Hatteras Inlet Batteries was a Civil War engagement fought in North Carolina, 1861. It was a Union victory.
On August 26, an amphibious expedition led by Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler and Flag-Officer Silas Stringham, embarked from Fort Monroe to capture Hatteras Inlet, an important haven for blockade-runners. On the 28th, while the navy bombarded Forts Clark and Hatteras, Union troops came ashore and attacked the rear of the Confederate batteries. On August 29, Col. William F. Martin surrendered the Confederate garrison of 670. The Federals lost only one man. Butler returned to Fort Monroe, leaving the captured forts garrisoned. This movement was part of Union efforts to seize coastal enclaves from which to enforce the blockade.
On August 28 and 29, 1861, Union land and naval forces joined together for the first time in the Civil War at Hatteras Inlet, an action that put the North Carolina Sounds, vital to the region's strategy, firmly under Union control.
Confederate forces had erected two forts along the Outer Banks, Fort Clark and Fort Hatteras, meant to shield their raiders preying on Union shipping. Their defenses proved weak, and the guns stationed there found themselves unable to strike the ships pounding them from offshore. Flag Officer Silas H. Stringham, in command of the Atlantic Blockading Squadron, had instructed his vessels to remain in motion during the bombardment so as not to offer the Confederates a fixed target. Poor weather slowed the operation, but eventually troops led by General Benjamin Butler made it ashore, and Flag Officer Samuel Barron surrendered to him.
This clash marked the earliest test of the blockade as a naval tactic. Once secured, the two forts gave Union forces a crucial gateway into the sounds while sharply curtailing Confederate raiding operations. Coming soon after the disheartening defeat at First Bull Run, news of this success lifted spirits among a discouraged Northern population. Some accounts refer to this action as the Battle of Forts Hatteras and Clark.
The stretch of coastline running from Cape Lookout in North Carolina up to the Virginia line is dominated by the North Carolina Sounds, bounded on their seaward side by the Outer Banks. This geography made the region almost perfectly suited for preying on shipping bound north. At Cape Hatteras, the farthest eastern point belonging to the Confederacy, sailors could see the Gulf Stream itself, a current running roughly 3 knots (1.5 m/s) at that latitude. Vessels returning from Caribbean trade routes toward New York, Philadelphia, or Boston could shorten their voyage considerably by catching that current northward. This made the area a natural haven for commerce raiders, whether privateers or ships belonging to the state, which could shelter there safe from storms and from Union patrol vessels while waiting for an unguarded target to pass. A lookout posted at the Hatteras lighthouse would spot such a target and alert a waiting raider, which could then rush out, seize its prize, and frequently be back before nightfall.
Once North Carolina left the Union, its leaders moved quickly to shield these raiders from Union retaliation by building fortifications at the inlets, the channels connecting the sounds to open water. As of 1861, only four such passages were deep enough for seagoing ships: Beaufort, Ocracoke, Hatteras, and Oregon Inlets. Because Hatteras Inlet mattered most among these, it received a pair of forts, called Fort Hatteras and Fort Clark.
The attacks on Northern shipping that originated from Hatteras Inlet demanded a response. Insurance underwriters leaned on Union Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles to fix the problem, though he hardly needed convincing. A document from the Blockade Strategy Board already sat before him, proposing a method for tightening the blockade along the North Carolina coast. The board's idea was to render the coastline useless to the South by sinking old, worthless, ballast-filled ships directly in the inlets.
Welles moved quickly once he had this recommendation in hand. He directed Commander H. S. Stellwagen to travel to Chesapeake Bay and purchase suitable old hulks for the purpose. Stellwagen was also instructed to keep Flag Officer Silas H. Stringham informed of his progress, since Stringham commanded the Atlantic Blockading Squadron and held responsibility for the North Carolina blockade. This marked Stringham's earliest connection to what would grow into the assault on Hatteras Inlet, an operation in which he would eventually play the central role.
From the outset, Stringham rejected the hulk-sinking scheme.
On the morning of August 28, the warships Minnesota, Wabash, and Cumberland opened fire on Fort Clark, while smaller vessels escorted the transports roughly three miles further east, where soldiers began coming ashore. Stringham had his vessels travel in a continuous loop, with Wabash pulling Cumberland behind her. Around eleven that morning, Susquehanna signaled her identity and entered the action as well. Each ship would fire a broadside toward the fort, pull back beyond the reach of return fire to reload, then swing in close once more to shoot again. This constant repositioning prevented the fort's gunners from adjusting their range between shots, stripping away much of the edge that land batteries typically held over naval guns. British and French forces had used a similar approach at Sevastopol during the Crimean conflict, but this marked its debut in American naval operations.
Fort Clark's answering shots proved harmless, either landing short of their targets or sailing over them, and not a single vessel took a hit. By early afternoon the garrison's powder supply dwindled, and around 12:25 it disappeared entirely. Faced with this, the defenders deserted their posts, with several running toward Fort Hatteras and others escaping by boat. Colonel Max Weber, who commanded the Union troops already landed, spotted the abandonment and sent men forward to claim the position, though word had not reached the ships offshore, which kept shelling for another five minutes. During this confused stretch, the only casualty among the landing force occurred, a soldier wounded badly in the hand by shell fragments. Luckily, troops managed to catch the attention of the ships' gun crews by waving a sizable American flag, halting the bombardment before further injury resulted. With that, Stringham and his fellow commanders shifted their focus toward Fort Hatteras.
The disembarkation itself was faring poorly. Barely a third of the men had reached shore before growing winds churned up surf that flipped and flooded the landing craft, forcing General Butler to call off any additional landing efforts. Colonel Weber discovered his force amounted to just 318 men, drawn from several sources: 102 from his own 20th New York, 68 from the 9th New York, 28 from the Union Coast Guard, 45 artillery specialists, 45 marines, and 28 sailors capable of operating heavy ordnance. Having dragged a handful of field guns through the pounding surf onto the beach, they stood a fair chance of repelling any Confederate assault, yet lacked the numbers to launch an offensive against Fort Hatteras themselves.
Off Fort Hatteras, Stringham repeated his earlier maneuver of keeping the fleet in constant motion. The garrison, hoping to preserve their limited ammunition, fired only now and then, leading Stringham to suspect the fort might already be deserted. No banner flew above it. The original flag had disintegrated before the fighting began and was never swapped out. He dispatched the Monticello to probe the inlet's depth, but the fort's guns suddenly roared back to life. As the ship attempted to pull free, she ran aground and took five hits while stuck. None caused lasting damage, though a handful of crewmen suffered light wounds.
By evening, worsening weather forced the fleet to withdraw. The weary Confederate defenders anxiously scanned for reinforcements, while the Union soldiers on land bedded down hungry, running short on drinking water, all the while fearing the reinforcements their enemies were counting on.
Once darkness fell, help began arriving at the fort. The gunboat Warren Winslow ferried in part of the garrison from Fort Ocracoke, and several of her sailors remained behind to assist with the guns, swelling the fort's strength past 700 men, with still more anticipated from New Bern. Traveling with these reinforcements was Flag Officer Samuel Barron, who oversaw coastal defenses across North Carolina and Virginia. Colonel Martin, citing exhaustion, asked Barron to take charge, which he did, holding onto hope that the promised troops from New Bern would let them retake Fort Clark.
The second day's dawn crushed those hopes. Conditions calmed sufficiently for the Union fleet to return and continue its assault, and they also succeeded in turning away the transport carrying Confederate reinforcements. One vessel did somehow slip through, though instead of delivering troops, she left carrying wounded men. The fleet began the day still moving, but soon realized they had positioned themsel
The fall of Cape Hatteras dealt a blow to Confederate hopes of commerce raiding, opened Pamlico Sound to federal ships, and tightened the blockade's grip. Command of the garrison there fell to Colonel Rush Hawkins, whose force included detachments from the 9th New York Infantry Regiment, portions of the
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