This text is part of:
[445] men, two or three hundred of whom were under Major Andrews, the commander of the forts; the rest, under Colonel Martin, consisted of the Seventh North Carolina regiment. The entire control of the maritime defences of the State was entrusted to Commodore Barron. These three commanders did not agree; the soldiers were inexperienced, the artillery of too small a calibre, and poorly supplied; for the want of fuses to fire the shells it was necessary to fill them with sand. But the works were strong, and the heavy swell of the Atlantic made it dangerous to attempt a landing. The Washington government decided to send a combined expedition to destroy these works and to obstruct the Hatteras Inlet by sinking a few old hulks in it. To accomplish this object the frigate Minnesota, the sloops-of-war Wabash and Pawnee, and the advice-boat Harriet Lane repaired to Newport News, under command of Commodore Stringham. These vessels were to be joined by the frigate Susquehanna and the sailing sloopof-war Cumberland. At the same time, General Butler, who had been superseded by General Wool, but who still retained command of the forces encamped at Newport News, embarked with nine hundred men on two large steamers and an advice-boat. The combined squadron got under way on the 26th of August, and on the following day anchored in deep water in sight of Hatteras Inlet. Operations commenced on the morning of the 28th; while the fleet was bombarding Fort Clark preparations were hastened for landing. The heavy naval artillery soon established its superiority over the five guns of inferior calibre which constituted the armament of the redoubt. The Federal frigates, steaming slowly in front of that work, poured shells into it, and soon silenced its fire. Fort Hatteras tried in vain to reach them; the distance was too great for its thirty-two pounders. The bombardment had commenced at ten o'clock; towards half-past 12 the two works had ceased firing; their flags had been lowered; and the defenders of Fort Clark, escaping in small squads, went, without orders, to seek refuge behind the parapets of Hatteras. In the mean time, a portion of the troops which the fleet had brought over effected a landing, notwithstanding the serious difficulties they had to encounter. To accomplish this disembarkation they
Philadelphia, Jos. H. Coates and co., 1876.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.