Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 4.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[364] to go to the quartermaster to request all that was necessary for the first works was so frightened at such an undertaking that he asked, as we are assured, to be furnished with a hundred men eighteen feet high, to the end, said he, that they might work without danger.

These difficulties did not stop Colonel Serrell: experiments made with care proved that this mud would stand a pressure, equally distributed, of about five thousand two hundred and fifty pounds to the square yard. It was on this foundation that it was intended to establish a battery capable of receiving and sheltering a two-hundred-pounder Parrott gun (nearly eight inches calibre), weighing more than fifteen thousand pounds. We have seen that the foundation could support a considerable weight, provided it was perfectly poised. But it was to be feared that once the firing had commenced the shaking produced by the recoil of the piece would disturb the equilibrium, and gradually cause the entire construction resting on that moving ground to sink. To avoid this danger, the parapet and the platform were established upon absolutely independent bases. Trunks of pine trees sixteen to twenty yards long were cut down in the woods on Folly Island and carried by the bayou to the location of the battery; four rafts were formed by fastening these logs one to another; then two of the rafts were placed one way, the other two another perpendicular to the first, and all four were joined at their extremities so as to form an immense rectangular floor, leaving an empty square in the middle. The surface of this square had been calculated in accordance with the coefficient of resistance of the superficial yard of mud and with the weight of the cubic yard of sand, so as to be able to bear a parapet of a height and thickness sufficient to shelter the piece and the gunners. The rafts were separated from the mud by alternate beds of grass and tarred cloth, which prevented it from getting in between the logs, and distributed the weight of the load equally. Even the parapet was made up of sandbags piled on one another on three sides of the floor, the fourth being used solely to connect the other three together. The platform of the piece was placed on piles in the space remaining vacant in the middle of the flooring. A square coffer was formed with sheet piles driven into the mud