared an official naval station. Many of the first Confederate ships were steamships converted into commerce-raiders or privateers.
    Savannah had its own privateers, one of which was the Brig Bonito. Based in New York, the Bonito had been engaged in the African slave trade. Captured by the “USS San Jacinto” off the coast of Africa, the vessel eventually ended up stationed in Savannah.
    Georgia’s Governor Joe Brown ordered the Bonito be converted into a Confederate privateer and armed with one sixty-eight pounder cannon taken from the Pensacola Navy Yard.
    The Confederate Navy’s first armed cruiser, the “Nashville,” was originally a fast side-wheel steamer purchased to transport Confederate Ambassadors to Britain and France. After the “Nashville” was sold to private parties and renamed the “Thomas Wragg,” she arrived in Savannah with a load of arms for the Confederacy. When she prepared to depart, she found herself trapped by the Federal blockade. Thus, she was sold to the Confederacy and renamed the “Rattlesnake.”  
    The “Rattlesnake” was sunk some eight months later by the monitor “USS Montauk” on the Ogeechee River after she had run aground in the area of Fort McAllister. The most famous Confederate warships were the “iron-clad rams.”
    The port of Savannah was home to several. Savannah’s first was built ostensibly to be the British steamship, the “Fingal.” This was actually a ruse: she was in reality a Confederate blockade-runner. However, in order to avoid being seized by British authorities, the “Fingal” left port registered as a British merchantman.
    Captained by Confederate super-spy James Bulloch, the “Fingal” brought the largest load of weapons ever smuggled into the South to the port of Savannah. Her cargo included 3 million ball cartridges and percussion caps, 1,000 rifles, 500 revolvers, and 3,000 cavalry sabres. It is said her cargo saved the Confederacy from an impending collapse.
    She was converted into an iron-clad warship and then renamed the “Atlanta.” Unfortunately, she was sunk not long after in a battle with the monitor USS Weehawken on the Savannah River.
    The first “Savannah” (or the Old Savannah) started out as the side-wheeled steamer “Everglade.” Purchased by the state of Georgia, she was converted into the gunboat “Savannah.” This vessel served as the flagship of the senior Georgia Naval Officer, Commodore Josiah Tattnall.
    Tattnall is most famous for his spirited but unsuccessful defense of Port Royal against the Union Navy’s South Atlantic Squadron.
    Tattnall’s Confederate naval force consisted of his flagship the “Savannah” and her tender the “Resolute,” the gunboats “Lady Davis” and “Sampson,” the steamers “Bartow,” “Ida,” and a supply scow.
    The steamers “Bartow” and “Ida” were part of the first-ever ship-board exchange of some 2,000 Federal prisoners for an equal number of Confederate prisoners. This was the first of what would eventually amount to an exchange of between 8,000 and 10,000 prisoners-of-war undertaken before the end of the war. The prisoners were exchanged by vessels under flags of truce at a secluded spot on the river between the city of Savannah and Fort Pulaski.
    
    Roger Allen is a local lover of history. Allen provides a brief look at Bulloch County's historical past. E-mail Roger at rogerdodg er53@hotmail.com