L. P. Brockett, The camp, the battlefield, and the hospital: or, lights and shadows of the great rebellion

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[464] “Sassacus” felt that their only chance of injuring their antagonist was to throw their shots with accuracy into her open ports, and that upon their own frail wooden vessel the enemy's every shot would tell with terrible effect. Muzzle to muzzle, the guns were served and fired, the powder from those of the “Albemarle” blackening the bows and side of the “Sassacus,” as they passed within ten feet. A solid shot from the latter's hundred pounder struck the “Albemarle's” port sill, and crumbled into fragments, one piece rebounding to the deck of the “Sassacus,” and the rest entering the port hole and silencing the enemy's gun. Through the same opening, followed, in rapid succession, a nine inch solid shot, and a twenty pounder shell, and as the tough-hided “ram” drifted clear, the starboard wheel of the “Sassacus” ground over her quarter, smashing the launches that she .was towing into shapeless drift wood, and grating over the sharp iron plates with a raw, dismal sound. Then, as the “ram” passed the wheel of the “Sassacus,” the crew of the latter drove solid shot into her ports from their after guns-and her armor was rent by a solid shot from the Parrott rifle gun, which, however, had received such damage to its elevating screw that it could not be depressed so as to fire into the enemy's ports. All this cool gunnery and precise artillery practice transpired while the ship, from fire room to hurricane deck, was shrouded in one dense cloud of fiery steam. The situation was appalling as imagination can conceive. The shrieks of the scalded and dying sufferers, rushing frantically up from below, the shrivelled flesh hanging shred-like from their tortured limbs, the engine without control, surging and revolving without check or guide, abandoned by