When the student of American history turns from the stories of the battles of New Orleans and Mobile to that of the naval efforts to reduce Charleston, he is driven to a conclusion that may be expressed by saying there was only one Farragut in the Civil War. He may easily believe that both Dupont and Dahlgren were great men, but their absolute failures before Charleston simply emphasize the fact that Farragut earned the place he has held in the hearts of his countrymen.

The chart of Charleston harbor in these days is somewhat misleading to a careless reader of history, because the channel now used by shipping runs straight out to sea, while the channel used in the days of the war is comparatively shoal, and is used by coasters only. In the time of the war a ship bound into Charleston must needs sail in toward the coast several miles south of the harbor, the exact point to be steered for being marked by a tall lighthouse. Arriving within half a mile or so of the beach, the ship turned to the north and followed along the shore of Morris Island, which terminates in a long sandy point called Cumming’s Point, very much like Sandy Hook of New York harbor. Above Cumming’s Point the channel swept away to the northwest until Fort Sumter was reached, when it turned still further to the west, passing Forts Ripley and Pinckney, and then the piers were reached.

The Union warships had to face earthworks from the moment they arrived within range of the tall lighthouse. There were, early in the war, guns at intervals all the way from Light House Inlet to Cumming’s Point, guns laid with muzzles out to sea and commanding the channel along the shore of Morris Island. The chief of these batteries was called Fort Wagner, and it stood on the beach about three miles north of the lighthouse, or say a mile south of Cumming’s Point; but there was another good work (Fort Gregg) on Cumming’s Point, and even before that was passed a ship came in range of Fort Beauregard and Fort Moultrie over on the north side of the harbor (Sullivan’s Island), and, later, of Fort Sumter, on an island midway between the north and south shores of the harbor, and of Fort Johnson, lying on the south side of the harbor. There were other earthworks about the harbor, and the two little island forts of Ripley and Pinckney ought, perhaps, to be considered, although they did nothing of consequence in the fighting.

These forts were armed during the attack made upon them on April 7, 1863, with the following guns that could bear upon the ships: Ten ten-inch smooth-bores, three nine-inch smooth-bores, two eight-inch rifles, nineteen eight-inch smooth-bores, eight thirty-two-pounder rifles, eighteen thirty-two-pounder smooth-bores, and ten ten-inch mortars. No detailed account is given of the landward bearing guns of these forts, but it may be said that the forts on Morris Island and James Island were well fitted to repel troops, while the harbor forts Moultrie and Sumter had nothing of account bearing toward the inner part of the harbor.

In addition to the forts, there were a lot of torpedoes, beginning in the channel off Fort Wagner and continuing around to a line of logs and chains stretched from Fort Sumter across the channel to Sullivan’s Island. It makes the gray-haired men of Charleston smile, in these days, when these channel obstructions are mentioned; for, as Bishop John Johnson—he who wrote “The Defence of Charleston Harbor,” a work that is entirely fair and most interesting—said to the writer: “The moral effect of these obstructions was excellent—excellent.” And so it was.

The first thing of importance done in Charleston harbor after establishing the blockade was in the line of strengthening the blockade, and not an attempt to reduce the city. This was the sinking of the “Stone Fleet.” On December 20, 1861, twenty old hulks of ships, well loaded with stone, were sunk in the channels. The importance of this work is found only in the fact that it brought out conspicuously the exact attitude of the British government toward that of the United States.

Let the reader observe, first of all, that the hulks were “so disposed as to obstruct navigation without impeding the flow of water.” They were “intended to establish at Charleston a combination of artificial interruptions resembling on a small scale those of Hell Gate or Holmes Hole, and producing, like them, eddies, whirlpools and counter currents, such as to render the navigation of an otherwise difficult channel hazardous and uncertain.” The last quotation is from a letter from Lord Lyons at Washington to the British Prime Minister.

Whether a nation has a right to close permanently a channel of commerce wholly within its own borders is a question that has never been decided by any international court, or any writer on international law, for that matter. At any rate, it is quite certain that if England chose to dam permanently a harbor as a war measure, she would not receive in kindly spirit any interference from a foreign power. But the fact is that the “Stone Fleet” was not sunk in Charleston’s channels with any idea that the hulks would “permanently injure” the harbor. It was well known to engineers in England, as well as in the United States, that when tidal currents over such sands as those at Charleston were interrupted in one place, they would cut new channels. It was further well known that these obstructions could be removed readily whenever there was need of doing so. With these facts in mind, the following extract from a letter of instructions written by Lord Russell to Lord Lyons about the “permanent” closing of Charleston harbor is of interest:

“Such a cruel plan would seem to imply despair of the restoration of the Union, the professed object of the war; for it never could be the wish of the United States government to destroy cities from which their own country was to derive a portion of its riches and prosperity. Such a plan could only be adopted as a measure of revenge and of irremediable injury against an enemy. Lord Lyons was further told that even as a scheme of embittered and sanguinary war such a measure would not be justifiable. It would be a plot against the commerce of all maritime nations, and against the free intercourse of the Southern States of America with the civilized world.”

The protest of France was of the same tenor, and when the French Chambers and the British Parliament met in January and February, 1862, the subject was vehemently discussed.

This was one of the first of a series of attempts made by the British government to aid in the destruction of the Union—a series that did not end until the United States laid the keels of a fleet of ships of which the Wampanoag was the type—ships that could carry a few one-hundred-pounder rifles and steam at the then unequalled rate of seventeen knots per hour. That the British government became friendly after the trial trip of the Wampanoag had been described in print is one of the most instructive incidents in the history of the American navy. If it be coupled with the facts that before the building of the modern Yankee White Squadron the British government refused even to consider a proposition for a general arbitration treaty between the two English-speaking nations, and that since the efficiency of the Yankee ships has been demonstrated the British were particularly in favor of such a treaty, the incident proves—but let the candid reader consider this matter in all its bearings for himself. The hull of the Wampanoag was designed by Constructor Delano, and the machinery by Engineer Isherwood. And it is written, “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

For a year after the sinking of the Stone Fleet the Union squadron off Charleston did nothing but the tedious work of interrupting commerce. During this time the Confederates, although Charleston had had nothing in the semblance of a shipyard, had been building two ironclads there, called the Palmetto State and the Chicora. Commodore D. N. Ingraham supervised the work. They were from plans by John L. Porter, the enterprising constructor of the Merrimac, and they were somewhat like her, though but 150 feet long by thirty-five broad, with a draft of twelve feet. They had the same kind of iron armor, backed by twenty-two inches of wood, and their guns included sixty-pounder and eighty-pounder rifles and some larger shell guns. The plating covered the ram-shaped bows, and was continued five feet below the water-line.

On the morning of January 31, 1863, the warships Housatonic, Ottawa, and Unadilla, with the armed merchantmen Mercedita, Keystone State, Quaker City, Memphis, Augusta, Stettin, and Flag were lying at wide intervals off Charleston harbor. There was a heavy fog lying low on the water. At 4.30 o’clock a ship suddenly appeared in the mists abeam of the Mercedita, Capt. Henry S. Stellwagen. The officer of the deck on the Union ship, manifestly believing the stranger was one of the blockading force, shouted:

“What steamer is that? Drop your anchor or you will be into us!” The reply that came was startling. It was made by Commodore Ingraham, and he said:

“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.

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.”

There is nothing in any report on either side to show that the flag was “promptly” rehoisted. There is nothing to show that Ingraham had any idea of taking possession of the Mercedita. In fact, he had no such idea. Scharf’s “Confederate States Navy” says (and, fortunately for this occasion, Scharf is a violent partisan rather than a historian) that “other vessels of the fleet assisted her to Port Royal for repairs.”

The Confederates followed this success by capturing the gunboat Isaac Smith in the Stono River, where, when scouting, she got among the Confederate batteries. Then the Union forces had a turn of good luck. The Confederate cruiser Nashville had been lying blockaded for a long time in the Great Ogeechee River. Fort McAllister guarded the river, and a line of piles prevented a dash past the fort, but Capt. John L. Worden, who commanded the Monitor, took a new monitor, the Montauk, to the line of piles, on February 28th, and while four other Union vessels fired on the fort, Worden shelled the Nashville at a range of 1,200 yards. The fort gunners kept up a furious but wild fire on Worden’s boat, but he got the range and burned the cruiser. Worden was always at least as proud of this event as he was of his fight with the Merrimac, and he had a right to be, for the marksmanship of his gunners was very much better on this occasion.

After all this preliminary work came the first serious attack on the Charleston defences.

“The order of battle was as follows: The Weehawken, Capt. John Rodgers, with a raft on the bows to explode torpedoes, led the line; the Passaic, Capt. Percival Drayton; the Montauk, Capt. John L. Worden; the Patapsco, Commander Daniel Ammen; the New Ironsides, Commodore Thomas Turner (as flagship), followed by the Catskill, Commander George W. Rodgers; the Nantucket, Commander D. M. Fairfax; the Nahant, Commander John Downes, and the Keokuk, Commander A. C. Rhind.

“The vessels were ordered to pass without returning the fire from batteries on Morris Island; when within easy range of Fort Sumter they were to open upon it, and take position to the north and west, at a distance of 800 yards, firing low, and at the centre embrasure. The necessity for precision of fire was enjoined.”

Of these nine ships the New Ironsides was a big broadside steamer with heavy iron plating, and she carried two 150-pounder rifles and fourteen eleven-inch Dahlgrens. The Keokuk was a sort of monitor with two fixed turrets, and the others were new monitors carrying one fifteen-inch Dahlgren, the solid shot of which weighed 440 pounds, and one eleven-inch Dahlgren, save only that the Patapsco carried a 150-pounder rifle in place of the smaller Dahlgren.

On April 7th this formidable squadron steamed up the channel. They did not get started until 1.15 P.M. because of the fouling of the big raft that was expected to serve as a torpedo-catcher in front of the leading monitor (Weehawken), but at 2.50 o’clock the squadron was within range of Fort Moultrie, and the Confederates opened fire. It was a battle in enclosed water—the Confederate gunners had the range marked to a yard with colored buoys, and the fire was hot from the first gun. But the squadron steamed slowly on until within about 1,000 yards of Fort Sumter. There is a clash of authorities as to the exact distance, but the point is of no consequence because it is certain that the distance of the ships was in no case less than 800 yards from Sumter. At 3.05 the ship at the head of the line opened fire. “A fifteen-inch shell fired at Sumter was watched until it struck on the northeast face; the fort was covered with a mass of dust from the bursting shell.” So says Ammen, and that tells the whole story of the effect of the attack. It kicked up a mighty dust. Some of the ships, including the flagship, became unmanageable. “Disregard motions of flagship” was signalled by Admiral Dupont, commanding. The ships were in a turmoil because of the tidal currents and the difficulty of seeing through the peep-holes and through the smoke. But they did not try to pass into the harbor and attack the forts in the rear. Capt. John Rodgers, of the Weehawken, in his report, tells why for himself and all the squadron:

“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.

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.

On June 17, 1863, she came down the Wilmington River, where the Weehawken and the Nahant were waiting for her. Several excursion steamers brought big loads of people to see her whip the monitors.

She opened fire on the Weehawken at a range of a mile and a half, and fired, in all, eight shots, of which not one hit the monitor. The Weehawken replied when at a range of 300 yards. The shot pierced the Atlanta’s casemate, and wounded sixteen men with splinters. The next shot from the monitor struck the Atlanta’s pilot-house, wounding both pilots and both wheelsmen. Three more shots were fired with less effect, but it was seen that the two monitors could shoot her to pieces, and Webb hauled down his flag. The action had lasted fifteen minutes.

Admiral John A. B. Dahlgren, whose name is familiar as a designer of great guns, relieved Dupont on July 6, 1863. The Union forces under General Gillmore were landed on the lower end of Morris Island, and Gillmore and Dahlgren planned a combined attack on Fort Wagner. It was made on the 10th. “At 9.30 the monitors opened on the work. The Admiral desired to get within grape-shot range, but was not able to get closer than about 1,200 yards, by reason of shoal water. The fire was promptly and vigorously returned till noon, when the monitors dropped down to allow the men to have dinner, after which they re-occupied their position and continued firing until 6 P.M., and then withdrew, the men having been fourteen hours employed. The weather was excessively hot. Five hundred and thirty-four shell and shrapnel were fired during the day.”

There were then ten or twelve guns on the seaward side of Wagner; but as Ammen says of Dupont’s attack on Sumter, “the effect of the fire of the vessels on the fort was not so observable as that of the enemy on the vessels.” The troops were also repulsed. On August 17, 1863, Gillmore was able to open on Sumter from land batteries, and Dahlgren, with four monitors and the New Ironsides, attacked Wagner, while seven gunboats used their pivots on the fort at long range. Late in the day Dahlgren, with the Passaic and Patapsco (monitors), went within 2,000 yards of Sumter. Wagner was silenced, but Fort Gregg kept up a steady fire. Commander George W. Rodgers, a favorite in the navy, was killed on the Catskill in this fight. The walls of Sumter were damaged somewhat by the monitor fire.

On August 23d five monitors opened on Sumter at a range of 800 yards. Dahlgren wrote to the department that morning: “I propose passing Sumter into the harbor, if the obstructions are not of such a nature as to prevent it,” and adds that “the gorge of Sumter has been completely ruined” by Union batteries on shore, of which one of four guns was worked by naval men. But he did not make the attempt to pass the fort, and never did.

Meantime Gillmore had been pushing forward the parallels—rolling waves of sand toward Fort Wagner, and the Confederates were hard pressed, but a truce for an exchange of prisoners (the Union forces did not know how badly the Confederates were pressed) gave the garrison a chance to rebuild their defences. On September 2d Dahlgren reports that the monitors were within 500 yards of Sumter during the night before. “The firing was steadily maintained.” Sumter returned two shots only. “Our fire was also directed at the floating obstructions that had been reported from day to day.” “The vessels were engaged five hours.” Of night attacks Beauregard, the Confederate general, said:

“This plan of attack could have been repeated every night until the walls of the fort should have crumbled under the enormous missiles which made holes two and a half feet deep in the walls, and shattered the latter in an alarming manner. I could not then have repaired during the day the damages of the night, and I am confident now, as I was then, that Fort Sumter, if thus attacked, must have been disabled.”

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.”

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:

“This boat, the first of the class known as ‘Davids,’ was built at his own expense by a citizen of Charleston, Mr. Theodore D. Stoney. He was aided in fitting it out by the counsel of Capt. F. D. Lee and Dr. St. Julien Ravenel. Having a length of about thirty feet, a diameter of five and a half feet at its middle, and ballasted so as to float deeply in the water, it was painted above the line a bluish-gray color. The torpedo, carried at its bow by a hollow iron shaft about fourteen feet ahead of the boat, was a copper cylinder charged with about 100 pounds of rifle powder, and provided with four sensitive tubes of lead containing an explosive mixture.”

Lieut. W. T. Glassell, with three men, went out on the night of October 5, 1863, and ran the torpedo against the side of the New Ironsides. It was exploded three feet under water, where the ship’s armor was three inches thick and the wood backing sufficient. No material harm was done, but the water thrown up partly submerged the tiny boat, and she was abandoned by all but one man, who could not swim. He held on to her, and, as she did not sink, another of her crew came to her as she drifted with the tide, and the two took her back to Charleston. Glassell and the other man were taken prisoners.

The boat was called David because, although small, she was supposed to be a match for any nautical Goliath afloat.

The partial success of this boat encouraged the Confederates to construct others. The most famous of these was built at Mobile, in 1863, by Hundley & McClintock, according to Scharf, and while there she sank, and drowned her crew. She was raised and taken to Charleston, where Beauregard put her in service. As described by the Confederate General Maury:

“She was built of boiler iron, about thirty-five feet long, and was manned by a crew of nine men, eight of whom worked the propeller by hand; the ninth steered the boat and regulated her movements below the surface of the water; she could be submerged at pleasure to any desired depth, or could be propelled on the surface. In smooth still water she could be exactly controlled, and her speed was about four knots. It was intended that she should approach any vessel lying at anchor, pass under her keel, and drag a floating torpedo, which would explode on striking the side or bottom of the ship attacked. She could remain submerged for half an hour without inconvenience to her crew.”

The story of her career in Charleston, as told by Scharf, is one of the most striking in naval warfare, for it shows the quality of the American when fully in earnest:

“Lieut. Payne, C. S. N., and a crew of eight men were preparing to take her out for action one night when she was swamped by the wash of a passing steamer and all hands except Payne were drowned. Again she was raised, and once more sunk—this time at Fort Sumter wharf, when six men were drowned, Payne and two others escaping. When she was brought to the surface, Hundley took her into the Stono River, where, after making several successful dives, she stuck her nose into the mud, and every soul on board perished by suffocation. For the fourth time she was raised, and experiments were made with her in Charleston harbor. She worked beautifully until she attempted to dive under the receiving ship Indian Chief, when she fouled a cable, and once more she proved a coffin for every man within her. Divers brought her up a week later, and Lieut. George E. Dixon, of Capt. Cothran’s Co. of the 21st Ala. Inf’y, asked permission of Gen. Beauregard to try her against the Housatonic, a splendid new ship-of-war, which lay in the North Channel off Beach Inlet.

“Beauregard consented, but only on the condition that she should not be used as a submarine machine, but operating on the surface of the water, and with a spar torpedo in the same manner as the David. All the thirty or more men who had met death in the ‘fish’ were volunteers, but Dixon had no difficulty in finding another volunteer crew ready to take the same risks. They were Arnold Becker, C. Simpkins, James A. Wicks, F. Collins, and —— Ridgway, all of the Confederate navy, and Capt. J. F. Carlson, of Captain Wagoner’s company of artillery.

“It was a little before nine o’clock, on the evening of February 17, 1864, when Master J. K. Crosby, officer of the deck of the Housatonic, detected the torpedo-boat, a scant hundred yards away from the ship. It looked to him, he said, ‘like a plank moving along the water,’ and before he decided to give the alarm, he had lost the seconds in which he might have saved his vessel. When he did pass the word, her cable was slipped, her engine backed and all hands called to quarters; but Dixon had closed on her and fired his torpedo on the starboard side, just forward of her mainmast. A hole was knocked in her side extending below her water line and she went down in four minutes. Five of the Housatonic’s people were killed by the shock or drowned; the remainder took refuge in the rigging, from which they were rescued by other vessels of the fleet. But the victory of the ‘fish’ was fatal to herself and her crew. Whether she was swamped by the column of water thrown up by the explosion, or was carried down by the suction of the sinking Housatonic, will never be known; but she went under never to rise again, and the lives of all on board were sacrificed.”

All the current histories of the war say that this David was found after the war on the bottom, within a hundred yards of the wreck of the Housatonic, but Johnson says the story is not confirmed. But that the men gave their lives to accomplish the work is certain.

This chapter may very well close with the story of a brave colored man, a Charleston harbor pilot, named Robert Small, at that time a slave. He was employed on the Confederate transport steamer Planter. On the morning of May 13, 1862, Small made one of the most remarkable dashes for liberty known to history. The Planter was lying at the pier, near army headquarters. The captain having gone on shore, Small, from the pilot-house, directed the lines holding her to the pier cast off, and it was done. He then headed out to sea, with the Confederate flag flying above her taffrail. As he passed Sumter and the other forts, he saluted them with three long blasts of the whistle in the usual fashion, and they dipped their flags in return. His boldness saved him from suspicion, and when beyond the line of fire he hauled down the Confederate flag, sent up a white one, and gave the ship to the Union forces.