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| The channels of Charleston Harbob. |
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opened a brisk fire into the woods in their front.
The Seventy-ninth New York led. Very soon a concealed battery near the Ferry was encountered.
It opened upon them with grape and canister, but was soon silenced by a close encounter, in which the Eighth Michigan bore the brunt.
The Fiftieth Pennsylvania pressed forward to the support of these and the Highlanders, but very little fighting occurred after the first onset.
The Confederates, seeing the gun-boats Seneca, Ellen, Pembina, and Ottawa coming forward, abandoned their works and fled, and the Pennsylvania “Round heads” passed over the Ferry and occupied them.
At four o'clock in the afternoon, General Stevens joined them.
The works were demolished, and the houses in the vicinity were burned.
General Stevens's loss was nine wounded, one of them (Major Watson, of the Eighth Michigan) mortally.
While the National forces were thus gaining absolute control of the South Carolina coast islands, and the blockading ships, continually multiplying on the Atlantic and on the Gulf, were watching every avenue of ingress or egress for violators of the law, the Government, profiting by the hint given by the insurgents themselves, several months before, in sinking obstructions in the channel leading up to Norfolk,1 proceeded to close, in like manner, the main entrances to the harbors of Charleston and Savannah.
For that purpose a number of condemned merchant vessels, chiefly whalers, were found in New England harbors, and purchased by order of the Secretary of the Navy. Twenty-five of them, each of three or four hundred tons burden, were stripped of their copper
per bottoms, and were as heavily laden as their strength would permit, with blocks of granite, for the purpose of closing up Charleston harbor.
In their sides, below water-mark, holes were bored, in which movable plugs were inserted, so that when these vessels reached their destination these might be drawn, and the water allowed to pour in.
This “stone fleet,” as it was called, reached the blockading squadron off Charleston at the middle of December, and on the 20th, sixteen of the vessels,2 from New Bedford and New London, were sunk on the bar at the entrance of the Main Ship channel,3 six miles in a direct southern line from Fort Sumter.
This was done under the superintendence of Fleet-captain Charles H. Davis.
They were placed at intervals, checkerwise, so as to form
1 See page 398, volume I.
2 One of these vessels was named Ceres. It had been an armed store-ship of the British navy, and as such was in Long Island Sound during the old war for Independence, when it was captured by the Americans.
3 There are four channels leading out from Charleston harbor. The Main Ship channel runs southward along Morris Island. Maffitt's channel, on the northern side of the entrance, is along the south side of Sullivan's Islanild. Between these are the North channel and the Swash channel, the former having eight, and the latter nine feet of water on the bar. The Main Ship channel had fifteen feet, and Maffitt's channel eleven.
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