Monday October 22nd, we got our props back on and were able to do a quick sea trial on Lake Pickwick. Everything ran great, so our propeller tune-up was well worth it. We were back at the dock before noon so I made some corn bread for docktails with friends later and Keith had someone from the service department looking at our second water chiller (the heat and A/C unit). It had been acting up a bit.
By 2:00 PM we had the marina courtesy car and were headed to Shiloh Battlefield in Shiloh, TN. The area around Shiloh and into Corinth, TN was a strategic crossroads for the western Confederate railroads coming between Memphis and Charleston and Mobile and Ohio. Confederate Supreme Commander Gen. Albert S. Johnston began concentrating troops in the Corinth, TN area in February of 1862 to protect this railroad intersection. About the same time Gen. Ulysses S. Grant positioned his Army of the Tennessee just 22 miles north of Corinth at Shiloh. He planned to wait until Gen. Don Carlos Buell arrived with his Army of the Ohio and together they would attack the Confederate forces at Corinth. Gen. Johnston however, marched north with his 30,000 soldiers to engage Grant's Union forces before the additional troops from Ohio arrived. On Sunday morning April 6, 1862 Johnston attacked the forward Union camps at Shiloh Church. At mid day Gen. Johnston was struck by a stray bullet in the right leg and bled to death. This left Gen. Pierre G.T. Beauregard in command of the Confederate troops. As darkness fell that evening both sides had dug in and the fighting ended for the night. The Confederate troops pushed the Union forces back and thought they were in good position to drive the Union forces out the next day.
Overnight the reinforcements of Gen. Buell arrived unbeknownst to the Confederates. On the morning of April 7th the fighting began again, however the Confederates were no match for the now combined armies of both Grant and Buell which numbered some 54,000 men. Outnumbered and exhausted they were forced to retreat back to Corinth. The combined cost to both sides during the two days of fighting was 23,746 men killed, wounded, or missing. It was more important for the Union to control the region than decimate the Confederate troops retreating to Corinth so they did not immediately pursue them. By May, the Union had entrenched 3 armies within cannon range of the strategic crossroads at Corinth, and Gen. Beauregard withdrew south to Tupelo, MS; abandoning the most viable east-west railroad communications in the western Confederacy.
Some of the many Monuments on the Battlefield in Shiloh
Pengi on a Cannon
The national Cemetery on Site
Our drive around the battlefield and the movie about the battle that was shown at the visitors center was really exceptional. We wished we had a little more time to spend at the national park, but since we had a late start; we had to get the car back to the marina.
The plan is to leave Tuesday morning and continue heading south down the Tenn-Tom Waterway.
We are technically on Pickwick Lake and this is the northern start of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway (the Tenn-Tom). This 253 mile long, man-made waterway is not well known except by people living around the area or boaters and tow/commercial traffic that use it. The Tenn-Tom Waterway however is quite interesting in its history. Back as early as the 1700s, French fur traders wanted a waterway to connect the Tennessee River at Pickwick Lake with the Tombigbee River at Demopolis, AL. It took well over 200 years and many different proposals before the project was approved by Congress and funded. Construction was begun in 1972 and after nearly 2 billion dollars the waterway was finally completed in 1985. The project moved more earth than was moved in the construction of the Panama Canal and it shortened the trip for vessels going from ports such as Pensacola, FL to Chattanooga, TN by 720 miles. It employed over 5,000 people during its construction and continues to provide jobs to the region.
We are expecting to be on The Tenn-Tom waterway through the remainder of October arriving in Demopolis, AL around the 1st of November.
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