Charles R. Ellet
Union Army officer
Charles Rivers Ellet (June 1, 1843 – October 29, 1863) was an American military officer who served as a colonel in the Union Army during the American Civil War. He served in the United States Ram Fleet under his father Charles Ellet, Jr. and as commanding officer of the ram fleet as part of the Mississippi Marine Brigade under his uncle Alfred W. Ellet. He commanded the ram ships USS Queen of the West, USS Switzerland, USS Lancaster and USS Monarch during the brown-water navy battle for control of the Mississippi River and its tributaries as part of the Vicksburg Campaign from 1862 to 1863.
At only nineteen years of age, he was one of the youngest colonels in the Union Army. His daring runs of two different ram ships past the batteries at Vicksburg as well as operations on the Yazoo River won him praise from William T. Sherman and David Dixon Porter. However, he was criticized by Porter when his aggressive actions on the Red River led to the capture of the Queen of the West by Confederate forces.
Early life and education
Ellet was born on June 1, 1843 in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. He was the only son to the well-known civil engineer Charles Ellet Jr. In 1855, he traveled to Europe with his father and attended school in Paris for two years. He studied medicine at Georgetown University until the Civil War began.
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This entry incorporates text from “Charles R. Ellet” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.