The Iroquois Theater was the last of five experiences Iroquois manager Will J. Davis had with serious fires. His first was in 1865 at the tail end of the American civil war. At age twenty, as assistant payroll master assigned to the USS Blackhawk, he was on board when it caught fire and exploded. All but four of the crew were saved.

In 1862 Davis had enlisted as a landsman in the navy, under Captain Alvin Phinney on board the mortar schooner, USS Racer. The Racer was originally part of the North Atlantic squadron but in 1862 was moved to the Mississippi.

Davis became clerk to paymaster Charles H. Kirkendall, fellow former Elkhart, Indiana resident. When Kirkendall transferred to the USS Blackhawk, Davis went along.

The USS Blackhawk (sometimes spelled USS Black Hawk) began service as the USS New Uncle Sam (sometimes shortened to USS Uncle Sam). It was a large and luxurious double-side-wheel partly tinclad wood steamship built at new Albany, IN, in 1857. It weighed 902 tons, was 260 ft long, and had a 45.5 ft beam, and hold depth of 8 ft.

Prior to the Civil War, the ship ran between New Orleans, Louisville, and St. Louis under the captainship of A. R. Irwin. During the war, it was sometimes referred to as a floating palace. In 1862 it was General Grant's headquarters.

General Grant's only known war council took place on the New Uncle Sam in February 11, 1862. In March 1862, the New Uncle Sam was part of a flotilla of 95 steamboats with 27,000 men that steamed south on the Tennessee River to Fort Henry in St. Louis.

In March 1862, the New Uncle Sam was on its way up the Cumberland river when it ran into overhanging trees at the side of the river, knocking down the smokestacks. In November 1862, after repairs, it was purchased by the US Navy, converted to a gunship, and in December 1862 renamed the USS Blackhawk. (See Gideon Welles' memo below.) It was then equipped with four 32-pounder smoothbores, two 30-pounder Parrott rifles, one or two 12-pounder Parrot rifles, two Union repeating guns, and one B&R gun.

The dates just cited are consistently used in discussions of the Blackhawk but a famous Union war correspondent, Charles Carleton Coffin, who was on board the Blackhawk at the time, reported that Confederate General Simon Bolivar Buckner officially surrendered Fort Donelson to Ulysses S. Grant aboard the New Uncle Sam on February 17, 1862. Apparently, the ship was used by the Navy in February, before it was reconditioned and acquired by the Navy in November 1962. The ship's first commander was K. R. Breese.

The ship served as 1st Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter's and Acting Rear Admiral Samuel Phillips Lee's flagship during the war. This was when Will J. Davis served aboard the ship. Porter and Lee insisted on strict military decorum aboard ship, requiring dress uniform at all times and constant drilling. Reportedly Porter kept a horse aboard.  His quarters were described as luxurious, furnished with "rebel furniture."

On June 16, 1862, the USS Blackhawk transported nearly three hundred Confederate prisoners north from Pittsburg Landing in Tennessee to the Union prison at Alton, Illinois.

The ship participated in the Vicksburg battle of December 1862, the capture of Fort Hindman in Arkansas January 1863 (planned by General McClernand, general Sherman, and Porter, conducted by Porter while aboard the Ivy), the attack on Haines Bluff, Mississippi, April 1863, the siege of Vicksburg, May–July, 1863 and the Red River Expedition March–May, 1864.

During combat, Davis' job was to pass ammunition from the hold to the guns on the main deck.  For his participation in General Bank's Red River Cotton Campaign in April-May 1864 he was awarded a share of naval prize money for seized cotton.

See a handful of directives issued to Davis when he was serviing on the U.S.S. Racer and the U.S.S. Blackhawk for orders from Admiral Porter and others involving Cotton Campaign, promotions, etc.

USS Blackhawk burns in Cairo, Illinois

At the end of the war, on April 22 1865, at 10:40 am while docked on the Ohio River, the magazine (or coal oil) caught fire, and the ship exploded, sinking near Mound City, Illinois, just below the Navy Yard and three miles above Cairo, Illinois. The ammunition exploded and sent fire, smoke and shells high into the air. The vibration was felt throughout the city. Within minutes three streams of water were directed at the ship but the conflagration was too intense and Captain Charles A. Babcock ordered the men to abandon ship.

The Tempest, the Union's new flagship, helped save all but four of the 325-man crew. Afterward, admiral Lee said that if the explosion had happened at night, it was so sudden that instead of four lost there would have been only four saved.  Six months later the Peerless sank too upon running into the remains of the Blackhawk.

The squadron records and payroll were lost. Davis was called to Washington to testify in the investigation about the incident. He was honorably discharged October 1865.

After the Peerless and Huntsville ships hit the wreck and sank, the USS Blackhawk was raised and sold by Dalson Wrecking in St. Louis in 1867. In 1872 sixty-seven torpedoes from the Albert were used to break up a remaining hunk of the Blackhawk. They brought up two gun carriage axels, a 1,275-lb anchor, and 120' of chain.

Below are the names of a few men thought to have been among the Blackhawk's 234-man crew:

(Will J. Davis exchanged Christmas cards and correspondence with several of these men for the next fifty years):
Abraham B. Ackerman
C. B. Adams — Acting Second Assistant
A. H. Ahernes — Acting Master's Mate
Edward Alford — Acting Master
Henry Baker — Acting Master
B. B. Baker — Acting Master's Mate
D. A. Boies — Acting Master's Mate
J. C. Barr — Acting Ensign
Michael Bradley — Passed Assistant Surgeon
William Burr — First Class Boy
C. A. Calvert — Acting Master
Jacob W. Cassell — Acting Third Assistant
Frank L. Church — Marines Lieutenant
Noah Dean — Acting Carpenter
Dr. Robert T. Edes — surgeon
James A. Greer — Lieutenant Commander
John R. Hall — Acting Gunner
B. T. Howell — Acting Ensign
Frederick S. Johnson — Captain
J. A. Jones — Acting Ensign
C. H. Kirkendall — Acting Assistant Paymaster (Will J. Davis' boss and a fellow Elkhartan - who helped Davis get a job with the IRS after the war)
A. S. Ludlow — Acting Master's Mate (good friend of Davis for many decades after the war)
Alexander Mosely Pennock
Jan Niemann — Acting Master's Mate
J. B. Pratt — Acting Ensign
O.G. Richey — Acting First Assistant
W. B. Richey — Acting Third Assistant
Harriet Ruth — Nurse
William R. Sampson
George W. Walker — Acting Chief (good friend of Davis for decades after the war)

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