Feb. 6, 1862. |
1 Report of Commander Foote to the Secretary of the Navy, February 6, 1862. Commander Stembel and Lieutenant-Commander Phelps were sent to hoist the Union flag over the fort, and to invite General Tilghman on board the commodore's flag-ship. When, an hour later, Grant arrived, the fort and all the spoils of victory were turned over to him. General Tilghman, and Captain Jesse Taylor of Tennessee, who was the commander of the fort, with ten other commissioned officers, with subordinates and privates in the fort, were made prisoners. It was said that the General and some of his officers attempted to escape, but were confronted by sentinels who had been pressed into the service, and who now retaliated by doing their duty strictly. They refused to let them pass the line, such being their orders, and threatened to shoot the first man who should attempt it.
2 The National loss was two killed and thirty-eight wounded, and the Confederates had five killed and ten wounded. Of the Nationals, twenty-nine were wounded and scalded on the gun-boat Essex, Captain W. D. Porter; some of them mortally. This calamity was caused by a 82-pound shot entering the boiler of the Essex. It had passed through the edge of a bow port, through a bulkhead, into the boiler, in which, fortunately, there was only about sixty pounds of steam. In its passage it took off a portion of the head of Lieutenant S. B. Brittain, Jr., one of Porter's aids. He was a son of the Rev. S. B. Brittain, of New York, and a very promising youth, not quite seventeen years of age. He was standing very near Commander Porter at the time, with one hand on that officer's shoulder, and the other on his own cutlass. Captain Porter was badly scalded by the steam that escaped, but recovered. That officer was a son of Commodore David Porter, famous in American annals as the commander of the Essex in the war of 1812; and he inherited his father's bravery and patriotism. The gun-boat placed under his command was named Essex, in honor of his father's memory.
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