City Point Wharf Explosion Facts
- Date — August 9, 1864.
- Location — City Point Wharf in City Point, Virginia (present-day Hopewell, Virginia).
- Part Of — The City Point Wharf Explosion was a Confederate operation during the Petersburg Campaign.
- Historical Context — The City Point Wharf Explosion happened 10 days after the Battle of the Crater (July 30, 1864), and four days before the Second Battle of Deep Bottom (August 13–20, 1864).
City Point Wharf Explosion Significance
The City Point Wharf Explosion is important to American History because Confederate agent Willliam Maxwell caused extensive damage with an early version of a time bomb. The explosion failed to end the Siege of Petersburg, even though it caused significant casualties and property damage.
City Point Wharf Explosion History and Overview
Maxwell’s Horological Torpedo
On August 9, 1864, a Confederate agent came as close to killing Union commander Ulysses S. Grant as the South ever did. On that warm morning, Grant was sitting outside his tent on a bluff above the James River at City Point, Virginia, when a barge moored in the river below him blew up.
The explosion killed 43 Union servicemen and civilians along the docks and wounded another 126, causing $2 million in damage to the Union’s City Point supply depot. The explosion scattered broken wood and metal shrapnel across the lawn of the Eppes Mansion where Grant was resting.
A canal boat moored alongside the barge was loaded with cavalry saddles that were flung through the air. One observer said, “like so many-big-winged bats.” (1)
The explosion had been caused by sabotage — Confederate sabotage.
A “Horological Torpedo” — an early form of a time bomb — had been planted aboard the barge by Confederate agent John Maxwell, who then moved back from the James River and waited to see the effects of his work.
Grant’s Headquarters at City Point
City Point, a quiet Virginia community at the conflux of the James River and Appomattox River (now Hopewell, Virginia.) gained a new prominence — and a new importance — when Grant made his headquarters there in June 1864.
It was from there that the Siege of Richmond was coordinated and supplied. Grant was to maintain his headquarters there until the last week of the war when the army moved out in pursuit of General Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia (CSA).
City Point Infrastructure and Traffic
A new river wharf and warehouses were built at City Point in 1864 as well as a hospital that could handle 6,000 patients, along with new sidings on the City Point Railroad, which ran west seven miles to Richmond, the Confederate capital.
Telegraph lines were laid connecting Grant’s headquarters with Fort Monroe further down the James River and with Washington, D.C. Earthworks were thrown up between the two rivers to protect City Point from the south.
On an average day, 40 steamboats, 74 sailing vessels, and some 100 barges would be anchored off City Point.
There were bakeries and wagon-repair shops in City Point, barracks, blacksmith shops and stables, steam engines to pump water, a newly constructed 20-mile railroad complete with repair shops, roundhouses, and freight yards, and daily passenger steamers to and from Washington. (2)
City Point was then one the busiest ports in the country, if not the world.
It was this facility that caught Maxwell’s eye.
Maxwell Travels to City Point
Traveling from Richmond with a companion, R. K. Dillon, who knew the area, Maxwell reached the area of City Point early on August 9 and crawled through the picket line to the east of the military reservation.
Maxwell’s Device
Waiting until dawn, Maxwell asked his companion to wait and approached the wharf carrying his Horological Torpedo. The bomb consisted of an ordinary wooden candle box Maxwell had bought at a country store, 12 pounds of gunpowder, and a timing device.
“In the box,” Maxwell wrote in his report of the incident, “was packed a small machine, my own invention, which was arranged, by means of a lever to explode a cap at a time indicated by a dial.” (3)
Maxwell is Granted Access to the City Point Wharf
Maxwell stood watching the wharves, he wrote, until he saw the captain of one barge leaving.
“This was my chance,” he wrote.
As Maxwell approached the wharf the guard who, he discovered “was German and could not speak a word of English,” hailed him. By signs and speaking in a broad Scotch accent, Maxwell indicated the captain of the barge had asked that he deliver a box and was allowed to pass.
The Horological Torpedo is Taken on Board the Barge
Approaching the barge itself he hailed a man on board. “The man took (the box) without question and carried it down while I went off,” Maxwell wrote. Maxwell then returned to his companion, and the two men “retired to a safe distance to witness the effect of our effort.” (4)
The Explosion and Damage at City Point
About an hour later, the bomb exploded. The damage was terrific.
The barge Maxwell had selected was loaded with 20,000 artillery shells and small arms ammunition.
43 people were killed in the wharf area and another 126 were injured, while the total number of casualties may have reached as many as 200.
Warehouses and shops were destroyed, barges sunk, and a card game between two Union officers was interrupted when a solid 12-lb. shot crashed into the bed in which they were playing.
A saddle from the neighboring barge sent flying by the explosion killed a lemonade vendor.
A musket later was found upright in the road a half-mile from the dock, “buried to the second band.” (5)
Immediately following the blast, Union officer Morris Scahff wrote, “From the top of the bluff there lay before ma staggering scene, a mass of overthrown buildings, their timbers tangled into almost impenetrable heaps. In the water were wrecked and sunken barges…The sky looked as it does in the fall of heavy snow flakes.” (6)
“Every part of the yard used as my headquarters is filled with splinters and fragments of shell,” Grant wrote in a telegram sent to General Henry Halleck shortly after the explosion.
City Point Wharf Rebuilt
Despite the damage, the operation did little to slow the Union. The wharves were rebuilt in less than two weeks and the effort against Petersburg and Richmond continued almost unabated.
Maxwell’s Involvement Comes to Light
At the time it was not known whether the explosion had been caused by sabotage or accident. All the men aboard the barge had been killed by the explosion and could shed no light on what had led up to the blast.
It wasn’t until after the war, however, that Maxwell’s involvement and the nature of the attack became known when a drawing of the torpedo and Maxwell’s report on the incident were found in the Confederate archives.
“There is one thing only that I regret,” Maxwell wrote in his report, “and that is, according to a report of the enemy, a party of ladies was killed.”
“Of course,” he wrote, “ we never intended anything of the kind.” (7)
References
- Foote, Shelby, The Civil War a Narrative: Red River to Appomattox, (New York: Random House, c. 1974), p. 543.
- Catton, Bruce, A Stillness at Appomattox, (New York: Pocket Books, c. 1953), p. 359.
- Stern, Philip Van Doren, Secret Missions of the Civil War, (Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, c. 1959), p. 234.
- Stern, op. cit., p. 234-5.
- Ibid., pp. 232-4.
- Ibid., p. 232.
- Ibid., pp. 234-5.
