Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[797] opened on ours, and before an hour's time we had captured the two hundred and eighteen men who had not time to march one mile, and who denied having marched at all within that time,--the over-plus men that could not be put in the bomb-proofs of the fort.

I ran out to the Malvern, for the fleet had come to anchor, and asked Admiral Porter what could be done. He informed me that he had exhausted his ammunition, and that he must go to Beaufort to replenish. As it took him four days to put in his ammunition at a time when I supposed his vessels were already nearly full, I thought it would take him quite as long to fill them when they were quite empty. Now Beaufort was some seventy miles off, and as it would take him at least four days to go there and back, he would be absent certainly a week.

The gale was increasing, and by ten o'clock the sea got so high that I could get off no more men that night with my utmost efforts. In the morning my vessel was rolling so that no man not a sailor could stand on deck, and it was impossible for the navy to come in or open fire upon the fort even if they had had ammunition,--and it will be seen by looking at the report and letter that many of his vessels were actually out of the larger kinds of ammunition. The fleet could do nothing so long as the wind remained as it was then, which was nearly southwest, and if it should shift to the easterly or northeasterly they would be driven on shore. Consequently they must get an offing or be driven on shore. For if they waited there, rolling as the sea was rolling my ship, the fire of the fleet would have amounted to nothing, for under such circumstances their shot would not, with any certainty, have hit a county. But when the fleet retired my men would have no heavy guns to protect them, and would be exposed to attack by large numbers on the peninsula. They might possibly intrench against these, but they would also be exposed to the fire of the heavy guns of the fort, of which there were still sixteen uninjured and bearing directly up the beach. The beach at that point was not more than a third of a mile wide, and the wind of the storm would not affect the accuracy of the enemy's fire from the fort Besides, the drenching rains of the storm would cause suffering and sickness among the unprotected men, as their tents had not been and could not be got on shore, and not even their medical stores had been landed. The fact that as