Its guns, which the sailors call its battery, are very powerful. There are two nine-inch guns, and also two sixty-four-pounders, rifled, at the bow. There are two forty-two-pounders at the stern, and those upon the side are thirty-twos and twenty-fours. There are rooms for the officers, but the men sleep in hammocks. They take their meals sitting on the gun-carriages, or cross-legged, like Turks, on the floor.
Captain Foote is the Commodore of the fleet. He points out to you the Sacred Place of the ship,—a secluded corner, where any one of the crew who loves to read his Bible and hold secret devotion may do so, and not be disturbed. He has given a library of good books to the crew, and he has persuaded them that it will be better for them to give up their allowance of grog than to drink it. He walks among the men, and has a kind word for all, and they look upon him as their father. They have confidence in him. How lustily they cheer him! Will they not fight bravely under such a commander?
On Monday afternoon, February 2d, the gunboats Cincinnati, Essex, St. Louis, Carondelet, Lexington, Tyler, and Conestoga sailed from Cairo, accompanied by several river steamboats with ten regiments of troops. They went up the Ohio to Paducah, and entered the Tennessee River at dark. The next morning, about daylight, they anchored a few miles below Fort Henry. Commodore Foote made the Cincinnati his flag-ship.
A party of scouts went on shore and called at a farm-house. “You never will take Fort Henry,” said the woman living there.
“O yes, we shall; we have a fleet of iron-clad gunboats,” said one of the scouts.
“Your gunboats will be blown sky-high before they get up to the fort.”
“Ah! how so?”
The woman saw that she was letting out a secret, and became silent. The scouts mistrusted that she knew something which might be desirable for them to know, and informed her that, unless she told all she knew, she must go with them a prisoner. She was frightened, and informed them that the river was full of torpedoes, which would blow up the gunboats.
The scouts reported to Commodore Foote. The river was searched with grappling-irons, and six infernal machines were fished up; but they were imperfectly constructed, and not one of them would explode.