Disasters to the Fleet. 223 Twenty heavy guns tween three and four hundred yards of their teeth. His intention was to silence the batteries and pass them, so as to gain a position to enfilade the faces of the fort with broadsides.* The firing on both sides was soon very accurate, rapid, and destructive. The shot and shell from the fleet plowed into the lower batteries, dismounting guns and driving away the gunners, while the heavy cannon of the fort played incessantly upon the sides and decks of the boats. "Never was a little squadron exposed to so terrible a fire. were trained upon it, those from the hill-side hurling plunging shot with awful precision and effect, while the boats could reply with only twelve guns."+ Notwithstanding this furious fire from the fort at a higher level, and at so great an advantage, raking the broadsides of the boat obliquely, in which some of the 128-pound shots crushed through the iron armor, carrying destruction with them, the boats held on constantly to their work, until the upper battery of four guns was silenced, and the men were distinctly seen flying from the lower battery, and the vessels were just on the point of shooting by and gaining a favorable position. It is said (and we give this as an unauthenticated report) that at this time of the height of the combat Pillow telegraphed to Governor Harris: "The Federal gun-boats are destroying us. For God's sake, send us all the help you can immediately. the land force of the enemy; they can't hurt us if you can keep those iron hell-hounds in check." At this critical moment, when things looked as if victory were almost in their grasp, the Louisville was disabled by a shot which cut away her rudder-chains, making her totally unmanageable, so that she drifted with the current out of action. Very soon after the St. Louis was disabled by a shot through her pilot-house, I don't care for * Lossing's "Civil War in America," vol. ii., p. 213. + Ibid., vol. ii., p. 213. rendering her steering impossible, so that she also floated down the river. The other two armored vessels were also terribly struck, and a rifled cannon on the Carondelet burst, so that these two could no longer, by themselves, sustain the action; and after fighting for more than an hour, the little fleet was forced to withdraw. The immediate object of the attack of the gun-boats, viz., to silence the formidable river batteries, and to obtain a good position to bombard the upper works in co-operation with the assault of the land forces, which was all, in fact, that the flotilla had the power of doing, since there was a whole army within the fortifications to be dislodged and conquered, and the boats could not walk upon land-this object of the attack was on the point of being successfully attained, when the unforeseen casualties that have been related occurred. It was indeed a hard disappointment after such persistent fighting. Foote, it is said, wept like a child when the order to withdraw was given. The St. Louis was struck fifty-nine times; the Louisville thirty-six times; the Carondelet twenty-six; the Pittsburg twenty; and the four vessels receiving no less than one hun dred and forty-one wounds. The attack was repulsed, but it was through the imperfection of the boats themselves in not having sufficient protection to their machinery, wheels, and steering apparatus; but the demoralizing influence of their fierce bombardment upon the fort could not have been small, and must have helped toward the great but hard-won success of the next day. At all events, the gun-boats did what they could, and, until rendered entirely helpless for action, drifting like logs in the rapid current, they were fought with a determined energy that looked, even to the last moment, only to victory. The fleet, gathering itself together, and rendering mutual help to its disabled members, proceeded to Cairo to repair damages, intending to return immediately with a stronger |