Existing comment:
Innovation and Disaster: Bluff Furnace and the Coming of War:
The conversion of Bluff Furnace into the region's first coke-fired stack, in 1860, was a significant milestone in southern iron production. The failure of the furnace, in November of 1860, occurred as the nation drifted toward the Civil War. The Bluff Furnace would never be fired again.
Northern ironmasters James Henderson and Giles Edwards arrived in Chattanooga in 1859, and converted the charcoal-fired furnace into a more advanced coke-fired operation with a sophisticated cupola-style blast stack. Recycling the heat from waste gases to preheat the fresh blast air, Bluff Furnace could more efficiently smelt iron ore. The use of processed coal or coke as fuel permitted larger quantities of ore to be smelted at a faster rate, thus producing cheaper, more competitive iron.
This introduction of the latest technology to be southern Appalachians was not without difficulties. Obtaining the blast fuel, coke, could not keep pace with production. After a trial blast took place in May 1860, a second blast in November of that year ended abruptly; a failure of the hearth lining put the plant out of operation.
Before repairs could be made, the American Civil War had begun.
As Union threatened Chattanooga, the furnace machinery was removed and sent south into Alabama. In 1863, the directors of the East Tennessee Iron Manufacturing Company, dissolved the enterprise permanently.
In June 1863, Union troops occupied Chattanooga, crossing the river on pontoon bridges that landed below the bluff. After defeat at Chickamauga, the Federal forces were besieged until their successes in the battles of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge in November.
As the Federal armies prepared to advance on the Confederate stronghold of Atlanta, Chattanooga was transformed into a marshalling yard for men and materiel. To meet construction needs of the Federal quartermasters, building supplies were collected in vast quantities until, supplied by river and rail, storehouses were overflowing.
The lower remnant of the stack of Bluff Furnace was used as a retort in which limestone was burned to produce lime. The stone walls of the casting shed of the furnace were thrown down, and a wooden shed was built to hold supplies and mule teams. Only the base of the blast stack remained. Soon, even this remnant was demolished and its iron scrapped. By the end of the war, nothing remained above ground of the South's first coke-fired blast furnace. |