February 7–8, 1862 · Roanoke Island, North Carolina
Roanoke Island battle game: the road through the swamp
One road, one battery, and a swamp both sides believed no army could cross. Roanoke Island is one of the four Forgotten Fields in Civy War, and it is free.
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.
Roanoke Island
Free · Forgotten Fields
February 8, 1862 · 7 a.m.
As the Union, carry the three-gun battery across the causeway. Foster's brigade, with the 10th Connecticut in front and four Massachusetts regiments behind, holds the road under fire while Reno's regiments (the 21st Massachusetts, 51st New York, 9th New Jersey and 51st Pennsylvania) and Parke's, with Hawkins' Zouaves and the 4th Rhode Island, push through the swamp on either side.
As the Confederacy, hold the battery. General Wise lies sick at Nags Head and Colonel H. M. Shaw commands the 8th and 31st North Carolina, the Wise Legion's Virginians and the guns on the road north. The swamps guard your flanks, if they are as impassable as everyone says.
The battle
In early 1862 Ambrose Burnside led an expedition of soldiers and Navy gunboats into the sounds of North Carolina. Roanoke Island sat between Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds, and its forts and batteries were the key to both.
The Federals landed on the island and came north up its only road. The Confederate battery at the end of the causeway was thought safe because of the swamp around it. It was not. Reno's men struggled through on the left and Foster's on the right while the 10th Connecticut stood on the causeway under fire for hours; its colonel, Charles L. Russell, was killed. When the flanks closed in, Hawkins' Zouaves charged up the road and the battery fell.
By evening about 2,500 Confederates had surrendered, for some 260 Union losses. The victory gave the Union the sounds and a base behind Norfolk, a week before Fort Donelson, and made Burnside a national name. The 8th and 10th Connecticut went on with him to New Bern, and the 8th crossed Burnside's Bridge at Antietam that September.
Free or paid
Free. Roanoke Island is one of the Forgotten Fields, four lesser-known battles fought in part by Connecticut regiments, and all four are free to play with no purchase. It is played on Robert Knox Sneden's period plan of the battle, from the Library of Congress.
Thirteen battles, the Drill Field and the Field Manual are free. The Historical Campaigns, Grant's Campaigns and The Western Campaigns are optional one-time purchases that restore on every device signed in to the same Apple ID.