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The Union ships were clad in armor — a recent development for the antiquated Union navy — and the fleet was powered by steam, not sail. Still, for all their new technology, their task was as old as sea warfare itself: to bring a concentrated fire of heavy guns to bear, to project force on a distant target.
To achieve this goal, DuPont led the most powerful squadron ever assembled.
Commander A. C. Rhind stared through the forward porthole of his command, Keokuk. His ship was farthest to the west and last in the long line of warships. Keokuk was an experimental craft commissioned to the Union navy on February 24, 1863.
Her design was different from that of the seven other Passaic-class ironclads. Unlike the razor-edged styling of the monitors, Keokuk featured a rounded, whale-like upper deck. A pair of armored, half-conical towers perched on each end of the vessel, separated by a stubby smokestack. Amidships, alongside the slightly taller smokestack, was a davited wooden shore boat. On the stern deck was a wooden staff, where the Stars and Stripes fluttered in the breeze.
The ship looked like a cigar topped by thimbles.
Keokuk was 159 feet 6 inches in length, with a beam of 36 feet and a draft of 8 feet 6 inches. She was propelled by twin screws powered by steam, which gave her greater speed and maneuverability over the monitors. Her armament consisted of a pair of massive 11-inch Dahlgren guns. The guns were designed to pivot to fire through a trio of gun ports. Unlike the monitors, the towers did not rotate to give her a greater field of fire. Her armor was too light for the guns of Sumter, but Rhind did not know this yet. Keokuk carried a crew of ninety-two.
Ship engineer N. W. Wheeler approached Rhind. “All is in order,” he reported quietly.
“Follow them in,” Rhind said to the pilot.
“We’re almost in range,” Captain John Rodgers shouted. “We’ll be hearing from the rebels soon.”
Rodgers commanded Weehawken, the lead vessel in the line approaching Fort Sumter. While Rodgers was proud of his vessel and crew, he couldn’t help but feel anxious. At that moment, he saw a puff of smoke from Sumter, and a shot struck the water twenty feet ahead. The battle was starting.
Weehawken was some 200 feet in length, with a beam of 46 feet. The vessel featured twin gun turrets that packed a wallop. One gun was a standard 11-inch smoothbore; the second, a 42,000-pound, 15-inch Dahlgren, could hurl a 400-pound shell a mile. On her bow she pushed a torpedo raft to detonate the Confederate mines.
From inside the pentagonal-shaped Fort Sumter, the approaching line of warships looked like a corridor of floating death. The commanding officer of Fort Sumter, Major Stephen Elliott Jr., had faith in his ability to ward off the attack. Still, the sight was enough to give pause. Built on an artificial island three and three-eighths miles distant from Charleston, Sumter was a fortress. The fort’s base was constructed of chunks of stone from northern quarries. Her walls were solid brick, and concrete masonry stretched sixty feet high. At their thickest point, the walls were twelve feet in width; at the narrowest, a full eight. Guns were arranged on casemates on a pair of decks; the upper deck was open, and the lower deck guns were firing through reinforced ports.
On board Patapsco, the fourth Union ship in line, the view ahead was already becoming clouded with smoke. To an untrained eye, Patapsco and Weehawken looked similar, except for color. Weehawken was lead gray and Patapsco basic black, but Patapsco carried a surprise. She had the massive 15-inch Dahlgren, but her 11-inch smoothbore had been replaced by a 50-pound rifled Parrot gun that had the ability to lob a round over a mile with accuracy.
Slowly, like an old man turning his head, the turret on Patapsco rotated. And then the Parrot sang.
Major Elliott was standing on the upper gun deck of Fort Sumter when he heard the high-pitched whine of a rifled round. It slammed into the base of the fort, showering brick dust high into the air. Elliott felt a sting on his cheeks like the bites of many tiny ants. Wiping the lens of his spyglass clean, he ordered the fire returned.
It was 2:41 P.M., some ten minutes after the first shot had been fired from Fort Sumter, and aboard New Ironsides, DuPont was seeing his carefully crafted plans unraveling. The line of Union warships was straying out of formation. As he peered through the smoke ahead, it looked as if Weehawken was slowing.
New Ironsides was eight hundred yards from Fort Sumter and was inside the curtain of fire from both Fort Moultrie to the north and Sumter dead ahead. A volley of Confederate shot rang out. DuPont was flung to the deck, as New Ironsides took the fourth of the ninety-three hits she would suffer in the next three hours.
Rising from the deck, DuPont trained his spyglass on Weehawken.
Captain Rodgers had felt what he thought was a sea mine exploding beneath his hull. The line of sea mines, known as torpedoes, brought more fear to the crews of the Union gunboats than did the guns of Sumter and Moultrie. The forts and their guns could be seen; the torpedoes were hidden assassins lying in wait for the unwary.
“Full astern,” Rodgers shouted through the speaking tube to the engine room.
Passaic, second in line, slowed. The Union formation began to deteriorate.
On Sullivan’s Island, Confederate gu
“Sir,” the pilot of New Ironsides said to DuPont, “we are having control problems.”
DuPont knew his command was unwieldy. The vessel had been designed and built in a frenzy by a Union navy anxious to meet the threat from Confederate ironclads. Unlike the monitors, she had been designed on the old tried-and-true hull of sail and steamships, and her hybrid design of steam, sails, and armor had never truly worked efficiently.
“We’ve been struck forty times,” DuPont noted. “I don’t doubt there are problems.”
“I fear we might run down one of the monitors,” the pilot noted.
DuPont turned to the signalman. “Make the signal to disregard motions of commander-in-chief.” The man scampered away. Next DuPont turned to the pilot.
“Take us out,” he said quietly. “I’ll be damned if I’ll sink one of my own.”
From last in line to first. As the formation broke apart, Keokuk bravely steamed to the front of the line. For her brave actions, she would pay a stern price.
“Sir,” Keokuk’s signalman reported, “New lronsides asks we disregard her movement.”
Commander Rhind nodded absently. He had more important things to contend with. In the last thirty minutes, Keokuk had taken eighty-seven hits. The ironclad was holed in nineteen places above and below the waterline. Her gun towers and smokestack were riddled with holes through which one could see the fading daylight, and his aft gun had been disabled before it could ever fire a round.
The forward gun had gotten off five shots — then it, too, was disabled. Rhind was in command of a vessel that was now completely defenseless. Then the engines stopped.
Weehawken had been struck nearly fifty times by the Confederate guns. One ca