Nov. 7, 1861. |
 |
| Plan of battle at Port Royal entrance. |
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its weakest flank, and enfilade its two water faces.1 The vessels were to pass abreast of the fort very slowly, in the order of battle, and each avoid becoming a fixed mark for the Confederate guns.
On reaching the shoal ground making off from the extremity of Hilton Head, the line was to turn to the north by the east, and, passing to the northward, to engage Fort Walker with the port battery nearer than when first on the same course.
These evolutions were to be repeated.
The captains of the vessels were called on board the Wabash, and fully instructed in the manner of proceeding; and this plan of pursuing a series of elliptical movements was strictly followed in the engagement that ensued.
The signal to get under way was given at eight o'clock in the morning,
and the action commenced at about half-past, nine, by a gun at Fort Walker, which was instantly followed by one at Fort Beauregard.
The Wabash immediately responded, and was followed by the Susquehanna. After the first prescribed turn, the signal for closer action was given, at a quarter past ten, the Wabash passing Fort Walker at a distance, when abreast, of eight hundred yards. In the designated order the fight went on. At half-past 11 the flag of Fort Walker was shot away, and the heavy guns of the Wabash and Susquehanna had so “discomforted the enemy,” as Dupont reported, and the shells from the smaller vessels were falling so thickly upon them at the enfilading point,2 that their fire became sensibly weaker and weaker, until their guns ceased altogether to reply.
At a quarter past one P. M., the Ottawa signalled that the fort was abandoned.
Fort Beauregard was also silent and abandoned.
The garrisons of both had fled for their lives.
According to the official and unofficial reports of the Confederate officers and correspondents, Fort Walker had become the scene of utter desolation, at noon. Dismounted cannon lay in all directions, and the dead
and dying were seen on every side.
The place had become utterly untenable, yet it was a perilous thing
2 Commander John Rogers, in a letter to a friend, said:
During the action I looked carefully at the fort with a powerful spy-glass. Shell fell in it, not twenty-eight in a minute, but as fast as a horse's feet beat the ground in a gallop. The resistance was heroic; but what could flesh and blood do against such a fire? . . . . . . The Wabash was a destroying angel, hugging the shore, calling the soundings with cold indifference, slowing the engine so as only to give steerage-way, signalling to the vessels their various evolutions, and at the same time raining shells, as with target practice, too fast to count.
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