3©iift(£rM^'. 
 
 REP^OPtT 
 
 FROM THE 
 
 JOINT SELECT COMMITTEE, 
 
 To investigate the management of the Navy Department. 
 
 The Joint Select Committee of the Senate and House of Represent- 
 atives, " appointed to investigate the administration of the Navy 
 Department, under its present head, with power to send for persons 
 and papers, and to report the result of said investigation to the tw(t 
 Houses, respectively," ask leave to rep^rt: 
 
 That, in accordance with the instructions contained in the resolution 
 for their appointment, they huve called before them many persons en- 
 gaged in the naval and military service, as contractors and em- 
 ployees, as well as others in civil life, supposed to have knowledge of 
 the matters to be inveitigated, and have examined many papers among 
 the archives of the Navy Department, in order to inform themselves 
 of the manner in which the department has hern administered. They 
 have sought information wherever they supposed it could be found, 
 and have invited it from all who could give ir. The largo number of 
 witmesses and voluminous records examined, proiractoi their sittings 
 until near ihe close cf the last session of Congress, when they found 
 it necessary to print the testimony, that each meuiber might review it 
 before making a report, and that the two Houses vnight he enable;! to 
 decide whether the committee had formed a ju-^t judgment, and at- 
 tained a proper conclusion. All the testimony deemed material and 
 proper to be published v.ill be found in a volume of nearly five hun- 
 dred pages, printed during the last recess of Congress, which they 
 herewitli submit as part of this report. The various laws relating to 
 the navy, the reports of the Secretary, (which have been confiden- 
 tially communicated to Congress.) and the rules and orders given by 
 him, although coming under the review of the committee, they did 
 not think it necessary "r proper to j)rint. 
 
 The committee confined their examination to the doniestic operations 
 of the Navy Department. They intended to investigate its foreign 
 operations also, and enquire who were sent as agents ro foreign coun- 
 
t; - wcic ^ivi'U liu'ui. >siiat 
 
 li hoy encountered, and wliat 
 
 V . ' Hut the Secretary and 
 
 r . tiic public interest and the 
 
 ;: '0 furniah such information, as its pub- 
 
 ' f»ur Pcrv;- - ' " d, arrest their labors, 
 
 us: an iniltee. concurring in 
 
 >. U 16 due, in this cr>nnec- 
 
 Novy offered to send before 
 
 who had charge of the foreign contracts, 
 
 ..v< relating to tliem, who could inform us. 
 
 r character and resulti*, and that he oflerod all 
 
 ' ' • 'icility for obtaining it he 
 
 r I ; -; of the navy, whenever 
 
 r:ili« nu cuminille«*. 
 
 ^' ir in the printed testimony, herewith submitted, that 
 
 have in«|uire<l into everything relating to the materials 
 .1111 ' ■ ns of the navy within the Confederate States ; the 
 
 mfntT^ ru. r'fl for building a navy ; the eftorts to purchase or 
 
 ^• ':;ince and ordnanre stores ; the number 
 
 av ; : or built, of whom purchased or by 
 
 whom buiif, the contracts for them and how complied with ; the con- 
 tracts for war vessels now pending ; the vessels owned by the 
 Government when the Navy Department was organized, and the num- 
 b' . . ^^^^^. ^^^.j^j,,j y^y jj. ji^p naval defences of the Mississippi 
 
 vi dally of New Orleans, of the Cumberland, Tennessee 
 
 and J:im<s rivers, an<l of the city of Norfolk ; the circumstances 
 '• ' i with the dcistruction of the A'^irginia, the Louisiana, the 
 i, the Arkansas, and other gunboats; the causes of our 
 1' isters and of the failure of our navy to meet the public 
 
 ( lis. 
 
 TIh- iiHuuiittee do not deem it necessary to review all the facts 
 K'l iiii.g to these topics or to express their conclusion upon each of 
 as the testimony is herewith presented and may bo read by all 
 u'sire the information it furnishes. They think they wilt dis- 
 (.• their duty by expressing the general result of their inve^tiga- 
 liwii:.. They arc gratified that they can state that, after long, patient 
 and careful investigation, they have found nothing in the administra- 
 tion of the Navy Department that justifies any censure of Mr. 
 Mallory. 
 
 Mr Mallory assumed the oftico of Secretary of the Nrvy at the 
 beginning of the Provisional Ciovernment and organized its Navy 
 Department, It then had no navy, no vessels of war, and, indeed, 
 not a vessel of any kind. There were but two navy yards in the 
 (Confederate States, and but little ship timber in them. We had but 
 a small number of ship-wrights or of persons possessing the skill or 
 handicraft necessary to the construction of vessels of war. We had 
 but few seamen, and no commercial school for training seamen. We 
 were especially deficient in the machinery for propelling steam ves- 
 sels and in tlie means for its construction. We had not the iron, the 
 
 \ 
 
P 
 
 iron works, tlie foundries or rolling-mill>;, the work shops or the ^^^ 
 skilled workmen, essential to the completion of formidable ships of 
 war. But seven steam war vessels had been built in the States now 
 forming the Confederac J since the war of 1812. Engines for but 
 two of these were contracted for in these States, the lieavy forgings 
 of which were necessarily contracted for elsewhere. The entire raa- 
 chinerv for such vessels had not been constructed in these States. 
 Our means and resources for building a navy were so small and 
 inconsiderable compared with the naval power and resources of the 
 enemy, that many patriotic men doubted the wisdom of an attempt to 
 construct a navy. 
 
 While our moans of building huUh., engines and machinery, and of 
 equipping and manning efficient sh'ps of war were thus limited, the 
 immediate and hourly demands upon all the workshops of the country 
 for ordnance and ordnance stores reduced them still more. Thus the 
 shops at Norfolk navy-yard, after they came under the control of the 
 Secretary of the Navy, were largely* engaged in the manufacture of 
 gun-carriages, shot, shell, kc, for the army, and in mounting and 
 supplying guns. 
 
 We have had to labor under the most untoward and embarrassing 
 circumstances. Men have been employed as ship-wrights who had 
 never served an apprenticeship, or budt a vessel, or even worked on 
 one, because skill and experience could not be commanded. All 
 the labor and materials requisite to complete and equip a .. ar vessel, 
 could not be commanded at any one point of the Confederacy ; but 
 the machinery propelling it, or some part of it, or the ordnance or 
 ordnance stores, had to be transported to the various and distant 
 points, where the hulls were being built. Thus in the construction 
 of the Mississippi at New Orleans, the labor, skill and resources of 
 different parts of the Confederacy were necessarily invoked; her iron 
 was rolled at Atlanta, portions of her machinery and equipments were 
 made at Norfolk, whi!e the mam shaft and ordnance and ordnance 
 stores were made at Richmond. 
 
 In order to sheath the hulls of gun-boats, we ha\e been obliged to 
 use such scrap iron, old and rejected sugar mills, and other discarded 
 iron as could he gathered up ; and, to propel them have been con- 
 strained to use the engines and boilers of dilapidated steamboats. 
 Hence it has happened that some of our gun-boat« have proven inef- 
 ficient, because of the imperfection of their machinery and sheathing. 
 
 Besides the deficiencies and difliculties, we have been obstructed in 
 our operations by the invasions of the enemy, whereby we not only 
 lost our navy yards, and much of their machinery and ship timber, 
 but were compelled to destroy gun-boats quite completed, and steam- 
 boats whose machinery might have served us, to prevent them frofli 
 being captured by the enemy. Hence the destruction of the Vir- 
 ginia. Louisiana, Mississippi,* fthe vessels in Lake Tonchartrain, 
 Bayou St. John, the Yazoo and Mississippi rivers, and elsewhere.) 
 
 l3ut, had we been able to command all the worshops and material, 
 
 * Note. — Some of the committee think the lilissisaippi was lost by want of energy and 
 Jiligence of officer* of the navy at New Orleans. 
 
the arii/ans and seamen, requisite to construct a navy equal in size to 
 that of our enemy, still we should have begun the war upon the most 
 unequal terms. The enemy had a powerful navy to begin with ; we 
 had none. Under the United States Government the southern States 
 had mad(^ great and generous sacrifices to promote the maratime in- 
 terest of the North, while the great resources of naval wealth and 
 power Vy-ere ignored ; and when we entered upon our struggle for in- 
 dependence, we found ourselves confronted, and our waters invaded 
 by a powerful navy, which had, with our aid, been fostered and de- 
 •velcped for over sixty years, and which, in addition to smaller vessels, 
 readily converted to war uses, from a great commercial marine, com- 
 prised thirty-s?ven steamships, many of them the most formidable on the 
 ocean, and thirty-seven sailing vessels, with an aggregate of two thou- 
 sand one hundred seventy-eight heavy guns, all under the guidance 
 of nava} men and seamen v/hose professional attainments and nautical 
 skill were unsurpassed. The enemy's vast naval resources, great 
 commercial school for seamen, numerous artizans and vast workshops 
 enabled him to augment thisformible force with a rapidity unequalled 
 in naval history', while the naval resources of the world were also 
 opened to him. It would hive required many years, even under the 
 most favorable circumstances, for us to have built and equipped as 
 many and such vessels as the enemy began the war with. 
 
 The committee make these observations merely in justice to the 
 Secretary of the Navy, but to correct the public judgment, which 
 has been founded, at least in part, upon an exaggerated estimation of 
 our means, or undeserved diaestimation or of the Secretary or of naval 
 officers or of contractors with the department. The testimony does 
 not furnish any sufficient grounds for imputing, the short-comings, 
 failures and disasters of our navy to the Secretary. On the contrary, 
 it shows that he has been vigilant, industrious and energetic, in era- 
 ])loying the means within his power to purchase and to build a navy. 
 One of hi.^ first acts, after entering upon his duties, was to call the 
 attention of Congress. to the rapid and radical changes in naval war- 
 fare which had taken place within a few years, in displacing the 
 ** wooden walls" that had been lelied on for attack or defence, with 
 gigantic iron-clads He early took means for constructing an iron- 
 clad navy. An officer was sent throughout the Confederate States to 
 examine and report, the means of manufacturing and preparing iron 
 armor and heavy machinery. Others were sent to the United States, 
 to Canadrf and Europe, to purchase or build suitable vessels for imme- 
 diate use. The building of armored vessels was begun in the hope 
 of compensating, by their individual strength, for ©ur great infe- 
 riority to the enemy in the number of war vessels, and of seamen 
 and marines. The time, labor and material necessary 1o construct a 
 single heavy armored vessel may be judged of from the following ex- 
 ample. The Merrimac, one of the ships sunk and partially de- 
 stroyed by the enemy on abandoning Norfolk, was raised, and al- 
 though the main part of the hull and the boilers and material parts of 
 the machinery were uninjured, eight months of uninterrupted labor 
 of as many workmen as could be advantageously be employed, 
 
aided by the workshops of Richmond, were necessary to get 
 her in fitting condition as an iron -chid. Work upon her, nnder 
 orders of the navy department, was commenced on the 11th of 
 July, 1861, and she foui^ht the memorable battle of Hampton Roads — 
 a battle which at once revolutiouizeil naval warfare — on the 18th of 
 March of 1862, before she was entirely completed. And yet Con- 
 structor Porter says : '* The yard at Norfolk was woti^ed up to its 
 fullest capacity. Everything was properly organ 'zd, and the oncers 
 were constantly on the spot directing ope.ati mm «nd [lUshing forward 
 the work. The Secretar) of the Nav\ , in o'der to stimulate ojteration^, 
 offered inducements, by way of additionjil piy or rv.*w.irds to wriic arter 
 dark and on Sundays. In short. .he offeii'd <'»ery encourngeraen that 
 was calculated to excite them to more zeal .iud energy. Bv letters and 
 by telegrams he urge<l the officers of the navy at New Orleans and 
 other important points to spare neither men nor money, and r,o work 
 day and night in completing gunboats, preparing ordnance stores, and 
 getting ready to attack or to meet the enemy. The credit of the Navy 
 Department, at New Orleans, was impaired for a short time for the want 
 of money to pay the employees ; but this is not imputable to Mr. Mallory. 
 His requisitions were made upon the treasury in due time to have sup- 
 plied all just demands against the department. The causes of this 
 financial embrassment are explained in the correspondence between 
 himself and the Secretary of the Treasury, which is embodied in the 
 testimony. It does not appear by the testiqiony that work on any vessel, 
 or for the navy, at any time or place, was delayed or suspended by 
 the default of the Secretary of the Navy, He has ordered courts of 
 inquiry in every instance where there was probable cause for attribut- 
 ing our defeat or disaster to the deficiency or delinquency of an officer 
 of the navy. He has invited contracts for building gunboats wherever 
 they could be soonest and best built, and most advantageously employed. 
 His contracts seems to have been judicious, and to have been properly 
 enforced. Contractors have, in some cases, failed to complete their 
 work within the time stipulated, whereby tue expectations of the Sec- 
 retary have been disappointed and his plans defeated. But, on inquiry, 
 it has been shown that they failed to comply with their engagements 
 in consequence of unforeseen causes beyond their control, and not 
 through any infidelity or want of diligence 
 
 Inasmuch as there has been much misrepresentation and crimiiia- 
 tion of the Secretary of the Navy, and of the Messrs. Tift, because 
 of their failure to complete and to save the Mississippi, it is but 
 sheer justice to say, that these gentlemen are not related by blood or 
 marriage, in any degree, to Mr. Mallory ; that they undertook to con- 
 struct their vesj'el without pecuniary reward, and prosecuted the work 
 on it with rare industry and energy and with extraordinary dispatch; 
 that their loyalty, patriotism and integrity, are unquestionable; and 
 that neither they nor the Secretary are censurable for the incomplete- 
 ness of that vessel when the enemy reached New Orleans, or for its 
 destruction. 
 
 Their operations were delayed from a want of iron which the Navy 
 Department could not possibly supply as fast as it was demanded. In 
 
deed, neither the Government nor the people of the Confederacy have 
 been able to meet and satisfy the great demands of the army and navv 
 for iron. The Navy Department has, for a long time past, employed 
 agents in many parts of the count.iy, to gather scrap iron in cities 
 and on plantations, to relieve, in some measure, its necessities. 
 
 The reports of the Secretary of the Navy have not been published, 
 from motives'* of sound policy, and hence the operations of that 
 department are not generally known. It is not dee ued proper now 
 to publish all the facts which should be presented in order to a full 
 knowledge and just appreciation of the management of the Navy 
 Department. But it is not improper to state, that the departmeni;. 
 has elected a powder mill, which supplies all the powder required by 
 our navy ; two engine boilers and machine shops, and fine ordnance 
 work shops. It has established eighteen yards for building war 
 vessels, and a rope-w;ilk, making all cordage, from a rope yarn 
 to a nine inch cable, and capable of turning out eight thousand per 
 month. 
 
 Of vessels not iron clad, the department has purchased and other- 
 wise acquired and converted to war vessels, 44. 
 
 Has built and completed as war vessels, 12. 
 
 Has partially constructed and destroyed to save from the enemy, 
 10. 
 
 And has now under construction, 0. 
 
 Of iron-clad vessels, it has completed and has now in commission, 
 14. 
 
 Has completed and destroyed, or lost by capture, 4. 
 
 Has in progress of construction and in various stages of forward- 
 ness, 20. 
 
 It has, also, one iron-clad floating battery presented to the Confed- 
 erate States by the ladies of Georgia ; and one iron-clad ram par- 
 tially completed and turned over to the Confederacy by the State of 
 Alabama. 
 
 Taking into consideration the poverty of our means and the formi- 
 dable naval power and boundless resources of our enemy at the begin- 
 ning of this war, our people have no sufficient cause for shame or 
 discouragement in the operations of our navy. What ha? been and 
 is being done to resist the enemy on the waters of our rivers and on 
 the sea, should inspive confidence and excite strong hope that our navy 
 will yet prove an efficient and worthy ally of our noble artnies in 
 achieving our independence. It has already won the admiration 
 and applause of neutial nations for its gallant and glorious achieve- 
 ments. And if we should succeed in getting into service the war 
 vessels completed and in progress of construction, the committee 
 believe that our naval triumphs will yet rival the heroic and brilliant 
 achievements of our land forces. 
 
 Since the last session of Congress, tme of the members of this com- 
 mittee on the part of the Senate, the Hon. R. L. Y. Peyton, has died; 
 and, as the testimony had been taken before his death, it was not 
 deemed necessary or proper to ask the appointment of another Senator 
 
to till his place. This will explain why this report is signed by only 
 
 four Senators. 
 
 E. BARKSDALE, 
 JAMES LYONS. 
 
 Reserving my jutlgment upon mucli of the general course of 
 reasoning adopted in the report, I desire to express my full concur- 
 rence in the conclusion arrived at favorable to the Secretary of the 
 Navv. 
 
 WM. W. BOYCE, 
 
 On the part of the House. 
 
 C. C. CLAY, JR.. CfMirmmi, 
 THOS. J. SEMMES, 
 A. E. MAXWELL, 
 JAMES PIIELAN.