Black Terror (ship)

Black Terror was a fake warship used in the American Civil War to bluff Confederate forces into destroying the partially-salvaged remains of the ironclad USS Indianola.

Early the next year, the ram USS Queen of the West moved downriver to interfere with Confederate shipping on the Red River; Indianola was sent down a few days later.

The naval historian Myron J. Smith has since suggested that Black Terror was actually a later fake designed to reveal the location of Confederate artillery batteries, and that the story has been conflated with a possible earlier ruse aimed at forcing the destruction of Indianola.

An important part of this plan was controlling the Mississippi River, which would sever the Confederacy in two and provide an outlet for northern goods to be shipped to foreign markets.

[6] The naval elements were joined by a flotilla of ironclads led by Flag Officer Charles Henry Davis that had come downstream from Memphis, Tennessee.

As many of his ironclads had engines that were too weak to easily travel back up the river, Porter sent the lightly armed ram USS Queen of the West past Vicksburg on February 2 to operate against the shipping.

[15][16] With the remains of Indianola in Confederate possession, salvage crews and impressed plantation slaves began working on the ship to get it repaired and refloated.

United States Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles believed that Indianola represented a significant threat in potential Confederate hands and ordered that a squadron of ships be sent to take the wreck back.

[17][18] Porter, who described the loss of Indianola as "the most humiliating affair that has occurred during this rebellion",[16] took a flatboat[17] or coal barge[16][19] and had logs added to it to create a structure resembling a ship's hull.

[17][22] Another illusion was made by mixing tar and oakum in pots, lighting the mixtures on fire, and placing them at the bottom of the "smokestacks" to produce smoke.

[19] After successfully navigating the stretch of the river near Vicksburg with minimal damage from the Confederate artillery there, she either became stuck in an eddy near the site of Grant's Canal[19] or ran aground near Warrenton, Mississippi.

[17][19] Queen of the West sighted the oncoming vessel[17] on February 26 and informed the possibly drunk salvage crew, who decided to destroy Indianola to prevent her from returning to Union hands.

[29] The Richmond Examiner, a Confederate newspaper, lambasted the destruction of Indianola, stating "laugh and hold your sides lest you die of a surfeit of derision".

As the second fake vessel, Black Terror would have been sent downriver in early March in order to provide evidence on where the Confederate batteries were located.