Meanwhile, Fort Sumter’s garrison was not idle. It was at this time that the great “central bombproof,” with quarters for 100 men, was built out from the gorge interior and, in the remaining casemates of the right face, a new 3-gun battery mounted.
“Fort Sumter from Fort Moultrie, November 10, 1863” painted by Conrad Wise Chapman. Courtesy Confederate Museum, Richmond.
The Second Great Bombardment
On October 26, “on the strength of certain reports ... that the enemy have recently been at work remounting some guns,” Gillmore resumed the bombardment; at least Fort Sumter could be “kept down” while the Navy prepared. For the next 12 days, the concentration of fire was comparable to the great bombardment of the preceding August. But now, firing from the new batteries on Cummings Point, with range shortened to less than a mile, the effect was far greater. For the first time, 16 heavy mortars were in use—2 of them 8½-ton pieces (13-inch bore) throwing 200-pound projectiles. Their sharp, plunging fire was added to that of 12 Parrott rifles—the types already used so effectively against the fort—and 1 powerful Columbiad. In addition, 2 monitors, with guns “equal to a dozen” Parrotts, crossed fire with Gillmore’s artillery.
Sumter’s “sea front” (right flank), upright and relatively unscathed till then, was breached now for nearly half its length. The ramparts and arches of its upper casemates were cut down and the interior barracks demolished. The accumulated debris made ascent easy inside and out. Through the breach, the Federal guns took the channel fronts “in reverse.” For the first time, these were exposed to direct fire; soon they were “cut and jagged.” Still, the gorge ruin remained much the same; to Admiral Dahlgren, that “heap of rubbish” looked “invincible.”
Night and day, Gillmore’s batteries maintained a “slow fire” against Fort Sumter throughout November and into December. On occasion the monitors assisted. Sumter could return merely “harmless musketry”; only telescopic rifle sights made even that much possible. But, the “rebels” seemed “snug in the ruins”; and if Sumter was without guns, Confederate batteries on James and Sullivan’s Islands kept up an irritating counterfire.
Capt. John C. Mitchel. From Johnson, The Defense of Charleston Harbor.
