Civil War boat off Bateman Island may offer opportunities

Is a tourism and education opportunity buried in the sand and silt off Bateman Island?

Terry Guarisco thinks so. He asked the Morgan City Council on Tuesday to consider ways a Civil War-era gunboat could be brought up from its muddy, watery grave.

The boat had a brief but colorful history in service to the Union during the Civil War.

According to the U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command website, the Union Army captured a sidewheel steamer at New Orleans in 1862. None other than Gen. B.F. Butler, nicknamed “the Beast” for his administration of New Orleans during the
Union occupation, ordered the vessel converted into a gunboat for “service in the rivers and bayous of Louisiana.” It was re-named the Colonel Kinsman.

The Kinsman was itself a beast. Guarisco said his research showed the Kinsman to be 177 feet long and 49 feet wide.

The Kinsman fought two battles with the Confederate ironclad J.A. Cotton on the Teche in October 1862 and January 1863. The Union vessel was hit 50 times had two crewmembers killed in the first battle. In the second, it damaged the Cotton badly enough that the Confederate vessel had to be destroyed.

Then, in February 1863, the Kinsman was performing reconnaissance on Berwick Bay when it ripped open its bottom on a snag, the naval history site said.

The crew tried to ground the boat on Bateman Island, but “despite being beached, she filled and slid off the steep bank into deep water where she sank near Brashear City, La.”

Five of her crew were killed in the attempt. Guarisco said the victims were free people of color.

Guarisco said a $200,000 study involving the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Oceaneering located the area where the Kinsman went down. That study was in 2000.

“It’s possible it can be resurrected if the money is there,” Guarisco said.

Mayor Lee Dragna said the Kinsman is probably buried deep under the accumulated silt. Another complication is that the boat is in a navigable waterway.

The mayor offered to ask the Coast Guard’s captain of the port whether a rescue operation is possible. If the answer is yes, Dragna said, “maybe.”