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

The monitors, that had so often braved the artillery of the Confederates and escaped from their torpedoes, encountered more formidable enemies in the storms that winter was bringing back more and more frequently on the coast of South Carolina. The monitors were, as we have said, very bad sailers. The vessel called the Monitor had foundered off that coast on the 31st of December, 1862. One year afterward another vessel of the same class, the Weehawken, which we have already followed up in many an engagement, was lost in like manner. On the 6th of December, in the daytime, being made fast to a buoy in the Charleston roads, it went down so suddenly that some twenty men had not time to climb on the bridge and perished with the vessel. The sea, though heavy, was not rough enough to prevent the boats belonging to the rest of the fleet being lowered, and the greater part of the crew was thus saved. It is supposed that the flat bottom of the monitor, strained by a rough cruise and several strandings, had become disjointed, and soon after partly opened in consequence of the shocks which the ship, being very low in the water, had sustained from a choppy and broken sea. Eleven hours thereafter the loss of two launches capsized on the bar swelled the number of disasters caused by bad weather on this dangerous coast. Finally, the year closed in front of Charleston with an attempt, of little importance, by the Confederate troops posted on James Island against the Federal craft occupying the waters of Stono River—namely, the Marblehead, the Pawnee, and the sailing vessel Williams. A pretty sharp artillery engagement took place on Christmas Day near Legareville, and ended with the retreat of the Confederates, who left behind them some men killed and two guns.

Almost the entire squadron of Dahlgren being concentrated before Charleston, a few words will suffice us to recall the incidents which occurred on the rest of the coast blockaded by this squadron. On the 17th of August the Federal steamer Norwich, reconnoitring on the St. John's River in Florida, captured two hostile signal-stations with all the personnel. On the 22d of September the crew of the gunboat Seneca destroyed considerable saltworks