CSS General Beauregard

The General Beauregard (center right) rams the Monarch while other Confederate ships sink, burn, or run aground in the First Battle of Memphis.
History
Confederate States
Name	General Beauregard
Namesake	General P.G.T. Beauregard
Launched	1847
Acquired	January 1862
Commissioned	April 1862
Fate	Sunk at action, 6 June 1862
General characteristics
Type	Sidewheel steamer
Tonnage	454 long tons (461 t)
Propulsion	Steam engine, side wheels
Armament	4 × 8 in (200 mm) guns

CSS General Beauregard was a cottonclad sidewheel ram of the Confederate States Navy during the American Civil War.

Built in Algiers, New Orleans Louisiana in 1847 as a towboat, the paddle steamer Ocean was selected in January 1862 by Capt. James E. Montgomery, former river steamboat master, for his River Defense Fleet. At New Orleans, on 25 January, Captain Montgomery began her conversion to a cotton-clad ram, installing 4-inch (100 mm) oak and 1-inch (25 mm) iron sheathing over her bow, with cotton bales sandwiched between double pine bulkheads to protect her boilers.

Conversion completed on 5 April, and now renamed CSS General Beauregard, the ship steamed to Fort Pillow, Tennessee, to defend the approaches to Memphis. On 10 May 1862, General Beauregard, Capt. J. H. Hart, and seven more of Montgomery's fleet, attacked the Federal Mississippi ironclad flotilla. The Battle of Plum Point Bend witnessed effective ramming tactics by the Confederates, although General Beauregard succeeded only in keeping her four 8-inch guns bravely firing in the face of a withering hail of Union shells. Montgomery's force held off the Federal rams until Fort Pillow was safely evacuated, 4 June, then fell back on Memphis to coal, on the fifth.

After Fort Pillow fell, Flag officer Charles Henry Davis, USN, commanding the Mississippi River Squadron, lost no time in appearing off Memphis, on 6 June 1862. Montgomery, with a smaller squadron short of fuel, was unable to retreat to Vicksburg; unwilling to destroy his boats, he fought against heavy odds. In the ensuing First Battle of Memphis, "witnessed by thousands on the bluff," Beauregard missed ramming USS Monarch and "cut away entirely the port wheel and wheel-house" of her partner, CSS General Sterling Price, also engaging Monarch. General Beauregard, backing out, gave Union flagship USS Benton a close broadside with a 42-pounder, and Benton replied with a shot into the Confederate's boiler, killing or scalding many of her crew, 14 of whom, in agony, were rescued by Benton.

• Bibliography of early United States naval history
• Fort Pillow State Historic Park

•  This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. The entry can be found here.

• NH 58891 "The Great Naval Battle before Memphis, June 6, 1862"