Battle of Memphis The First Battle of Memphis was a naval battle fought on the Mississippi River immediately above the city of Memphis on June 6 , 1862 , during the American Civil War . The engagement was witnessed by many of the citizens of Memphis . It resulted in a crushing defeat for the Rebels , and marked the virtual eradication of a Confederate naval presence on the river . Despite the lopsided outcome , the Union Army failed to grasp its strategic significance . Its primary historical importance is that it was the last time civilians with no prior military experience were permitted to command ships in combat . As such , it is a milestone in the development of professionalism in the United States Navy . Background . The defending Confederates closely matched the advancing Federal force in raw numbers , with eight Rebel vessels opposing nine Union gunboats and rams , but the fighting qualities of the former were far inferior . Each was armed with only one or two guns , of a light caliber that would be ineffective against the armor of the gunboats . The primary weapon of each was its reinforced prow , which was intended to be used in ramming opponents . The Confederate rams were distinguished by a unique feature of their defense against enemy shot . Their engines and other interior spaces were protected by a double bulkhead of heavy timbers , covered on the outer surface by a layer of railroad iron . The gap between the bulkheads , a space of , was packed with cotton . Although the cotton was the least important part of the armor , it caught the public ' s attention , and the boats came to be called " cottonclads " . ( Later in the war , ships ' crews were often protected from small - arms fire by bales of cotton placed in exposed positions , and these vessels were also referred to as cottonclads . They differed , however , from the originals of the category . ) The Federal force consisted of five gunboats , four of which were known semi - officially as ' Eads gunboats , ' after their builder , James Buchanan Eads , but more commonly as ' Pook Turtles ' , after their designer , Samuel M . Pook , and their strange appearance . The fifth gunboat , flagship , was also a product of the Eads shipyards , but was converted from a civilian craft . Each of these vessels carried 13 – 16 guns . The other four vessels were rams , with no armament whatever , aside from small arms carried by the officers . All of the rams had been converted from civilian riverboats , and had no common design . Organization . Both sides entered the battle with faulty command structures . The Federal gunboats were members of the Western Gunboat Flotilla , commanded directly by Flag Officer Charles H . Davis , who reported to Major General Henry W . Halleck . The gunboats were thus a part of the United States Army , although their officers were supplied by the Navy . The rams were led by Colonel Charles Ellet , Jr . , who reported directly to Secretary of War Edwin M . Stanton . Thus the Federal ' fleet ' consisted of two independent organizations , with no common command outside of Washington . The Confederate arrangement was even worse . The cottonclads were about half of a group of 14 river steamers that had been seized at New Orleans and converted into rams to defend that city . Known as the " River Defense Fleet " , it was split in two when the Confederate holdings on the river became threatened from both the north and the Gulf of Mexico . Six were retained below New Orleans to face the fleet of David G . Farragut , while eight were sent up to Memphis to block the Federal descent down the river . ( Sending them this far north did not violate their original purpose , as Memphis was regarded as a shield for New Orleans . ) The northern ( Memphis ) section was commanded overall by James E . Montgomery , a riverboat captain in civilian life . The other boats were also commanded by former civilian riverboat captains , selected by Montgomery , and with no military training . Once under way , Montgomery ' s command ceased , and the rams operated independently . The futility of this arrangement was recognized immediately by military men , but their protests were disregarded . Furthermore , the captains would not either learn how to handle the guns themselves , nor assign crew members to the task , so gun crews had to be drawn from the Confederate Army . The gunners were not integrated into the crews , but remained subject to the orders of their army officers . Battle . As a result of the Federal victory at Corinth , the railroads that linked Memphis with the eastern part of the Confederacy had been cut , severely reducing the strategic importance of the city . Therefore , in early June Memphis and its nearby forts were abandoned by the Rebel army . Most of the garrison were sent to join units elsewhere , including Vicksburg , and only a small rear guard was left to make a token resistance . The River Defense Fleet would also have retreated to Vicksburg , but it could not get enough coal in Memphis . Unable to flee when the Federal fleet appeared on June 6 , Montgomery and his captains had to decide whether to fight or scuttle their boats . They chose to fight , steaming out in the early morning to meet the advancing flotilla and the rams trailing behind it . The battle started with an exchange of gunfire at long range , the Federal gunboats setting up a line of battle across the river and firing their stern guns at the cottonclads coming up to meet them . Two of the four rams advanced beyond the line of the gunboats and rammed or otherwise disrupted the movements of their opponents ; the other rams misinterpreted their orders and did not enter the battle at all . With the Federal rams and gunboats not coordinating their movements and the Confederate vessels operating independently , the battle soon was reduced to a melee . It is agreed by all that the ram flagship , , drew first blood by ramming CSS " Colonel Lovell " . She was then rammed in turn by one or more of the remaining cottonclads . Col . Ellet was at this time wounded by a pistol shot in his knee , thereby becoming the only casualty on the Union side . ( In the hospital , he contracted measles , the childhood disease that killed some 5 , 000 soldiers during the war . The combination of the disease and the debilitation caused by his wound was too great , and he died on June 21 . ) The remainder of the battle is obscured by more than the fog of war . Several eyewitness accounts are available ; unfortunately , they are mutually contradictory to a greater degree than usual . All that is certain is that at the end of the battle , all but one of the cottonclads were either destroyed or captured , and one Yankee boat , " Queen of the West " , was disabled . The sole boat to escape , CSS " General Earl Van Dorn " , fled to the protection of the Yazoo River , just north of Vicksburg . Personnel losses among the Confederates cannot be estimated reliably . Results . The battle , which took less than two hours in the early morning hours of June 6 , resulted in the immediate surrender of the city of Memphis to Federal authority by noon that day . The battle of Memphis was , aside from the later appearance of the ironclad CSS " Arkansas " , the final challenge to the Federal thrust down the Mississippi River against Vicksburg . The river was now open down to that city , which was already besieged by Farragut ' s ships , but the Federal Army authorities did not grasp the strategic importance of the fact for nearly another six months . Not until November would the Union Army under Ulysses S . Grant attempt to complete the opening of the river . The poor performance of the River Defense Fleet , both at Memphis and at the earlier Battle of New Orleans , was the final demonstration that naval operations had to be commanded by trained professionals subject to military discipline . The Ellet Rams remained in the Federal service , but they had no opportunity for combat of the sort for which they were intended . They were soon transformed to an amphibious raiding body , the Mississippi Marine Brigade ( with no connection to the United States Marine Corps ) , led by Col . Ellet ' s brother , Lieutenant Colonel ( later Brigadier General ) Alfred W . Ellet . The demand for increased professionalism has also resulted in the elimination of privateering , although the River Defense Fleet was not composed of privateers in the usual meaning of the term . The battle remains a cautionary tale , demonstrating the ill effects of poor command structure . It is also interesting in that it is one of only two purely naval battles of the war , excluding single - ship actions , and took place from the nearest open water . ( The other was the Battle of Plum Point Bend , also on the Mississippi . ) Another Civil War military engagement also took place in Memphis , the Second Battle of Memphis in April 1864 , when Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest led a nighttime cavalry raid on his hometown of Memphis with the intent of freeing Confederate prisoners and capturing Union generals encamped in Memphis . The raid failed in both goals , but forced the Union Army to guard the area more diligently