THE CAPTURE OF FORT FISHER.
The port of Wilmington, North Carolina, on Cape Fear River, about
twenty miles from its mouth, was one of the most difficult to blockade,
and when the other ports of the Southern States had been closed one
after another, this became the Confederacy's main reliance for such
supplies as had to be imported. Hence the desire of the national
administration and military authorities to seal it up. This could be
done only by capturing its defenses, and the principal of these was
Fort Fisher, the strongest earthwork then in existence. This
fortification, with its outworks, occupied the end of the narrow
peninsula between Cape Fear River and the ocean. It mounted
thirty-eight heavy guns; the parapets were twenty-five feet thick and
twenty feet high; there were heavy traverses, bombproofed; ditches and
palisades surrounded it; and outside of these were buried torpedoes
connected with electric batteries in the casemates. The garrison
consisted of about two thousand men.
In December, 1864, it was proposed to capture this work by a combined
land and naval force. The troops sent for the purpose were commanded by
General Butler. The fleet was the largest that ever had been gathered
under the American flag, and was commanded by Rear-Admiral David D.
Porter. It consisted of fifty-six wooden vessels and four ironclads.
The Colorado, commanded by Captain Henry K. Thatcher, was one of the
largest wooden ships; she was the one that could not be taken over the
bar to participate in the attack on the forts below New Orleans. Her
place in this battle was second ship in second division.
Lieutenant George Dewey, after his experience on the Mississippi, had
served for a time in the James River flotilla under Commander McComb,
and then was ordered to the Colorado, in which he participated in both
attacks on Fort Fisher.
An accidental explosion of a boat load of powder, a short time before,
which produced a concussion that shook down buildings, suggested the
possibility of damaging the fort by similar means, and it was resolved
to try the experiment. An old steamer filled with powder and disguised
as a blockade runner was taken in close to the fort in the night of
December 23d and exploded within three hundred yards of the beach. But
no effect whatever was produced upon the fort or its equipment.
The next day two thirds of the fleet--the remainder being held in
reserve--steamed slowly in, anchored in their appointed order, and
began a bombardment, directing their fire principally at the guns of
the fort. This was kept up all day, and there was such a play of
bursting shells over and within the works as never had been seen
before. Two magazines were exploded, and several buildings were burned.
The fire was returned by the fort, and some vessels were injured by the
shells, but no casualties resulted from it except by the explosion of a
shell in the boiler of the Mackinaw. There were serious casualties in
the fleet, however, from the bursting of hundred-pounder rifled guns.
There were four of these accidents, by which fifteen men were killed
and twenty-two wounded.
The next day, which was Christmas, the troops were landed from the
transports, and the fleet renewed the bombardment in the expectation
that the troops would be marched to the rear of the fort and storm it.
But General Butler and General Weitzel made a reconnoissance, and
agreed that the works could not be carried by assault. They therefore
re-embarked the troops and steamed back to Fort Monroe. In the two days
the fleet had fired fifteen thousand shells, and disabled nine guns in
the fort.
This fiasco was a disappointment and mortification to the President and
General Grant, who believed they had furnished a force to which they
had a right to look for substantial results. They therefore resolved
upon a second attempt, and this time the command of the troops was
intrusted to General Alfred H. Terry. Porter's fleet renewed its
supplies of coal and ammunition, and at the same time kept up a
moderate fire on the fort to prevent repair of the works or erection of
new ones.
Terry's transports arrived the first week in January, in the midst of a
heavy storm. But the vessels rode it out safely, and then preparations
were made for an early assault. On the 13th the fleet anchored as near
the fort as the depth of water would permit, in the same order as
before, and bombarded nearly all day while the troops were debarking. A
curious incident occurred when they shelled the woods back of the fort;
several hundred cattle there, intended for the garrison, were
frightened by the bursting shells and rushed down to the beach, where
Terry's men secured them.
Admiral Ammen, who commanded the Mohican in the first division, says:
"As the sun went down and the shadows fell over the waters, the
spectacle was truly grand; the smoke rose and partially drifted off,
permitting glimpses now and then of the earthwork, and the fitful yet
incessant gleams from the hundreds of shells bursting on or beyond the
parapet illuminated, like lightning flashes, the clouds above and the
smoke of battle beneath."
General Terry gave his troops a day to rest, get over the effects of
the sea voyage, and throw up intrenchments across the peninsula two
miles above the fort. The 15th was fixed upon for the grand assault,
and the entire fleet had orders to move up and bombard at an early
hour. Admiral Porter thought to assist the army further by detailing
sixteen hundred sailors and four hundred marines to land on the beach
and assail the sea face of the fort while the army stormed the land
side. The sailors were armed with cutlasses and revolvers, and looked
upon this new service as a sort of lark, but they found it a serious
matter before the day was over. They came in several detachments, from
different ships, and, never having been drilled together for any task
of this kind, did not know how to work together. But, even if they had,
it is doubtful if they could have accomplished anything; for, though
they sprang to the assault nimbly enough, a large part of the garrison
were called to that side of the work to repel them, and before they
could get near enough to use their pistols their ranks were so thinned
by grape shot and musketry that they were compelled to fall back and
seek shelter. Three times they were rallied by their officers, and once
they got within fifty yards of the parapet: but the murderous fire from
a dense mass of soldiers behind it was too much for them. Four of their
officers were killed and fifteen were wounded, while the number of
sailors killed or wounded was about three hundred.
But though this assault by the sailors and marines was a failure in
itself, it assisted the work of capture by calling a considerable part
of the garrison to the sea face while the army assailed the rear of the
fort. And the bombardment by the fleet was much more effective than in
the first battle. Colonel Lamb, who commanded the fort, says: "In the
former bombardment the fire of the fleet had been diffuse, but now it
was concentrated and the definite object was the destruction of the
land defenses by enfilade and direct fire. All day and night of the
13th and 14th the navy continued its ceaseless torment; it was
impossible to repair damages at night on the land face. The Ironsides
and the monitors bowled their eleven and fifteen-inch shells along the
parapet, scattering shrapnel in the darkness. We could scarcely gather
up and bury our dead without fresh casualties. At least two hundred had
been killed and wounded in the two days since the fight began."
In those three days the fleet fired nearly twenty-two thousand shells.
Terry's troops worked up to positions near the fort, and on the 15th,
when the fleet gave the signal for assault by blowing the steam
whistles, rushed to the work. In spite of all obstructions, they gained
the parapet; but this was only the beginning of the task, for the work
was provided with heavy traverses, and the defenders had to be driven
from one to another of these, fighting obstinately all the way, until
the last was reached and surrender could no longer be avoided. The
assailants had lost about seven hundred men, killed or wounded. When
Fort Fisher fell, the minor defenses at the mouth of the Cape Fear fell
with it, and the port of Wilmington was closed. General Lee, then
besieged at Petersburg by Grant, had sent word to its commander that
Fort Fisher must be held or he could not subsist his army.
Thus the young officer on the Colorado, who was to become the Hero of
Manila thirty-three years later, participating in this great conflict
and the resulting victory, received one more lesson in the terrible art
of war.