The next day I paid another visit to the work at Venus Point to see how it looked. It could hardly be called a fort. It was only a place where some platforms had been laid down and guns mounted, enclosed by a low parapet, not so much to repel an enemy as to keep out the tides. Nevertheless it was named Fort Vulcan, perhaps because it was better fitted for aggression than for defense.
While I was there it happened that the rebel steamer came down on her usual trip from Savannah to Fort Pulaski, and the battery opened on her for the first time. She was an ordinary river steamboat, painted white; and her name, the Ida, could be read with a good glass upon her wheelhouse. She evidently suspected something new at Venus Point and hugged the farther edge of the channel. After some shots had been launched at her, the artillery officer in charge invited me to try my hand at the game. So I sighted one of the guns as well as I could guess at her speed and distance, pulled the lanyard, and watched the effect of the discharge with no little interest. It was the first time I had ever had the opportunity of firing at a steamboat. As might be expected, I failed to make a hit. At that distance she seemed to be moving very slowly, though she was no doubt making the best of the time so far as she was able; and while my thirty pound projectile was traveling across the river, she was going down stream fast enough to be quite out of its way when it got there. Apparently she escaped all the shots without serious damage, for she kept on her course toward Fort Pulaski; but she did not venture to risk it again, and returned to Savannah by a circuitous channel farther south.
A week later the passage was more effectually closed by a second battery established on Bird island, opposite Venus Point and near the south bank of the river. This was the same kind of low-lying flat with the other islands in the neighborhood. When I made a visit to the work some days afterward, it was at the period of a spring tide, and nearly everything beyond the parapet was submerged. I was taken to the tent of Major Beard, the commanding officer, in a row-boat. The plank floor of the tent was just above the water level; but the major was lying, high and dry, in a bunk of rough boards, smoking his pipe with an air of supreme satisfaction. He had been from the start most active and efficient in the work of establishing the blockade, and he now held the advanced position, where it hardly looked as if he had ground enough to stand on. He was commissioned as field officer in the Forty-eighth New York, but had been detached for some weeks on special service at Hilton Head and Daufuskie.
During this time we had at brigade headquarters several officers of the regular army, whose acquaintance I greatly enjoyed. Captain Gillmore, chief engineer of the expedition, then about thirty-seven years of age, was with us from the first. Cheerful, hearty, enterprising, and wholly devoted to his work, he was the moving spirit throughout. He knew every detail of the engineering and artillery service, and his knowledge was exact and thorough. It was his examination and advice that determined the plan for the reduction of Fort Pulaski, and he fixed upon the location of all the batteries on Tybee island. The river blockade from Daufuskie was a part of his scheme, and while there he spared no pains or fatigue to superintend everything and make sure that it was done right. After this was completed, he returned to Tybee island, to push on the works at that place with the same unremitting persistency. The capture of the fort was the occasion of a well deserved advancement in rank, and before the close of the war he became major-general of volunteers.
Lieutenant James H. Wilson, topographical engineer, and Lieutenant Horace Porter, ordnance officer, were both busy under Captain Gillmore's direction. Neither mud and water, nor rain or darkness seemed to discourage them; and they would come in, after a night on Jones' island, wet, weary, and famished, but as lively and talkative as ever. Wilson was afterward a cavalry general, and it was a part of his command that captured Jeff Davis in his flight through Georgia in 1865, the last brilliant exploit of the war. Porter also became a general, and served on the staff of General Grant through the Petersburg campaign. Both were transferred to the batteries at Tybee island after finishing their work on Daufuskie. General Viele's troops remained, to keep up the river blockade, and prevent further supplies reaching Fort Pulaski.
Our own headquarters had been shifted by this time to a dwelling-house on the extreme southernmost point of Daufuskie, about a mile from the regimental camps. It was a spacious well-built mansion, and from a sort of open veranda on the roof there was a wide prospect, including the mouth of the Savannah river, with Tybee island and Fort Pulaski on the opposite shore, a little over three miles away. I sometimes went up into this crow's nest before sunrise, to watch the strange effect of the morning mist. At that hour the landscape for miles around was often covered by a low-lying bank of white cloud, with a few clumps of trees or small hillocks emerging from it here and there like so many scattered islands, and everything looking cool and still, without a sign of animal life or human habitation. Afterward, when the warm sunbeams began to touch the surface of this cloudy sea, the mists would slowly melt away into vapor, and I could see the outlines of the roads and fields and inlets and watercourses coming out, one after another, like the markings on a map. On two sides of the house was a flower-garden with carefully trimmed beds and walks, that had evidently been a favorite with the owner. Roses and camellias were in full bloom there in February and March, and many other flowering shrubs followed as the season went on. The cardinal grosbeak nested among them almost within reach of the windows, and the brown thrush and mocking-bird reared their broods but a short distance away.
There was a similar house toward the eastern side of the island, which we occupied for a brigade hospital. After obtaining the necessary stores and appliances from Hilton Head, it made a very convenient and useful establishment. Here we placed all the sick or disabled men, likely to need a prolonged treatment; thus relieving the regimental hospitals of all but their temporary cases, and giving the chronic invalids a better chance for convalescence and recovery.
We had a new topic of interest about this time in the rebel iron-clad steamer Atlanta, said to be approaching completion at Savannah. The country had just passed through a spasm of terror and relief at the unexpected performances of the Merrimac and Monitor at Hampton Roads; and after that, every one had a realizing sense of the devastation an iron-clad might accomplish in case there were no Monitor to oppose her. We knew that such a vessel was getting ready at Savannah; and for some weeks it appeared doubtful whether our control of Venus Point and Bird island might not at any moment come to a sudden termination. As a matter of fact, the Atlanta was getting on very slowly, and it was not until some weeks after the fall of Fort Pulaski that she could be put in condition to move. By that time the monitor Weehawken was in waiting for her; and on her approaching and opening fire, disabled and captured her in fifteen minutes. Nevertheless she was the cause of no little foreboding on Daufuskie during the months of March and April.
Meanwhile Captain Gillmore was erecting his batteries on Tybee island along the western side of the sand ridge, toward the fort. Every night, under the cover of darkness and silence, his working parties traversed a narrow causeway of fascines and brushwood to the advanced positions, returning before daybreak to their camps on shore. As the low parapets and bombproofs gradually rose above the surface, they were shielded from view by clumps of bushes carefully distributed along the front; and lastly the heavy guns and ammunition were transported with the same precautions to their destination. After seven weeks of this labor, everything was ready. Eleven batteries, mounting sixteen mortars and twenty guns, were arranged along a sinuous line following the edge of the morass. From the lookout on our house-top all was in full view, Fort Pulaski on the right and Tybee island with its concealed batteries on the left. At that distance nothing was visible to show the preparations on either side; but the first gun would be seen and heard from our position almost as well as on the spot.
Early on the morning of April 10th it began. A mortar at one of the batteries gave the signal, and the rest chimed in, one after another, as fast as the gunners could get their range. By ten o'clock all were in operation, mortars, columbiads, and rifled guns throwing their shells at the parapet or into the interior of the work, or battering its nearest wall, at the rate of four discharges per minute. They were answered with equal activity by the guns of the fort. This kept up all day long; the volumes of white smoke rolling out from both sides, and the reports, mellowed a little by the distance, following each other across the river in almost uninterrupted succession till nightfall. Then the heavy cannonading was suspended; but every five minutes a shell from one of the mortar batteries was sent into the fort, to keep its defenders uneasy and prevent their repairing the damages of the day.