James B. Eads, the engineer who built the great railroad bridge over the Mississippi at St. Louis, made the first iron-clads for the West. There were seven of these. They were river steamers, and were covered with iron, but it was not very thick. Two others were afterward built, making nine in all.
Each of these boats had thirteen guns, and they did good work in helping the army to capture two strong Confederate forts in Kentucky. Then they went down the Mississippi to an island that was called Island No. 10. It was covered with forts, stretching one after another all along its shore.
A number of mortar boats were brought down and threw shells into the forts till they were half paved with iron. But all that did no good. Then Admiral Foote was asked to send one of the boats down past the forts.
That was dreadfully dangerous work, for there were guns enough in them to sink twenty such boats. But Captain Walke thought he could take his boat, the Carondelet, down, and the admiral told him he might try.
What was the Carondelet like, do you ask? Well, she was a long, wide boat, with sloping sides and a flat roof, and was covered with iron two and a half inches thick. Four of her guns peeped out from each side, while three looked out from the front door, and two from the back door of the boat.
Captain Walke did not half expect to get through the iron storm from the forts. To make his boat stronger, extra planks were laid on her deck and chain cables were drawn tightly across it. Then lumber was heaped thickly round the boiler and engines, and ropes were wrapped round and round the pilot-house till they were eighteen inches thick.
After that a barge filled with bales of hay was tied fast to the side that would catch the fire of the forts. Something was done also to stop the noise of the steam pipes, for Captain Walke thought he might slip down at night without being seen or heard.
On the night of April 10, 1862, the boat made its dash down stream. It started just as a heavy thunderstorm came on. The wind whistled, the rain poured down in sheets, and the men in the forts hid from the storm. They were not thinking then of runaway gunboats.
But something nobody had thought of now took place. The blazing wood in the furnaces set fire to the soot in the chimneys, and in a minute the boat was like a great flaming torch. As the men in the forts sprang up, the lightning flashed out on the clouds, and lit up "the gallant little ship floating past like a phantom."
The gunners did not mind the rain any more. They ran in great haste to their guns, and soon the batteries were flaming and roaring louder than the thunder itself.