John Smith

He Threw a Holystone Into an Enemy Gunport

John Smith was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1831. Little is securely documented about his early life, but during the American Civil War he entered the United States Navy and became one of the sailors whose courage in the Battle of Mobile Bay earned the Medal of Honor.

Smith served aboard USS Lackawanna, a screw sloop-of-war commissioned during the Civil War and assigned to operations against the Confederacy. By August 1864, Lackawanna had joined Rear Admiral David G. Farragut’s West Gulf Blockading Squadron for an assault on one of the most heavily defended Confederate ports remaining on the Gulf Coast.

Aboard the ship, Smith held the rating of Captain of the Forecastle and served as first captain of a gun. His duties placed him directly within the fighting machinery of the warship, where discipline, speed, and accuracy were essential during close naval combat.

His defining action came on August 5, 1864, during the Battle of Mobile Bay.

Mobile Bay was protected by Confederate forts, naval vessels, and fields of underwater mines then commonly called torpedoes. Fort Morgan dominated the entrance, while Confederate warships inside the bay included the powerful ironclad CSS Tennessee.

Farragut’s fleet had to pass through this dangerous defensive system before it could challenge the Confederate naval force.

The battle became deadly almost immediately.

The Union monitor USS Tecumseh struck a mine and sank rapidly, taking many of her crew with her. Despite the disaster, the remaining Union ships continued into the bay under fire from the Confederate defenses.

USS Lackawanna pressed forward with the fleet.

Smith remained at his battle station as the ship exchanged fire with the enemy and became involved in the struggle against CSS Tennessee.

Tennessee was heavily armored and difficult to damage with conventional naval gunfire. Union ships closed the distance, firing repeatedly and attempting to ram the Confederate ironclad.

During the close-range engagement, Lackawanna came so near Tennessee that Smith could no longer depress his gun sufficiently to fire effectively into the enemy vessel.

What happened next became one of the most unusual episodes preserved in a Civil War Medal of Honor citation.

With the vessels fighting at extremely close quarters, a Confederate sailor reportedly directed insulting language toward Lackawanna’s crew.

Unable to bring his gun properly to bear, Smith seized a hand holystone—a piece of sandstone normally used by sailors to scrub and smooth a wooden deck—and hurled it through one of Tennessee’s gunports.

The improvised act captured the extraordinary closeness and intensity of the engagement. This was no distant exchange of naval artillery. The ships were fighting at ranges so short that individual sailors could see and react to one another across the gap.

Smith then continued performing his combat duties as the battle raged around him.

USS Lackawanna repeatedly engaged Tennessee along with other vessels of Farragut’s fleet. The Confederate ironclad was battered, surrounded, and eventually forced to surrender.

The capture of Tennessee helped secure the Union victory at Mobile Bay.

The strategic consequences were significant. Although the city of Mobile itself remained under Confederate control until 1865, Union possession of the bay effectively closed one of the Confederacy’s most important remaining Gulf ports to blockade-running traffic and further tightened the naval blockade.

For John Smith, the battle also brought the highest military recognition the United States could bestow.

On December 31, 1864, his conduct at Mobile Bay was recognized with the Medal of Honor under General Order No. 45.

The Navy Medal of Honor had been established during the Civil War to recognize extraordinary conduct by sailors and Marines. Smith joined a remarkable group of USS Lackawanna crewmen and other sailors from Farragut’s fleet whose actions during the battle were formally honored.

His Medal of Honor carried no additional clasp, star, or device.

Smith’s wider Union naval service was also represented by the Navy Civil War Campaign Medal. That decoration commemorated qualifying service by Navy and Marine Corps personnel during the conflict.

For Smith, the Civil War Campaign Medal represented his broader wartime service, while the Medal of Honor was specifically connected to his conduct aboard USS Lackawanna on August 5, 1864.

His story is especially important to distinguish from that of another sailor named John Smith who also received the Medal of Honor at Mobile Bay on the same day.

That other recipient served aboard USS Richmond.

The John Smith honored here was the Captain of the Forecastle aboard USS Lackawanna—the sailor whose citation preserved the remarkable moment when the ships fought at such close range that he hurled a holystone through an enemy gunport.

The surviving record of Smith’s later life is limited. Unlike some Medal of Honor recipients whose postwar careers were extensively documented, much of his life after the Civil War remains uncertain.

What is firmly preserved is his conduct at Mobile Bay.

On August 5, 1864, USS Lackawanna entered one of the Civil War’s most dangerous naval battles.

Around Smith were heavy guns, armored ships, Confederate batteries, smoke, casualties, and the constant threat of underwater mines.

When his ship closed with CSS Tennessee, the distance between the two vessels became so small that his gun could no longer be properly aimed downward.

Smith did not leave his station.

Instead, in one of the battle’s most memorable moments, he grabbed a sailor’s holystone and threw it through the Confederate ironclad’s gunport before continuing the fight.

For his courage and conduct during the Battle of Mobile Bay, John Smith received the Medal of Honor and secured a distinctive place in the history of the United States Navy.