Dam No. 1 battle game: wading the Warwick under fire
A river dammed into flooded ponds, water waist deep and worse, and a foothold nobody came to support. Dam No. 1 is part of River Crossings in Civy War.
One scenario, playable from either side. Every battle runs five minutes on the clock against a Green, Regular or Veteran enemy: the attacker has to break the line before nightfall, the defender has to hold.
Dam No. 1
River Crossings
April 16, 1862 · 3 p.m.
As the Union, cross the Warwick at Dam No. 1 and take the works beyond it. Brooks's Vermont Brigade goes in: the 3rd Vermont wades the pond below the dam, the 4th presses the lower dam on the left and the 6th waits to follow, with Hancock's 5th Wisconsin and 6th Maine behind. Mott's, Ayres's, Wheeler's and Kennedy's batteries fire across the water. The dam is the only dry way over. Get across in strength, not by companies.
As the Confederacy, hold the rifle pits along the Warwick and throw back anyone who crosses. Howell Cobb's brigade is dug in behind the flooded pond: the 15th North Carolina at the water, the 16th Georgia and the 2nd Louisiana by the dam redoubt, Cobb's Georgia Legion and the 24th Georgia to the right, and the Troup Artillery in the works. G. T. Anderson's Georgians are close behind. If the Federals get a foothold, hit it at once.
The battle
In April 1862 McClellan's Army of the Potomac landed on the Virginia Peninsula and stopped in front of Yorktown. John Magruder's much smaller Confederate force held a line along the Warwick River, which he had dammed into a chain of flooded ponds. On April 16 General W. F. Smith found a weak spot at Dam No. 1, where the near bank was higher than the far one, and his guns spent the morning shelling the works across the water.
About three in the afternoon roughly 190 men of the 3rd Vermont waded the pond and drove the 15th North Carolina out of its rifle pits. They held there for most of an hour, calling for help that never came, while their cartridges got soaked. Colonel Robert McKinney of the 15th North Carolina was killed leading the first counterattack; then the 7th Georgia and Cobb's Legion drove the Vermonters back through the water. Late in the day the 6th Vermont tried again below the dam and was thrown back too.
Union losses were about 165, Confederate about 145. It was the only Union infantry attack on the Warwick line during the month-long siege. Afterward McClellan settled down to dig siege works, and Johnston slipped away from Yorktown in early May. Captain Samuel Pingree and fourteen-year-old drummer Julian Scott, who went back into the pond again and again to carry out the wounded, later received the Medal of Honor.
Free or paid
Paid: part of River Crossings, a one-time purchase that unlocks Dam No. 1, Fredericksburg, North Anna and Natural Bridge (Ball's Bluff, the first, is free). The map is Robert Knox Sneden's copy of the official map of the Union assault at Lee's Mills, made for General Heintzelman's Third Corps and now in the Library of Congress.
Fourteen battles, the Drill Field and the Field Manual are free. The Historical Campaigns, Grant's Campaigns, The Western Campaigns and River Crossings are optional one-time purchases that restore on every device signed in to the same Apple ID.