Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 3.

[487] within a thousand yards of it, when they opened their batteries, and a sharp fight ensued. Then Porter ordered his wooden vessels to engage in the conflict. Line No. 1, in the plan on page 486, was led by the Brooklyn, Captain Alden, and line No. 2 was led by the Colorado, Commodore Thatcher. The bombardment was continuous, but not rapid, until dark, to the severe hurt of the armament of the fort, when the wooden vessels fell back to their anchorage. But the iron-clads fired slowly throughout the night, by which the garrison was worried and fatigued. During the landing of the army ordnance on the 14th,¹ and the successful movements of Terry on the peninsula, all the vessels carrying 11-inch guns, led by the Brooklyn, joined the monitors in bombarding Fort Fisher, damaging it severely. “By sunset,” says Porter, in his report, “the fort was reduced to a pulp; every gun was silenced by being injured or covered up with earth, so that they could not work.” ²

In the arrangement for the general attack by land and water, the fleet was to first concentrate its fire on the land face of Fort Fisher, for the purpose of disabling its guns and destroying the palisades upon its wings and front, when the army should make the assault at three o'clock in the afternoon. All night the monitors pounded the fort, and allowed the garrison no rest, nor opportunity to repair damages; and at eight o'clock in the morning,

Jan. 15, 1865.

the entire naval force, excepting a division left to aid in the defense of Terry's line across the peninsula, moved up to the attack, “and a fire, magnificent alike for its power and accuracy, was opened.” ³ Meanwhile, fourteen hundred marines and six hundred sailors, armed with revolvers, cutlasses and carbines, were detached from the fleet to assist the land troops in the work of assault; and, digging rifle-trenches in the sand under cover of the fire of the ships, they reached a point within two hundred yards of the sea-front of the fort, where they lay awaiting the order for attack.

Ames's division had been selected for the assault. Paine was placed in command of the defensive line, having with him Abbott's brigade in addition to his own division. Ames's first brigade (N. M. Curtis's) was already at the outwork captured the day before, and in trenches close around it. His other two brigades (G. A. Pennybacker's and L. Bell's) were moved, at noon, to within supporting distance of him. At two o'clock, preparations for the assault were commenced. Sixty sharp-shooters from the Thirteenth Indiana, armed with the Spencer repeating carbine, and forty others, volunteers from Curtis's brigade, the whole under the command of Lieutenant Lent, of the Thirteenth Indiana, were thrown forward, at a run, to within less than two hundred yards of the work. They were provided with shovels, and soon dug pits for shelter, and commenced firing at the parapet, which, as the firing of the fleet at this point had ceased, was instantly manned, and a severe storm opened upon the assailants from musketry and cannon.⁴