Henry Shutes

A Shell Hit the Magazine—He Saved the Ship

Henry Shutes was born in 1804 in Baltimore, Maryland. Unlike many Civil War Medal of Honor recipients, he was already an experienced middle-aged mariner by the time the conflict began. A surviving enlistment record from 1858 credited him with approximately twenty-two years of previous maritime experience, showing that the sea had been part of his working life long before the United States descended into civil war.

Shutes entered United States Navy service at an age when many sailors were approaching the end of their careers. His extensive experience gave him the practical seamanship skills that the rapidly expanding Navy urgently needed. During the Civil War, thousands of inexperienced recruits entered naval service, making veteran mariners especially valuable aboard ships expected to operate in dangerous coastal waters, rivers, and blockade stations.

His early documented wartime assignment was aboard USS Don, where he served as Gunner’s Mate. The position carried substantial responsibility. A Gunner’s Mate helped maintain the ship’s artillery, ammunition, gun equipment, and related fighting gear. During combat, his knowledge of naval weapons and disciplined handling of ammunition could directly affect both the effectiveness and safety of the ship.

Shutes developed a reputation for outstanding seamanship while aboard Don. He later transferred to USS Wissahickon, where he served as Captain of the Forecastle. Despite the word “Captain” in the title, this was an experienced enlisted rating rather than the commissioned rank of a ship’s commanding officer.

The Captain of the Forecastle supervised sailors working in the forward portion of the vessel and was expected to possess extensive practical knowledge of seamanship, deck operations, anchors, lines, rigging, and shipboard discipline. For an experienced mariner such as Shutes, the position reflected years of accumulated knowledge at sea.

USS Wissahickon was a steam-powered Union gunboat built during the rapid naval expansion of the Civil War. The vessel became involved in important operations along the Gulf Coast and later the Atlantic coast. For Shutes, the ship would become the setting for two separate combat actions ultimately recognized by a single Medal of Honor.

The first occurred during the Union campaign against New Orleans in April 1862.

New Orleans was one of the Confederacy’s most important cities and commercial ports. Control of the lower Mississippi River was strategically vital to both sides. The principal naval defenses protecting the approach to the city included Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip, positioned along the Mississippi River below New Orleans.

Union naval commander David G. Farragut developed an aggressive plan to move his fleet directly past the forts rather than wait indefinitely for bombardment to destroy them.

During the early hours of April 24, 1862, the Union fleet began its dangerous movement upriver.

Confederate artillery opened fire as the ships attempted to pass the forts in darkness. The river became filled with smoke, flashes from heavy guns, burning material, obstacles, and the movement of warships attempting to maintain formation under fire.

USS Wissahickon took part in the operation with Henry Shutes serving aboard.

As Captain of the Forecastle, Shutes performed his duties with the skill expected from an experienced sailor. His later Medal of Honor citation specifically recognized his skill and courage during the battle below New Orleans on April 24 and 25.

The operation succeeded.

Farragut’s ships forced their way past Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip and continued toward New Orleans. Without an effective naval force capable of stopping Farragut, the city became untenable and soon fell under Union control. The forts subsequently surrendered.

The capture of New Orleans represented one of the most important early Union victories of the war. It removed a major Confederate port, strengthened Federal control of the Mississippi, and demonstrated the effectiveness of aggressive naval operations against heavily defended positions.

Shutes survived the battle and continued serving aboard Wissahickon.

His second and even more dramatic Medal of Honor action occurred the following year on the coast of Georgia.

By early 1863, Wissahickon was participating in Union operations against Fort McAllister on the Ogeechee River, south of Savannah. The Confederate fort protected approaches to the region and presented a persistent challenge to the Union blockade.

The Ogeechee River created difficult conditions for attacking ships. Its confined waters limited maneuverability, while Confederate artillery crews inside Fort McAllister could fire on Union vessels from protected earthworks.

On February 27, 1863, Wissahickon entered another engagement with the fort.

Confederate artillery began firing on the Union gunboat.

One of the shots struck Wissahickon below the waterline.

The projectile penetrated the hull and entered one of the most dangerous places it possibly could have reached: the powder magazine.

A nineteenth-century warship’s magazine contained the powder required to fire its guns. If fire or sparks ignited the stored powder, the resulting explosion could destroy the vessel almost instantly, killing large numbers of the crew.

The situation aboard Wissahickon therefore became a potential catastrophe.

The enemy had not merely damaged the ship.

A Confederate projectile had entered the compartment containing the explosives that powered its entire battery.

Henry Shutes reacted immediately.

His Medal of Honor citation later emphasized his “presence of mind and prompt action.” Rather than panic or abandon the threatened compartment, Shutes acted to protect the powder and prevent the ship from being destroyed.

A later account of the incident described Shutes shutting himself inside the magazine while water was used to saturate the endangered area and prevent ignition. Whether viewed from the perspective of seamanship or personal survival, the danger was extraordinary. If the powder exploded, the magazine would become the center of the destruction.

Shutes understood that risk.

He acted anyway.

His actions materially contributed to protecting the powder supply and preserving USS Wissahickon.

The difference between success and disaster may have been measured in seconds. A delayed reaction around exposed powder could have transformed a damaging artillery hit into the destruction of the entire gunboat.

Shutes’s years of maritime and naval experience were crucial at that moment. Experience taught sailors how dangerous powder magazines were and how rapidly an emergency had to be controlled. Courage allowed Shutes to apply that knowledge while the vessel remained under enemy fire.

This combination of professional competence and personal bravery became the central reason his conduct was considered extraordinary.

The following day, Union naval forces continued operations around Fort McAllister. USS Wissahickon participated with other vessels in action associated with the destruction of the grounded Confederate blockade runner Rattlesnake, formerly known as CSS Nashville.

The broader campaign demonstrated the continuing importance of the Union blockade. Confederate ports depended heavily on ships capable of carrying military supplies through Federal naval lines, and destroying blockade runners directly weakened the Confederacy’s access to overseas resources.

For Shutes, however, the defining Fort McAllister moment had already occurred inside Wissahickon’s threatened magazine.

A Confederate shell had reached the powder.

The survival of the ship depended upon immediate action.

Shutes provided it.

His two distinguished combat episodes—New Orleans in April 1862 and Fort McAllister in February 1863—were eventually combined into one Medal of Honor recognition.

The Medal of Honor itself was still a new decoration during Shutes’s service. Congress had authorized the Navy Medal of Honor on December 21, 1861, making it the earliest authorized version of what would eventually become the highest military decoration of the United States.

The Civil War Navy did not possess the extensive hierarchy of individual valor awards familiar from later American conflicts. The Navy Cross and many other later decorations did not yet exist. The Medal of Honor therefore served as the principal national award for enlisted sailors and Marines whose conduct reached an exceptional level.

Shutes’s case illustrates the broad nature of early Medal of Honor recognition.

His decoration did not recognize only one spectacular second of combat.

It acknowledged a record of distinguished service during two separate major engagements.

At New Orleans, he performed his duties with skill and courage while Farragut’s fleet forced its way through Confederate defenses.

At Fort McAllister, his prompt reaction after a projectile penetrated the powder magazine helped prevent a potentially catastrophic explosion and contributed directly to the safety of the ship.

On January 15, 1866, after the Civil War had ended, Shutes’s Medal of Honor recognition was formally recorded through Navy General Order No. 71.

For the historical database, his verified decoration is represented as Medal of Honor 1862–1912 Navy — 1866.

The year 1866 represents the formal award record.

His recognized combat actions occurred earlier: April 24–25, 1862, below New Orleans, and February 27, 1863, at Fort McAllister.

Shutes received one Medal of Honor.

The fact that two separate actions were included in his citation does not mean that he received two medals. Both episodes were recognized by the same decoration.

No additional star, clasp, bar, or other device has been verified with his Medal of Honor.

His final verified decoration therefore remains Medal of Honor 1862–1912 Navy — 1866 — no device or clasp.

Another remarkable feature of Shutes’s story was his age.

Born in 1804, he was approximately fifty-seven or fifty-eight years old during the actions for which he was recognized. This made him exceptionally old compared with most Civil War combatants and has led to his recognition as the oldest Medal of Honor recipient associated with Civil War actions.

His age makes the Fort McAllister episode even more striking.

Shutes was not an inexperienced young sailor reacting instinctively to his first battle.

He was a veteran mariner with decades of experience who recognized exactly how dangerous a shell inside a powder magazine could be.

He understood what might happen.

And he deliberately acted to prevent it.

After the war, Shutes returned to civilian life. Reliable records preserve far more about his maritime and military service than they do about the details of his postwar occupation and family life. His identity therefore remains most firmly connected with the Navy and the actions for which he received the Medal of Honor.

He lived for more than two decades after the Civil War.

During those years, the United States Navy changed dramatically. The wooden steam gunboats and sail-assisted vessels of Shutes’s generation gradually gave way to new technologies and eventually to the development of a modern steel fleet.

Shutes belonged to an earlier naval world—a world of heavy muzzle-loading guns, steam engines combined with traditional seamanship, wooden hulls, rigging, powder magazines, and battles fought at relatively close range against forts and enemy vessels.

Henry Shutes died on September 10, 1889.

He was approximately eighty-four or eighty-five years old.

He was buried in the Naval Plot at Mount Moriah Cemetery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where his grave remains associated with his Medal of Honor service.

His life stretched across an extraordinary period of American maritime history.

He was born when the United States Navy was still a small force of sailing warships.

He accumulated decades of maritime experience.

He entered documented Navy service before the Civil War.

He served as Gunner’s Mate aboard USS Don.

He became Captain of the Forecastle aboard USS Wissahickon.

He fought during Farragut’s breakthrough below New Orleans.

And at Fort McAllister, when an enemy shell penetrated his ship and entered the powder magazine, his quick action helped prevent the vessel from becoming an exploding tomb for its crew.

That final image best captures his military legacy.

The shell had already reached the magazine.

The danger was no longer outside the ship.

It was inside the compartment containing the powder.

Henry Shutes did not run from it.

He acted.

His final verified decoration remains Medal of Honor 1862–1912 Navy — 1866 — no device or clasp.

The medal preserved two separate chapters of his courage, but the most dramatic remains the moment at Fort McAllister when a Confederate shell threatened the powder magazine and an aging veteran sailor placed himself between disaster and the survival of his ship.