CHAPTER XX.
BATTLE WITH THE KEARSARGE.
On board the Kearsarge the long wait had bred doubts of the martial temper of Captain Semmes, and aside from the preparations already made affairs had largely dropped back into the ordinary routine. Soon after ten o’clock the officer of the deck reported a steamer approaching from the city, but this was a frequent occurrence, and no attention was paid to the announcement.
The bell was tolling for religious services when loud shouts apprised the crew that the long-looked-for Alabama was in sight. Captain Winslow hastily laid aside his prayer book and seized his trumpet. The fires were piled high with coal and the prow was turned straight out to sea. The fight must be to the death, and the vanquished was not to be permitted to crawl within the protection of the marine league. Moreover, the French government had expressed a desire that the battle should take place at least six or seven miles from the coast. Ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five minutes passed. The Alabama kept straight on, and the Kearsarge continued her apparent flight.
Finally, at 10:50, when six or seven miles from shore, the Kearsarge wheeled and bore down upon her adversary. At a distance of a little over a mile the Alabama began the fight with her Blakely rifle, and at 10:57 she opened fire with her entire starboard broadside, which cut some of the Kearsarge’s rigging but did no material damage. The latter crowded on all steam to get within closer range, but in two minutes a second broadside came hurtling about her. This was quickly followed by a third, and then, deeming the danger from a raking fire too great longer to allow the ship to present her bow to the enemy, Captain Winslow directed his vessel sheared, and fired his starboard battery. He then made an attempt to run under the Alabama’s stern, which she frustrated by shearing, and thus the two ships were forced into a circular track round a common center, and the battle went on for an hour, the distance between them varying from a half to a quarter of a mile. During that time the vessels described seven complete circles.
At 11:15 a sixty-eight pounder shell came through the bulwarks of the Kearsarge, exploding on the quarter deck and badly wounding three of the crew of the after pivot gun. Two shots entered the ports of the thirty-two pounders, but injured no one. A shell exploded in the hammock nettings and set fire to the ship, but those detailed for fire service extinguished it in a short time, and so thorough was the discipline that the cannonade was not even interrupted.
A hundred-pounder shell from the Alabama’s Blakely pivot gun entered near the stern and lodged in the stern-post. The vessel trembled from bowsprit to rudder at the shock. The shell failed to explode, however. Had it done so, the effect must have been serious and might have changed the result of the battle. A thirty-two pounder shell entered forward and lodged under the forward pivot gun, tilting it out of range, but did not explode. A rifle shell struck the smoke stack, broke through, and exploded inside, tearing a ragged hole three feet in diameter Only two of the boats escaped damage.
As the battle progressed, it became evident that the terrible pounding of the two eleven-inch Dahlgrens was having a disastrous effect on the Alabama. The Kearsarge gunners had been instructed to aim the heavy guns somewhat below rather than above the water line, and leave the deck fighting to the lighter weapons. As the awful missiles opened great gaps in the enemy’s side or bored her through and through, the deck of the Kearsarge rang with cheers. A seaman named William Gowin, with a badly shattered leg, dragged himself to the forward hatch, refusing to permit his comrades to leave their gun in order to assist him. Here he fainted, but reviving after being lowered to the care of the surgeon, waved his hand and joined feebly in the cheers which reached him from the deck.