Ironclad River Gunboat Cairo

Image from wikipedia, PD. USS Cairo in the Mississippi River, 1862


Cairo, Illinois is a river port town at the bottom of the state of Illinois where the Ohio River flows into the Mississippi River. The early settlers had noticed that it resembled Egypt's Nile Delta, so they named it Cairo, but the Americanized pronunciation is like KAY-row. In fact the area around there is called Egypt, or Little Egypt, to this day.

Cairo was already an important point for the riverboat trade before the secession crisis turned into the Civil War, and when that happened it became far more important as a base of operations for the Federal forces by land and riverboat.

Illinois stayed in the Union, but right across both rivers were slave states, and Federal troops moved early on to secure the place as a base. A big part of the plans brewing in Washington as to how to conquer the South involved securing the Mississippi and other rivers, to cut the South in half and control traffic on the water.

The planners were initially thinking about having 12 to 20 river gunboats. And the Federal government had money to order their construction, which would provide jobs for the builders, and for crews afterwards. Some of the companies involved were in the 'border' states, or slave states that had not seceded from the Union, Missouri and Kentucky, as well as Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania and other places along the rivers.

The one shown above in the Mississippi River was built under a contract from the Army, not the Navy, from August 1861, along with a total of seven in the class. Three built at Mound City, and four more at St. Louis. They were fitted with 2 1/2 inches of armor on the casemate, which are those main 'walls' you see coming up from the deck.

They could go 8 knots. That is something like the idle speed of a modern car, moving slowly but steadily. The project went over budget by about $12,000 and took longer than they thought, but the seven gunboats were ready in January 1862. These seven became the backbone of the River Squadron. For the first ten months they were Army gunboats, and went to the Navy in October 1862, although their officers were from the Navy all along.

The guns were:

3x 7-inch 42-pdr army rifles
3x 8-inch, 64-pdr, 63-cwt smooothbores
6x 32-pdr, 42-cwt smoothbores
1x 30-pdr Parrott rifle

The boats in the class were:

Cairo
Carondelet
Cincinatti
Louisville
Mound City
Pittsburgh
St. Louis

The Cairo fought the Confederate rams at Memphis among other actions. During the Yazoo Expedition, part of the operations against Vicksburg, she struck a mine (torpedo) while trying to clear mines, and sank, December 12, 1862. The next July the same thing happened to the St. Louis. The other five survived to be sold off after the war was over.


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In the 1960's during the Centennial of the Civil War, a project was undertaken to raise the Cairo back up. Unfortunately Dr Walter Johnson died while working on the project, but she was successfully raised. People today can visit and walk around on her, to see what these boats were like, and someone recorded that, so here are a couple minutes worth of video clips on the outside, on deck, and then down inside, by the guns.

As you look at the size of this gunboat, consider that even with the 75 tons of armor she still only draws six feet of water, a very important consideration in the rivers, which may be deep and may be shallow in different parts. This is also the reason they needed flat bottoms and the paddle wheel for propulsion, instead of a keel and screw like an ocean-going design. Those would too easily run aground or snag in the rivers. They did add another 47 tons of armor later on to make them stronger.

The Cairo is 175 feet long. by 51 feet wide.
There were two other gunboats at the Battle of Shiloh, in the Spring of 1862, that were the same length, one of them five feet longer, but those two at Shiloh were narrower, only 36 feet vs 51 feet wide (that is the beam).



The Exterior of the Cairo runs 1:16

The Interior of the Cairo runs 2:47


Sources of information:
wikipedia, ironclads
you tube
Tony Gibbons, Warships and Naval Battles of the Civil War, Gallery Books, New York, 1989.


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54mm or so Toy Soldiers Project

I stumbled over a coffee can in the closet that was full of what I'd call 54mm toy soldier figures for the Civil War. I had completely forgotten that I had these. I think I found them at a grocery store in the toys section, right next to the cowboys and Indians, dinosaurs, farm animals and green army men. It may be that I bought two bags of them and poured them in this can before forgetting all about it.



Technically they are not even all exactly the same scale, some come out around 40-some millimeters and others over fifty, but they look okay together. They are meant to be toys, not prize-winning sculpts, but they are not half bad.

I guess I wasn't taking them seriously for wargaming, or I'd have at least remembered that I had some. These may be from two years ago.

But on the other hand there are some blogs out there talking about figures like these for some good-looking games, and for more than just the Civil War. Revolution, Alamo, Wild West, etc also are done. WW2 of course.

Also my best old wargaming buddy moved away to California quite a while back. He told me he has been playing Civil War lately with a fireman out there with 54mm figures. This would be in the Napa or Sonoma Valley area north of San Francisco. If anyone knows them, and sees this, please jump in. If there was a blog for them it would be great to see, but my friend doesn't much know about things like that, so he definitely doesn't have a blog, or even barely know what one is for that matter.

This friend unfortunately barely understands computers, except as necessary,  so he hasn't been around yet, but may show up sometime. Anyway I just figured out computers a few years ago, when I had to. He just hasn't had to yet.



His army was 20mm Thomas figures from K and L, a classic type from the 1950's era, Civil War of course, and he kept them like jewelry in padded boxes and tissue paper. Never would consider putting them on bases. They are individuals only. He would have 20 figures per regiment, with two figures per company.

I am not sure yet how they are doing the 54mm because now there are two minds involved and not just one, but I do know he thinks they are too big and they have to play outside on the ground in order to have enough room, because they make the table seem too small.

But now that I see I do have some of those after all, I think I may start collecting more of them.

Now they may seem 'silly' at first, after all they are meant for five-year-old kids, but they are really not that bad. The guns elevate, and will hook on to the trailer hitch on the limbers.  There just aren't enough horses, but that could be remedied.

So far there are 18 foot and two horsemen per side, plus four cannon, four limbers, and just four horses for the mounted generals. Each side has two color bearers with paper flags. The horses are the same type from the cowboys and Indians bags, so I think I could get more.

Since I have just been painting up 600 figures for the Civil War in 1/72 scale, it would be very easy to just switch gears and try painting up some of these huge two-inch tall figures. I saw that another store in town carries figures like this, so now I think I have another new project going