“We approached very close to the obstructions extending from Fort Sumter to Fort Moultrie—as near, indeed, as I could get without running upon them. They were marked by rows of casks very near together. To the eye they appeared almost to touch one another, and there was more than one line of them.
“The appearance was so formidable that, upon deliberate judgment, I thought it right not to entangle the vessel in obstructions which I did not think we could have passed through.”
The obstructions were really of no account, and there was, moreover, an opening through them.
“After braving the fire of sixty-nine guns for about an hour, the ironclads retired, some of them seriously injured. The Keokuk had drifted much nearer than she intended to do. She was struck ninety times in thirty minutes, and nineteen shots pierced her armor.” “In short, the vessel was completely riddled.” She went down next day. The Nahant was disabled for one day, and was not in good order for a month. The New Ironsides was for a long time over an electrical torpedo containing 3,000 pounds of powder, but the firing apparatus had been improperly adjusted, and she escaped. The Confederates thought she escaped through treachery, and it is said they executed the man in charge. The Confederate ironclads had no part in this battle. And the Confederates had fewer guns than at Mobile.
Dupont wrote regarding this attack: “During the few minutes that we were under the heaviest fire of the batteries, half of our turret-ships were in part, or wholly, disabled. We have only encountered the outer line of defence, and if we force our way into the harbor, we have not men to occupy any fort we may take, and we can have no communication with our force outside except by running the gauntlet.... We have met with a sad repulse; I shall not turn it into a great disaster.”
Chief Engineer A. C. Stimers, who had been in the original Monitor, was so disgusted with the result of the battle that he could not help expressing his opinion forcibly in Dupont’s presence. He was court-martialled and acquitted. There was no Caldwell to break the chain running from Sumter to Moultrie, and there was no Farragut to plan to go in, as at Mobile, where he believed that six of his squadron must be sacrificed to make the passage, or to say “Damn the torpedoes!” when once the start was made.
Confederate Ironclad Atlanta, Captured at Wassaw Sound, June 17, 1863.
From “The Navy in the Civil War.”
In June a couple of Dupont’s monitors had a successful fight with another Confederate ironclad. She was originally a thirteen-knot iron steamer called the Fingal, a Scotch boat. Having run the blockade at Savannah, she was cut down and decked over, and a casemate was erected in the favorite fashion of John L. Porter. But she was broadened out with solid timbers bolted outside the hull until she had sides seven feet thick at the water-line. Her armor-plates were the same as the Merrimac carried except that they were not of such good metal, and the wood backing of the armor was but eighteen inches thick, although the power of the fifteen-inch guns she would have to face was well known. She carried four of the excellent Brooke guns so mounted that they could fire ahead or in broadside. The speed of the ship was reduced by the weight to eight knots. She was named the Atlanta, and was commanded by Lieut. William A. Webb.