Immediately “a red light was shown as a signal of danger,” and then the whole squadron except the Water Witch slipped their cables and fled. “I ordered the Preble and Vincennes to proceed down the Southwest Pass,” says Pope, and “they did.” Meantime, “after the first blow given to this ship by the ram,” it “remained under our port quarter, apparently endeavoring to fix herself in a position to give us a second blow, but the slipping of our chain and the ship ranging ahead under steam frustrated the object.” That was Pope’s idea. The fact was that the ram’s machinery had not been properly stayed to sustain a shock, and the blow had entirely crippled the low-pressure engine, and left her with barely enough power to stem the current. She lay there making repairs, with her crew in a state of alarm lest she be disabled altogether. However, they got the high-pressure engine working independently, and then, to the great relief of her crew, she went creeping and coughing up the river, hugging the shoal water lest the Richmond or Water Witch pursue her after she had passed them. Both the Richmond and the Preble fired broadsides at her; the Richmond fired three, “with what effect it was impossible to discover owing to the darkness,” but “some officers are of opinion they heard shot strike the ram.” As the ram disappeared up the river, the Richmond’s “helm was put up, and the ship rapidly fell off, presenting her broadside up and down the river.” In that position they let her drift with the current to “cover the retreat” of the squadron.
A squadron of four great ships, armed with forty-five first-class guns, had been driven into a shameful panic by one crippled tug carrying a gun that couldn’t be fired.
At about this time a rocket was thrown up from the ram, and at once three lights were seen—“three large fire rafts, stretching across the river, were rapidly nearing us, while several large steamers and a bark-rigged propeller were seen astern of them.” In the minds of the flying officers the peril was frightful. Nevertheless, as the Richmond “drifted near the Passes ineffectual attempts were made to get her head upstream.” The attempts did not include the dropping of an anchor, because that would have stopped her in her flight for the sea. Pope was willing to head upstream provided he could keep travelling away from the fearsome ram and fire-rafts “stretching across the river.” When the “ineffectual attempts” were stopped “I found myself a mile and a half down the Southwest Pass.” “I then put the helm up, and continued down the river, hoping to be able to get her head around off Pilot Town. In doing this she drifted some distance below, grounding broadside on.”
Meantime the Vincennes and the Preble had been “drifting” also, and without making any attempts to get their bows pointed upstream. They were under sail, and the wind was in the north. The Preble outran the Richmond, even. Captain French says that as he passed the Richmond Captain Pope told him to “proceed down the pass.” He obeyed, and after bumping on the bar two or three times, crossed over into water unfretted by rams and fire-rafts. So he “anchored near the coal ships Kuhn and Nightingale to protect them if necessary.”
Meantime the Vincennes, like the Richmond, had grounded in the pass, and a little later along came the Water Witch. She had found, as she steamed down the pass, “that the fire rafts were drifting with the wind steadily over toward the western shore,” so the “Water Witch was now steered to the northward and eastward (upstream) and easily cleared them.” The river at this “time in the vicinity of the passes was entirely clear of the enemy.” Nevertheless, a “general signal, ‘cross the bar,’” was displayed on the Richmond.
The effect of this signal on Captain Handy of the Vincennes is well-nigh past belief. He read it “abandon the ship,” he says, but he was not quite sure about the reading, and so sent a boat to the Water Witch to ask how Captain Winslow read it. Captain Winslow replied “that it was impossible” an order to abandon the ship had been given. Captain Handy was of his original opinion still, and at once ordered the boats away. A slow match was set to the magazine, and then, as the crew started over the side of the ship, Captain Handy wrapped the ship’s flag about him in broad folds and climbed down the ladder to his gig.
Fortunately, a quarter-gunner (whose name has not been preserved, alas!) slipped down below, and cutting off the burning end of the slow match, tossed it overboard. Two of the boats went to the Water Witch, but the others, including the gig, to the Richmond. Here Handy’s theatrical air left him. The utter disgust of his crew became manifest after it was told that the slow match had been cut, and Handy was sent back crestfallen to his ship. But, though crestfallen, he was as nerveless as ever.
Of course daylight had come long before the time the two ships had grounded, and the Confederates, who had followed their fire-rafts with the bark-rigged McRae and the four converted gunboats and a river tug, found, to their astonishment, the whole river clear. They had hoped, at first, to make some disturbance—possibly to sink the Richmond with the ram—and, at any rate, get the McRae to sea. But the McRae’s engines had failed, and so had the ram’s, while the fire-rafts had drifted ashore harmless. And yet there were the government ships out at sea, or aground inside and sorry they couldn’t get away. Very naturally the Confederates came down where their long-range Whitworth rifles would take effect, and opened fire on the grounded ships. The only damage done was when a shell lodged in the locker where Captain Pope kept his linen. Fortunately, the shell did not explode, and the linen was not wholly destroyed. The Richmond replied with a nine-inch gun on her forecastle, and the Confederates, having boats so frail that one shell could have sunk any one of them, were obliged to keep at long range. The Water Witch was sent in great haste to bring the South Carolina from Barrataria, and after she came to the rescue the transport McClellan also arrived with rifles for the Richmond. “My mind was very much relieved, knowing that the armament of four rifled guns on board the McClellan, together with the long gun of the South Carolina, would keep the enemy at bay,” says Pope in his report. Imagine the state of mind of this officer! “Four rifled guns on board the McClellan, together with the long gun of the South Carolina, would keep the enemy at bay!”
But before the relief ships arrived, Captain Handy, of the Vincennes, had once more become so nervous he couldn’t stand the strain without doing something. The Confederates were firing at the Richmond; but they might fire at him and he might get hurt. So he wrote a note to the already overwrought Pope. Because no other case of the kind is known to the annals of the American navy, because the exhibit forms an interesting study in mental phenomena, and because the shame of it, when spread in history, must serve to make a repetition of the story impossible, the note shall be given in full:
“Sir: We are aground. We have only two guns that will bear in the direction of the enemy. Shall I remain on board after the moon goes down, with my crippled ship and worn-out men? Will you send me word what countersign my boats shall use if we pass near your ship? While we have moonlight, would it not be better to leave the ship? Shall I burn her when I leave her?