Battery Kirby: Twenty-eight-inch Seacoast Mortars against Sumter.
From a photograph by Haas & Peale.
No attempt to pass the silenced Sumter was made. In fact, Sumter was, at the last, reduced to a wreck. It became a mere infantry post. On the night of September 6th Fort Wagner was evacuated by the Confederates. The Union soldiers were gaining ground. The navy planned an expedition to carry Sumter by storm. Commander Thomas Holdup Stevens was placed in charge. In all, 400 men, sailors and marines, were put into small boats. But a lookout on the Confederate side was able to read the “wigwag” signals by which the orders were transmitted between the ships. So says Johnson. Of course the Confederates were ready when the force came. All who landed on the fort, including ten officers and 104 men, were taken prisoners, and three men were killed. These were the men who led. The men in the rear were able to get off. It was the most courageous deed on the Union side before Charleston. It was worthy of Farragut, who planned to take the castle at Vera Cruz, during the Mexican War, by laying the ships alongside, tricing up ladders and calling away boarders. So the Confederates were allowed to hold the wreck of the famous fort in comparative peace until Sherman, in his famous march through the Confederate States, got into the rear of Charleston, when the city and all the forts were abandoned.
Wilson’s “Ironclads in Action” has this to say of the Union naval operations against Charleston:
“Never before had ships so invulnerable been in action, and probably never again will so many hits be inflicted with such trivial damage and such slight loss of life. If the impenetrable monitor could do nothing against forts garrisoned by resolute men and efficiently armed, what hope of success could our Royal Sovereigns or Majesties have? Artillery has progressed so much that cannon can be mounted on land which can pierce armour thicker than any ship can hope to carry. Considerations of weight and displacement limit the protection which can be given to the ship, whilst they have no such determining influence on the fort. The ironclad’s armour and ordnance then are limited; the fort’s unlimited. How can the two fight on an equal footing? There are these further considerations, too, to be taken into account. The guns must be crowded into a limited space on board ship, where several may be silenced by a single lucky shot. In the fort a wide space can intervene between each weapon, and if properly mounted, each gun must be actually struck before it is put out of action. Then, too, the fort’s fire can be directed upon the ship’s water-line; hits here will be every whit as efficacious as upon her battery, and she can be driven off without a single one of her guns being struck. Thus a close attack by ships upon forts has become almost impossible, though it is beyond doubt perfectly feasible for war vessels to run through an unobstructed channel, commanded by forts however numerous.”
Admiral Dahlgren and Staff on the Pawnee at Charleston.
From a photograph.
However, the story of naval affairs before Charleston by no means ended with the failure of the attacks on the forts; for what the Union forces suffered at the hands of the daring Confederate torpedo-men is quite as interesting and as instructive as anything done afloat during the war.
The Confederates had organized a submarine torpedo corps, and the leading man of the corps at Charleston was Capt. F. D. Lee of the engineers. A part of the work done under his supervision was the building of a number of small torpedo boats now known to the world as “Davids.” Johnson, previously quoted, says of one of them: