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Captain Douglass Vass, paymaster of the army, left
Fort Gaines on Saturday night at 10 o'clock in a rowboat for
Fort Morgan, and arrived in
Mobile Sunday night. He gives the following particulars of the condition of affairs when he left:
‘
On Thursday, a Yankee monitor approached the fort on the gulf side and opened fire.
The fort had three 10-inch columbiads; and in the first shots in reply to the monitor, two of them were dismounted and disabled by the breaking of their carriages.
On Friday, the fleet ran by
Fort Morgan.
Captain Vass had a fine view of the whole scene and the subsequent naval fight.
The
Tecumseh, the finest monitor in the
Yankee navy, went down almost instantly, a tremendous column of water being thrown up around her — evidently the work of a torpedo.
Her commander,
Craven, was lost in her, for the
Yankee truce-boat inquired if he was among our prisoners, and finding he was not, they said he went down with his ship.
The same monitor which had shelled the fort from the gulf side now approached to within half a mile of the wharf and opened again.
There was but one 10-inch gun left to fight her, and the carriage of that gun soon became unsafe.
’
On Wednesday night, the
Yankee troops, estimated from 3,000 to 5,000, landed on the island and gradually approached to within four hundred yards of the fort.
They had been confronted from the front by a line of skirmishers thrown out from the fort.
The enemy had planted their batteries of light Parrott guns on a sand hill near the gulf shore, another midway of the island in front of the fort, and a third on little
Dauphin island.
These, with the monitor in the water front, were enabled to bring a fire to bear upon every part of the work, and with the aid of sharpshooters, our men were not able to stand at their guns.
The bomb-proofs were only capable of covering two hundred and fifty men out of the garrison; the rest were exposed to bombardment.
Up to the time
Captain Vass left, the commander,
Colonel Anderson, had said nothing about capitulation; but he saw signs of demoralization in the garrison.
Some of the officers expressed decided opinions in favor of surrender; they thought the place would be taken and there would be a frightful waste of life to no purpose.
The men saw little or no hope of relief since the
Tennessee was lost and they much exhausted by skirmishing all day and working in the fort at night.
Captain Vass states that, up to the time he left,
Colonel Anderson behaved with great resolution and spirit, gallantly exposing himself and urging his line of skirmishers to maintain its ground.
It was the night after
Captain Vass left that
General Page passed over to
Fort Gaines.
Captain Vass is of the opinion that
Fort Morgan will hold out as long as its provisions do, and that will be the best part of a year.
The Yankee fleet was badly crippled.
Nearly every ship is careened over, and the whole are busily repairing.
It is believed its losses are not less than seven hundred and fifty.
