Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events: Documents and Narratives, Volume 6.
Frank Moore, Ed.

[340] off Galveston. Here an ominous sight awaited her in the ruined lighthouse on Bolivar Point — a long sandy reach stretching toward the town from the east. The upper portion of the tower, of whitewashed brick, had been destroyed, the light extinguished, the house below burned, as afterward appeared, on the night of Sunday, the twenty-eighth, by the rebels, in anticipation of the arrival of Union troops. The signal of the Mary A. Boardman being answered by the flagship Westfield, that vessel came out to meet her, and Com. Renshaw sent an officer and pilot on board, when the Mary's crew learned for the first time that Magruder was in command at Virginia Point, with heavy reenforcements, threatening active hostilities.

The Mary A. Boardman crossed the first bar of the harbor in company with the Westfield, just at sunset, the day dying magnificently, the declining sun lighting up the windows of the city with dazzling lustre. Passing the inner bar, she came to anchor up Bolivar's Channel, on the eastern side of Pelican Island, in the still water below the town, the flag-ship doing the like, within hailing distance, only a little nearer to Bolivar's Point. Seaward, further down, lay the Saxon. A fine, calm, moonlight night succeeded the day; it was a little hazy, but without fog, and very quiet; one could see objects distinctly, hear the dash of the waves on the beach, and their ripple on the bay. And so the last night of the year settled down on Galveston.

Up to half-past 2 o'clock A. M., every thing remained tranquil, but just then, when the moon was disappearing in the western haze, and the specks of light on the vessels burned all the brighter for the gathering darkness, the Harriet Lane signalled suddenly, announcing danger. From her post at the inner extremity of the town she had discerned an uprising within it — an attack upon our three hundred Massachusetts soldiers. Almost simultaneously, four rebel gunboats were discovered, either by the Clifton or Westfield, coming down the bay. Immediately the signalled vessels answered, and the Westfield, hauling up her anchor, got under way, intending to cross the Pelican Spit and run up to the wharves, abreast the town.

The flag-ship aground! A fatal mischance! Drifted by the current directly on to the island, in shoal-water, at full tide, there she struck on her bows and there remained. A thousand-ton boat, one of the best of our blockading fleet, with a rudder at each end, double boilers, and seventy feet breadth of beam, she lay in the sand immovable.

And first she signalled to the Clifton (another vessel of the same sort, and, like the Westfield, well known to Staten Islanders and holiday New-Yorkers) to come alongside and tug her off, and the Clifton tugged and tugged, and could not effect it. At this juncture Commodore Renshaw sent a warning to the Mary A. Boardman concerning the rebel gunboats, and resumed his pilot, Mr. Davis, who had remained on board the former. Leaving the Westfield for a while, until the tragic interest of the scene shall culminate in her, let us turn our eyes (still from the deck of the Mary A. Boardman) to what is transpiring elsewhere.

The fighting began in the town at from three to half-past 3 A. M., and raged furiously. It appeared in the upper portion, where Colonel Burrill's men were encamped, above the gas works, at three wharves distance below where the Harriet Lane lay. From warehouses, wharves, windows, and house-tops, a hellish fire of musketry had opened upon the devoted three hundred of the Forty-second Massachusetts, while light artillery raked the streets leading to the water-side. To this the Harriet Lane responded, first by throwing solid shot from her two nine-inch guns, and then by shell from her rifled cannon and twenty-pounders, throwing them in the direction of the railroad bridge, by which it was only too evident that the rebels were swarming to the attack. Their batteries — the four before mentioned — were all active. They had crossed with upward of three thousand infantry, commanded by Magruder in person, bringing artillery on the cars. At this time it was as dark as Erebus; a blackness illumined only by the flash of cannon, the bursting of shell, and the quick, intermittent sparkle of musketry. The sounds, at once horrible and indescribable, welcoming this ghastly New-Year's morning, need not be dwelt upon.

As soon as the firing began, two of the rebel gunboats had borne down upon the Harriet Lane and engaged her. One was a huge, long, high-pressure Mississippi steamer, of the usual two-story build, with her tall chimneys cut down, piled four bales high with cotton, her paddle-boxes hidden by them, faced with planking and cross-pieces, and manned — the upper and lower decks — with sharp-shooters. The other, a stern-wheel boat, slow and small, partook of the character of a ram, being armed with one pivot-gun, and faced, even to the top of her solitary chimney, with railroad iron, so that the black smoke exuded as from the conical roof. Both of these anomalous monsters assailed the Harriet Lane, evidently intending to board her, she in her turn throwing shell at them, some of which ricocheted for half a mile upon the surface of the water, her object being to strike them below the guards and sink them. This, however, she did not effect, and steadily they approached, the ram careening over to one side, as if ill balanced, and the sharp-shooters on the steamer keeping up an incessant fusilade from her decks and the tops of the cotton-bales, where they clustered like bees.

To the assistance of the Harriet Lane came the Owasco and the little Sachem, a combatant worthy of mention. A light-draft steamer, she had put into Galveston in an almost unseaworthy condition, and had been ordered to lie by the wharf to protect Col. Burrill's men; with her one large rifle-gun and two small ones she joined battle with all the courage of a first-class man-of-war.

So, presently, did the Clifton, temporarily relinquishing the hope of rescuing the Westfield, and making to the scene of action, but her progress was not unchallenged. As she turned to