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blow in return, which sent her to the bottom of the harbor.
The only cannon on the Bayou City (a 68-pounder) had bursted, and it seemed as if she, too, must speedily succumb, when, by a quick maneuver, she ran her bow into the wheel of the Harriet Lane, held her fast, careened her so that she could not bring her guns to bear, and allowed Sibley's soldiers to swarm over on her deck.
A brief resistance by an inferior force followed, and when Captain Wainwright was killed, and Lieutenant-commanding Lee was mortally wounded, she was captured.
The Owasco, coming up to her assistance, was kept at bay by the sharp-shooters and the fear of the Lane's captured cannon, now in the custody of the Confederates, and she withdrew to a safe distance.
Meanwhile the Westfield, Renshaw's flag-ship, which went out to meet the Confederate steamers in Bolivar Channel, had run hard aground at high tide, and signaled for assistance, when the Clifton hastened to her relief.
During the absence of the latter the attack began.
Observing this, Renshaw ordered her back.
She opened upon Fort Point batteries, and drove the Confederates up the beach; and at about sunrise a flag of truce came to her commander, Lieutenant Law, with a demand for a surrender of the fleet.
Law refused, and time was given to communicate with Renshaw, on the Westfield. He, too, rejected the proposal, ordered the National vessels and troops to escape, and, as he could not get his own ship off, he resolved to blow it up, and with officers and crew escape to two of the transports.
The firing of the magazine was done prematurely by a drunkard, it was said, and Commodore Renshaw, Lieutenant Zimmerman, Engineer Green, and about a dozen of the crew, perished by the explosion.
Nearly as many officers and men were killed in the Commodore's gig, lying by the side of the Westfield.
In the mean time, while flags of truce were flying on the vessels and on shore, the Massachusetts troops, with artillery (which they had not) bearing upon them, were treacherously summoned to surrender by General R. Scurry.1 Resistance would have been vain, and they complied,2 satisfied that when the Harriet Lane should be relieved from contact with the Bayau City, she would be too much for the Clifton or the Owasco. Law fled in the latter, with the remains of the fleet, to New Orleans.
Before the Harriet Lane could be repaired and got out to sea as a Confederate pirate ship, Farragut sent a competent force to re-establish the blockade of Galveston, and Magruder's victory was made almost a barren one.3 Just as that blockade was re-established under Commodore Bell, with the Brooklyn as
1 Richardson Scurry was a native of Tennessee, and was a representative in Congress from Texas from 1851 to 1858.
2 Report of Captains James S. Palmer and Melancthon Smith, and Lieutenant-commanding L. A. Kimberly (who composed a court of inquiry appointed by Admiral Farragut), dated January 12, 1868. The Confederates acknowledged the bad faith on their part. An eye-witness, in a communication in the Houston Telegraph, January 6, 1863, declared that the flag of truce was only a trick of the Confederates to gain time. It was evident, he said, that if the Harriet Lane could not be speedily disengaged, the Nationals would escape, and the flag was to make a delay. “A truce of three hours was agreed upon,” said the writer. “During the truce with the vessels, the unconditional surrender of the Massachusetts troops was demanded and complied with.” Magruder, in his official report, declared that Renshaw had “agreed to surrender.” If that be true, the conviction is forced upon us that Renshaw was a traitor, and was acting in concert with Magruder.
3 Magruder's spoils were only the Harriet Lane and her property, the 260 officers and men of the Forty-second Massachusetts, and about 120 on board of the Harriet Lane, made prisoners. His loss he reported at 26 killed and 117 wounded, and the steamer Neptune.
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