DMUND JONES had served aboard commercial ships for many years and with the start of the. In January 1862, his ship broke the chain boom blocking the Union fleet from entering the Mississippi River at New Orleans, and he led a band of sailors to reconnoiter that the passage was sufficiently open. He returned to , and it joined the attacking fleet only to soon become disabled. Hit 14 times, several below the waterline, was out of the fight. Naval theory indicated that cannon shots could not penetrate more than five feet below the waterline; however proved that wrong. To emphasize this, Edmund Jones kept a broken copper bolt taken from over eight feet below the waterline which, in time he passed on to his brother Elbert, who had a farm near Waupun, Wis. It remains in that town’s historical society.
