Charles Ellet, Jr.

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Charles Ellet, Jr. (1 January 1810 – 21 June 1862) was a civil engineer and a colonel during the American Civil War, mortally wounded at the Battle of Memphis.

Ellet was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, brother of Alfred W. Ellet, also a civil engineer and a brigadier general in the Union Army during the war.^[1] Charles studied civil engineering at École Polytechnique in Paris, France, and built the Wheeling suspension bridge over the Ohio River at Wheeling in 1849. His other civil engineering accomplishments include improving flood control and navigation of mid-western rivers and planning the layout of railways in Virginia.

The Secretary of War appointed him colonel of engineers and tasked him with developing the United States Ram Fleet.

He was mortally wounded during the Battle of Memphis while on board Queen of the West, dying fifteen days later.^[2]

Ellet published a Report of the Overflows of the Delta of the Mississippi River, which helped to reshape New Orlean's waterfront. George Perkins Marsh published Man and Nature fourteen years later, but it was Ellet who first noted in writing that the artificial embankments created an overflowing delta. It would be decades later that his assertions were taken seriously and used in flood control decisions.^[3]

His son Charles Rivers Ellet was a colonel in the Union Army.

USS Ellet (DD-398), which was in service in 1939-46, was named in honor of Charles Ellet, Jr. and other members of his family.

[edit] References

• Eicher, David J., The Longest Night: A Military History of the Civil War, Simon & Schuster, 2001, ISBN 0-684-84944-5.
• Eicher, John H., and Eicher, David J., Civil War High Commands, Stanford University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3641-3.
• Kelman, Ari, A River and Its City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans, University of California Press, 2003, ISBN 0-520-23432-4.

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Eicher, Civil War High Commands, p. 224.
2. ^ Eicher, Longest Night, p. 253.
3. ^ Kelman, p. 162