“The Confederate States steamer Palmetto State,” and he emphasized the answer with a shell that killed one man, cut through the condenser and the steam-drum above one of the Mercedita’s boilers, and then exploded just short of the further side of the steamer, tearing a great hole in her side near the water-line. The shot and escaping steam killed four, and as many more were scalded. They were at the mercy of the ironclad, and they believed the ship was sinking. When the Confederates demanded that the Mercedita surrender, Lieut. T. Abbott was sent in a small boat to the Palmetto State, where he gave a parole for all the members of his crew.
This done, Commodore Ingraham left the Mercedita alone, and went hunting other blockaders. Meantime the Chicora found the Keystone State, Capt. William E. LeRoy. A shell was fired at the Chicora, Capt. J. R. Tucker, and the Confederates returned it with a shot that set the Keystone State on fire, and she steered away in the fog to escape until she had extinguished the fire, when she turned toward a black smoke, intending to ram the vessel making it. It proved to be a Confederate ship cruising in the fog for blockaders, but the Keystone State failed to ram her. Worse yet, the Confederate projectiles cut the Keystone State’s steam-pipes and pierced her below the water-line. It was an ironclad against a frail merchant ship, and there could be but one result. The merchant ship surrendered. She had lost twenty killed and as many wounded before she did so.
GENERAL MAP
OF
CHARLESTON HARBOR,
SOUTH CAROLINA.
Showing Confederate Defences and Obstructions.
ARMAMENT OF REBEL FORTS.
February 18, 1865.
Meantime the Palmetto, Commodore Ingraham, had been cruising about and exchanging shots with some other ships of the blockading squadron, but they being of superior speed, easily avoided her, according to the Confederate accounts. The Union reports say that the Unadilla and Housatonic came to attack her instead of running. In any event, the two Confederates had accomplished everything possible in compelling the surrender of the two Union ships. They could not even take the surrendered ships into port. “I knew that our only opportunity was to take the enemy unawares, as the moment he was under way, from his superior speed, we could not close with him,” says Ingraham in his report. He therefore “led the way to the beach channel.” He did not make any attempt to carry either of the surrendered vessels with him. The two Confederate ships started for home at 7.30, according to Tucker’s official report, “leaving the partially crippled and fleeing enemy about seven miles clear of the bar, standing to the southward and eastward.”
However, when the Cossack, with the 176th Pennsylvania militia on board, reached the bar at 8.30 o’clock, it found all but two or three of the blockading squadron in the usual places, as her officers and the officers of the regiment testified. Neither the Unadilla nor the Housatonic had passed beyond the usual line of blockade. No blockade-runner passed in or out during the fight, and, according to Tucker’s report, the retreating rams anchored under the shore batteries at 8 o’clock. And that was the only service rendered by these rams.
All this is important only because Robert Bunce, the British consular agent; Baron de St. Andre, consul for France, and Señor Francisco Moncada, consul for Spain, “at a joint conference concurred in the opinion that the blockade had been legally raised.” Wilson, the British author of “Ironclads in Action,” says of the surrender of the Mercedita:
“The ram, without stopping to take possession, ran north, and the Mercedita’s captain promptly rehoisted his flag. This very questionable proceeding he could scarcely justify on any grounds.”