The USS Pawnee was a warship? Well that can't be right, because OIFVeteran told me it was a "resupply" mission. Nobody would send a bunch of warships on a "resupply" mission, would they?
Why warships aren't very suitable for carrying cargo or supplies at all!
Are you sure it's a warship? What about the Cargo ships "Pocahontas", "Yankee", "Powhatan", and "Harriet Lane"? Surely those aren't warships too?
Why I can't believe someone would send warships instead of supply ships on a supply mission! Boy, those guys in Washington DC were just making all kinds of mistakes! They should have gotten someone else to run the shipyards, because you have to be some kind of fool to send warships on a cargo mission.
Maybe that's why it took so many of them to carry the cargo? If they had just sent ships designed for cargo, like "Star of the West", they might have only needed one.
At least the Baltic had those two hundred riflemen, and those hundreds of sailors to help them unload all that cargo they put on those warships.
:)
Warships were necessary because on the last resupply effort to fort Sumter by the Star of the West. She was fired on by a Confederate battery at the entrance to Charleston harbor.