Valuable stores on the wharves were torn down, and a line of defenses was made in their places. The streets near the water were barricaded, and, on account of the scarceness of lead, many window-sashes of that material were melted into bullets. He pressed into service seven hundred negroes with tools, who belonged to Loyalists; and seized, for the moment, the money and papers of the lukewarm. By these energetic measures the city was made strong in moral and physical material, and when the British fleet crossed the bar, all were ready to receive them.
While these preparations were in progress by the Republicans, Sir Henry Clinton was busy in arranging for a combined attack with the land and naval forces. He constructed two batteries upon Long Island, to confront those of Thomson upon Sullivan's Island, and to cover the passage of his troops in boats and in fording from the former to the latter, for Fort Sullivan, the main work in the harbor, was the devoted mark for the first blow.
Its garrison consisted of only three hundred and forty-four regulars and a few volunteer militia, and its only aid was an armed sloop, with powder, which was anchored off Haddrell's Point, now Point Pleasant.
At half past ten o'clock on the morning of the twenty-eighth of June, Sir Peter Parker, on board his flag-ship, the Bristol, made the signal for attack. His fleet immediately advanced, and, with springs on their cables, anchored in front of Fort Sullivan. * The Active, Bristol, Experiment, and Solebay led to the attack, and anchored nearest the fort. At the moment of anchoring, the fort poured a heavy fire upon them, and each vessel returned the compliment by delivering a broadside upon the little fortress, but with almost harmless effect upon the spongy palmetto logs. ** It was a little before eleven o'clock when the action began, and terrible to the people of Charleston, who looked upon the contest from balconies, roofs, and steeples, was the roar of three hundred cannons.
To the little garrison the peril seemed great, yet they maintained their fire with precision and coolness. Perceiving the unfinished state of the fort on the western side, toward
* The British vessels brought into action were the Bristol and Experiment, of fifty guns each; the frigates Active, Solebay, Actseon, Syren, and Sphynx, of twenty-eight guns each; the Thunder-bomb, and Ranger, sloop, each of twenty-eight guns; and the Friendship, an armed vessel of twenty-two guns.
** The palmetto is peculiar to the low sandy shores of the Southern States. It grows from twenty to forty feet in height, without branches, terminating in a large tuft of very long leaves. The wood is very porous, and a bullet or cannon-ball, on entering it, makes no extended fracture. It becomes buried, without injuring adjacent parts.