Expedition to Fort Henry.
As the gunboats had never been tested, intense interest was felt in their success. Approaching Fort Henry, three went forward to reconnoiter. At the distance of two miles and a half, a twenty-four pounder rifled ball penetrated the state-room of Captain Porter, commanding the Essex, passing under his table, and cutting off the feet of a pair of stockings which hung against the ceiling as neatly as shears would have cut them.
"Pretty good shot!" said Porter. "Now we will show them ours." And he dropped a nine-inch Dahlgren shell right into the fort.
The next day, a large number of torpedoes, each containing seventy-five pounds of powder, were fished up from the bottom of the river. The imprudent tongue of an angry Rebel woman revealed their whereabouts. Prophesying that the whole fleet would be blown to atoms, she was compelled to divulge what she knew, or be confined in the guard-house. In mortal terror she gave the desired information. The torpedoes were found wet and harmless. Commodore Foote predicted
"I can take that fort in about an hour and a half."
The night was excessively rainy and severe upon our boys in blue in their forest bivouacs; but in the well-furnished cabin of General Grant's steamer, we found "going to war" an agreeable novelty.
Its Capture by Commodore Foote.
At mid-day on the 6th, Foote fired his first shot, at the distance of seventeen hundred yards. Then he slowly approached the fort with his entire fleet, until within four hundred yards. The Rebel fire was very severe; but he determined to vindicate the iron-clads or to sink them in the Tennessee. The wood-work of his flag-ship was riddled by thirty-one shots, but her iron plating turned off the balls like hail. All the boats were more or less damaged; but they fully established their usefulness, and their officers and men behaved with the greatest gallantry. One poor fellow on the Essex, terribly scalded by the bursting of a steam drum, learning that the fort was captured, sprung from his bunk, ran up the hatchway, and cheered until he fell senseless upon the deck. He died the same night.
With several fellow-correspondents, I witnessed the fight from the top of a high tree, up on the river-bank, between the fortification and the gun-boats. There was little to be seen but smoke. Foote's prediction proved correct. After he had fired about six hundred shots, just one hour and fifteen minutes from the beginning, the colors of Fort Henry were struck, and the gunboats trembled with the cheers and huzzas of our men.
The Rebel infantry, numbering four thousand, escaped. Grant's forces, detained by the mud, came up too late to surround them. Brigadier-General Lloyd Tilghman, commanding, and the immediate garrison, were captured.