THE DEFENSE OF CHARLESTON.
11
Lieutenant-Colonel J. C. Simkins, with three companies of the 1st SouthCarolina Infantry (regulars) and six guns: five 10-inch and one 8-inchColumbiads. 4. Battery Beauregard, under Captain Julius A. Sitgreaves,with two companies of regulars—one from Sumter and one from Moultrie—and three guns : an 8-inch Colambiad and two 32-pounders, rifled. 5. Bat-tery Wagner, under Major C. K. Huger, with two companies of regulars fromSumter. There four guns were used: one 32-pounder, rifled; one 24-pounder, rifled; and two smooth-bore 32-pounders. 6. Cumming’s Point Bat-tery, under Lieutenant Henry R. Lesesne, with a detachment of regulars fromPort Sumter. Two guns were engaged: one 10-inch Columbiad and one 8-inch Dalilgren. The number of guns actually engaged on our side against theiron-clad fleet, on the 7th of April, was therefore 69, of which five were mortars.
Two companies of infantry had been placed on Sullivan’s and Morrisislands, to guard against a land attack. Commodore Ingraham had alsobeen cautioned to hold the gun-boats Palmetto State and Ghicora in readinessto assist our batteries in case of need; but they were not needed.
The approach of the monitors was slow and cautious. They dreaded therope obstructions which were known to be connected with heavily chargedtorpedoes. ]) But the report afterward circulated,— to which Mr. Sewardgave the weight of his official name,— that the “ rope obstructions in thechannel fouled the screws of the iron-clads,” was entirely erroneous. Not°ne of the iron-clads ever approached nearer than 600 yards to any of theseobstructions, with the exception of the Keokuk, which dropped in to about300 yards of them before being able to get under way again.
The first shot was fired at 3 o’clock p. m. It came from Fort Moultrie, and^as aimed at the WeehawJcen. No heed was taken of it. \ The turreted iron-clad kept on her way until within fourteen hundred yards of Fort Sumter,when she paused a moment and opened fire on it. Fully two minutes elapsed,and then Sumter replied, firing by battery. The other monitors nowsteamed up, taking their respective positions, but with apparent hesitationand as far out of range as possible. The action had become general, Sumterbeing the central point of the attack. An occasional shot was sent at Moul-b'ie, an occasional one at Batteries Bee and Beauregard.
The spectacle of this singular combat between the fort and what appearedto be nine floating iron turrets—for the hulls of the monitors were almostwholly submerged—was, iudeed, an impressive one, not to be easily forgotten.
After a lapse of about three-quarters of an hour, Admiral Du Pout’s flag-ship, the New Ironsides , advanced to within some seventeen hundredyards of Sumter, evidently with a view to breach its walls. But the con-centrated fire from our batteries forced her to withdraw hurriedly out ofrange, as the Passaic had already done, in an apparently crippled condition.The fire of Sumter was so accurate that two other monitors were compelled
I In commenting on this passage Major Johnohnson savs in a letter to the editors: “ After the®tost thorough study of all the evidence, I am con-^ere were no torpedoes in connectionWith those rope obstructions until a later date.”