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non-combatants and the robbery of their property, extending even to the trinkets worn by women, made the devastation of Sherman's army as relentless as savage instincts could suggest.

Arriving at his destination during the night, Commodore Hunter sent armed boats with combustible materials on the bridge and soon it was a mass of flames from one end to the other. Remaining alongside to see it completely destroyed, in the morning the gunboats proceeded down the river to take position on the right of Hardee's lines at Savannah. The enemy having received intelligence of the return of the gunboats, lined the river bank with the heaviest of their artillery, and as the vessels approached made every preparation for the attack. They had secured the range at various bends in the narrow stream, and only waited for Commodore Hunter to get in the line of their fire before opening the engagement. Commodore Hunter had received notice from a refugee of the preparations to attempt the capture of his vessels on their passage down the river, and saw the enemy securing the range of the river at various points. The crews were called to quarters and final instructions given when the enemy opened fire at long range with rifle shot. The gunboats withheld their fire until they got nearly opposite, when a terrific fire was opened on both sides. The Federal artillery being stationed on the high bluffs had the advantage of position, and being light-rifled siege guns and field artillery could fire with great rapidity and precision. Commodore Hunter's two small wooden gunboats had their machinery and magazines exposed, and being within a few hundred yards of the enemy, nearly every shot from the latter took effect. As the gunboats approached nearer to the batteries, the fire of the guns of the enemy, which lined the river bank for some distance, was increased. In the hottest of the fight the little transport steamer became disabled in her machinery, and she floated ashore and surrendered. The Sampson and the Macon, although struck several times, continued the running fight for some time. The enemy, believing the gunboats could not pass their batteries, sent several batteries at full speed up the river to prevent their escape in that direction. Commodore Hunter was directing the movements of his vessels from the hurricane deck of the Sampson. Midshipman Scharf, who had charge of the bow gun of the Sampson, observing the attempt of the enemy to prevent the escape of the gunboats up the river, called the attention of the Commodore to the movements of the enemy, and he gave the orders to retreat at full speed before the Federal batteries in his rear could get into position. The Sampson and Macon were turned up stream under a heavy fire, and with the aid of a barrel of bacon in the furnaces, the boats soon steamed from under fire.

At this time there was a flood in the Savannah River, and Com. Hunter concluded to make an attempt to pass the ob structions before Augusta, and reach that city. With his

two gunboats he reached Augusta; his vessels being the only ones saved of the Confederate navy at Savannah. At Augusta several of the naval officers received orders to proceed to other points, but the majority of them, including Com. Hunter, were surrendered under Gen. Johnson's capitulation.

When the Federal colors were raised upon the parapet of Fort Jackson, below Savannah, on the afternoon of December 21st, the iron-clad Savannah was still in the river, and at once hoisted her flag and opened fire upon the enemy. She continued this for several hours, shelling the troops in Fort Jackson with sufficient vigor to drive them from their guns. Their return fire inflicted no damage upon her, and during the remainder of the day she displayed the Confederate colors in the face of the victorious Federals-the last emblem of the Southern Confederacy to float in hostility over the waters of Georgia. After dark Capt. Brent ran her over to the South Carolina shore, when he was joined by Com. Tatnall. They and the crew started on the march to Hardeeville, where the retreating Confederates were ordered to concentrate, first applying a slow match to the magazine of the Savannah. A little after ten o'clock she blew up with a tremendous explosion. A flash of light occurred and then an immense column of flames shot up in the air. The concussion shook the vessels lying in Tybee Roads, and made houses tremble for miles around.

The Federals captured at Savannah 32,000 bales of cotton, a large quantity of rice and some naval stores. They also got an uncompleted torpedo-boat and the small steamers Beauregard and General Lee, besides 150 pieces of ordnance in the fortifications. It was not until the 23d of January, 1865, that they cleared the river of the obstructions that had held back their ships.

While the naval defence of the port was marked by no such stirring events as were enacted on the South Carolina seaboard, it is a record on the Confederate side of persevering and determined battling against adverse circumstances, sometimes brightened by victories against great odds. The work of naval construction was more energetic and on a larger scale at Savannah than in any other Confederate coast city, but it failed to achieve important results because it was not concentrated. No other port was possessed of so many strong iron-clads as the Atlanta, Georgia and Savannah; but the first and last, which might have done good service for the Confederacy, were not in existence at the same time, and the Georgia was a marine abortion. It was the oft-told tale of no money or material to build more than one good ship at a time, and of the eventual bottling up of the squadron by the massive iron-clads of the enemy. The torpedo service, so efficient at Charleston and elsewhere, amounted to nothing at Savannah.

A few explosive machines were placed near or in the obstructions of the river, but they were never heard from until the Federals dug them up after the evacuation. Some were placed in the neighborhood of Fort McAllister, but the only one that did any duty exploded under the monitor Weehawken without injuring her.

Yet there is nothing in the Confederate nava. records in Georgia waters derogatory to the professional merit, the gallantry, or the fidelity of the officers and men of the service. They deserved well of their country, and they were the peers in every honorable attribute of those who worked and fought where more prominent reputations could be made.

F

CHAPTER XXI.

SOUTH CAROLINA WATERS.

ROM the sounding of the first note of the Civil War a sentimental as well as practical interest was focused upon the attack and defence of Charleston. It was the metropolis, the embodiment of the intellectual power and impetus of the commonwealth, whose political giants had thirty years previously enunciated the doctrine of States rights that underlaid the Southern movement of 1861; the State which held that doctrine was the first to point the way of independence; it was virtually in arms almost as soon as the election of Mr. Lincoln became a certainty, and in its harbor the shot that became the signal for armies and navies to rise, and battle- flags to tempt the breeze, was fired. What wonder, then, that there prevailed throughout the North a fierce and passionate hunger that it should be conquered at any sacrifice of life and treasure, while Southern men and women chained their hearts to its fate, and during the two years of the siege the ragged Confederate veterans in field and trench and camp asked first for the news from Charleston! In these sober days of peace the faithful history of the battle fury that within twenty-five years past raged around the spot where less than a century previous Sergeant Jasper had flung out the flag of the new-born American Republic in defiance of British shot and shell, brings back the stirring memories of the long beleaguerment of the cradle of secession" by ships and forts, the close and murderous conflicts on water and on shore, the diapason of the guns that thundered through more than six hundred nights and days, and the crimsoned pictures of the blood that was shed. No intelligent American can to-day pass the ocean gateways of the city without reverting, as the keel under him cuts the tossing waves of the bay, to the epoch when war held merciless sway over those beautiful waters and men died for the flag under which they served.

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The naval records of the war in South Carolina precede the birth of the nation which Mr. Gladstone said that Jefferson

Davis created. When the Ordinance of Secession was passed on December 20th, 1860, there were not wanting in Charleston men whose thoughts had already been drawn toward the subject of naval offence and defence, and who were turning over in their minds sundry projects of putting ships-of-war afloat. After Major Anderson transferred the garrison of U. S. troops from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter on the night of Christmas Eve, and the talk at Washington and in the North was devoted to sending a naval expedition to his relief, their ideas of meeting ships with ships could not but become more strongly fixed; and before the provisional government of the Confederacy was formed at Montgomery the palmetto flag had been hoisted over vessels equipped for war purposes by the people of South Carolina, and Governor F. W. Pickens had issued commissions in the naval service of the State. The destruction of the records, when Sherman's army fired Columbia, swept out of existence the official documents upon which a full statement of these commissions, to whom issued and the assignments to vessels, could be based, but newspaper files and communications from the surviving officers supply the deficiency to some extent.

The U. S. government vessels in South Carolina waters were taken possession of by authority of the State toward the close of December 1860, but they were of such small value as scarcely to be worth seizing. They comprised a venerable revenue-cutter known as the Aiken; the schooner Petrel, a relic of the Florida war; the light-house tender Governor Aiken, and the coast-survey schooner Crawford. They were all sailing-vessels, and carried less than half a dozen light guns among them all. A river steamer called the General Clinch was bought in January 1861, and when mounted with a couple of brass cannon was put into service as the first ship of the South Carolina navy.

The report of Major Anderson of December 27th, 1860, states that on that afternoon an armed steamer, two of which had been watching Forts Sumter and Moultrie, between which they had been passing to and fro, or had been anchored for the preceding ten nights, took possession by escalade of Castle Pinckney, Lieut. Meade, the U. S. officer in command, retiring without resistance to Fort Sumter.

On January 10th, 1861, the New York agents of the New York and Charleston steamship line were notified that their steamship, the Marion, a side-wheel vessel of 800 tons burden, which had that day arrived at Charleston, had been taken for the service of the State by Governor Pickens' orders. The fact was that the Governor had proposed to buy the ship with the consent of the Charleston stockholders of the company, and workmen were put on board to begin fitting her out for a vessel-of-war; but they had done very little before it was decided that she was not available for that purpose and she was

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