Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

---

[193] pound howitzer, were landed safely, but in attempting to land more, two gunboats were swamped in the surf. In the mean time the fleet opened a tremendous bombardment upon one of the Confederate works, Fort Clark. The ships, secure in their distance, and formidable by their long range guns, kept up a terrific fire, which rained nine and eleven inch shells upon the fort, at the rate of seven in a minute, shattering to pieces the wooden structures exposed, killing and wounding a few of the men, and cutting down the flag-staff from which floated the Confederate ensign. Finding the work untenable, it was decided by Commodore Barron, the Confederate officer in command, to retire to Fort Hatteras.

At half-past 8 o'clock the next morning, the Federal fleet steamed in from the ocean, and approaching within a mile and a quarter of Fort Hatteras, renewed the bombardment. The unequal combat continued for some hours. Assaulted by nearly a hundred heavy cannon, the fort was unable to reach effectively with its feeble thirty-two pounders, the ships which lay at a safe distance, pouring from their ten-inch rifle pivot guns a storm of shells upon the bomb-proofs and batteries. About noon, the fort surrendered. The loss of the Confederates was ten killed, thirteen wounded, and six hundred and sixty-five prisoners. The Federals had live men wounded.

But the Federals were to obtain a much more important success at a point on the coast further south. In the latter part of October a great fleet of war-ships and transports began to arrive at Old Point, and in a few days they were ready for their departure. So formidable an armament had never before assembled in the waters of America. The naval force was under the command of Capt. Dupont, flag-officer of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron; it consisted of fifteen war-steamers; the land force was embarked in thirty steam vessels and six sailing ships, and was under the command of Gen. T. W. Sherman. The whole force fell very little below twenty-five thousand men.

On the 3d of November the fleet was descried approaching the southern coast of South Carolina; and then for the first time it became apparent that the point they sought was Port Royal harbour. To defend the harbour and approaches to Beaufort, the Confederates had erected two sand forts-one at Hilton Head, called Fort Walker, and the other at Bay Point, called Fort Beauregard. The first had sixteen guns mounted, most of them thirty-two pounders. Fort Beauregard mounted eight guns, none of the heaviest calibre. The garrisons and forces in the vicinity, numbering about three thousand men, were under the command of Gen. Drayton.

Having carefully reconnoitred the position and strength of the forts, a bombardment was opened on Fort Walker in the morning of the 7th of November. The fleet steamed forward, delivering its broadsides with ceaseless violence, then turning in a sharp elliptic, it steamed back in the