3 ^
herself within one foot of the bottom, and under the influence of the currentsteered so badly that it became necessary to drop an anchor to bring herhead to tide. The anchor was quickly raised, and she was again under way,but the delay threw the line into some unavoidable confusion, and two of thefollowing monitors came in harmless collision with the flag-ship. They weredirected to go on, disregarding the order of sailing, and the Ironsides quicklyfollowed them; but when it was fifteen hundred yards or less from Sumter,the same difficulty in steering occurred, and the anchor was again dropped toprevent stranding and to bring the ship’s head in the right direction. As theIronsides swung to the tide into deeper water, she came directly over a hugetorpedo, made from an old boiler, filled with gunpowder, and connected withBattery Wagner by an electric wire; but, fortunately for those on board, theelectrician at Battery Wagner, to his great disgust, could not send the electricspark to the powder. The officers of the Ironsides were unaware of theirdanger until a letter from Mr. Cheves, the electrician in charge, to an officeron board the Atlanta , and captured in that vessel, revealed the fact, statingthat had he himself been allowed to place the Yankee flag-ship, he could nothave put her more precisely over his great torpedo. [See map, p. 3.]
In his order for the day, Admiral Du Pont had planned to deliver his firstattack upon the north-west face of Sumter, passing inside the gorge of theharbor for that purpose, and lingering before the fort until he should havereduced it, or at least silenced its fire. The Weehawken , the leading monitor,pressing forward with this view, came to the floating obstructions betweenSumter and Moultrie, and the probability of her screw being entangled andthe vessel held immovable under a fire more deadly than any ship had everbefore encountered led her commander to turn from the obstructions andbegin the attack short of the place designated in the plan of battle. As heturned, a torpedo exploded under him, giving a shock but no serious injuryto the monitor. In the whole navy there was no cooler, more gallant, morejudicious man than John Rodgers. It was he who had fought the Galena sodesperately under the fire at Drewry’s Bluff, and continued the action untilhis ammunition was exhausted, his ship riddled, and his loss of men verysevere. [See Yol. II., p. 270.] It was ho to whom Secretary Welles wrote,June 25th, 1863:
“ To your heroic daring and persistent moral coin-age, beyond that of any other individual,is the country indebted for the development, under trying and varied circumstances on theocean, under enormous batteries on land, and in successful rencontre with a formidable floatingantagonist, of the capabilities and qualities of attack and resistance of the monitor class ofvessels and their heavy armament.”
No officer in the navy was better qualified to command its confidencewhen he decided not to attempt to force the obstructions. He was followedby Percival Drayton, Farragut’s trusted and well-tried clnef-of-staff, by JohnWorden, of monitor fame, and by that grim, true-hearted, fighting man,Daniel Ammen. These, all turning short of the obstructions, threw thevessels following into some confusion, and caused the Ironsides to lose hersteerage-way and to anchor as already mentioned.