Hampton Roads Naval Museum Educator
Once refined, these chemical lamps used super-heated balls of lime, or calcium oxide, to create an incandescent glow. The lights, known as limelight or calcium lights, began appearing in lighthouses and theaters during in the 1830s.
A night raid upon Fort Wagner (also known as Battery Wager) supported by calcium lights. |
During the siege of Charleston, the Union Navy also focused “limelights” on Fort Sumter while they pummeled it into rubble. In a dispatch to Captain Stephen Rowan, commanding USS New Ironsides, Rear Adm. Dahlgren wrote from Morris Island, “I have just received your signal dispatch in reference to the use of my calcium light on the New Ironsides. I placed at your disposal with great pleasure, and have little doubt that it will aid you in keeping the torpedo vessel.”
Dahlgren made the following request to his superiors in Washington D.C. on April 6, 1864:
SIR: I beg leave to acknowledge the receipt of your communication enclosing a suggestion made to the Department that small steams with a calcium light would increase the security of our vessels against the rebel torpedo boats. A calcium light is always kept in operation on board the Ironsides, unless there be a good moonlight, I intended also to mount one on each monitor; the trial was made on one of them [New Ironsides, at the battles at Charleston Harbor], but not continued, because the commanding officer thought it a disadvantage. After a close observation of the one in use, I think it probable that the small angle at which the rays the water detracts from its efficiency. Small steamers are always kept in motion in advance of the picket monitors. As many as six have been on duty in a single night, besides a number of picket boats, making it exceedingly difficult for any object on the water to escape them unnoticed; which is confirmed by the fact that the efforts of the rebels were directed against the Housatonic, which was out in the open sea, while the monitors were inside the bar, within range of the rebel batteries and infinitely of more consequence. If any of the torpedo boats should elude the pickets, they would be stopped by nettings in the vicinity of the ironclads. There is no remedy for the outside cruisers except to be kept constantly underway, and I should pursue the same course inside with the monitors, but it is impossible at night in channels lined with dangerous shoals and heavy batteries. With an increased number of steam tugs and some torpedo boats like those of the rebels, added to the measures already taken, I should feel no apprehension whatever from this base style of rebel warfare.
With his requests' approval, this new technology was sent to the Norfolk Naval Shipyard for use in the North and South Atlantic Blockade Squadrons. Additional requests came flowing in, after great success was reported in stopping Confederate blockade runners. The order came via the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron flagship USS Malvern that five locomotive lights were to be brought and attached to the bow and sterns of several ironclads within the Hampton Roads area in 1864. During 1864 and 1865, the Navy ordered 300 calcium lights to be installed as standard issue aboard all ironclads built in the area.
These calcium floodlights were later used as searchlights to spot Confederate warships and blockade runners. In early 1865, a Union light even helped detect a Confederate ironclad fleet as it tried to move along the James River under cover of darkness. A Southern officer later noted that a planned sneak attack was made impossible in part because of the Union’s “powerful calcium light.”
Equipped with calcium lights, the Union Navy was able to continue, even on the darkest nights, the bombardment of Fort Sumter and Battery Wagner, ushering in a decades-long period in which the “Spotlight” was an important and well-used tool for peacetime, and war, aboard naval vessels.
1 comment:
I was watching the Discovery Channel on January 12,2019 and it showed a Lime Light in use during the Civil War against Fort Wagner on Morris Island in the Charleston Harbor,used by Yankee Ships, for Blinding the Confederates, and shortly afterwards Fort Wagner was captured by the Yankees. Thomas Cranston Hucks of Conway, SC 29527
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