Rear Admiral Thomas S. Phelps, United States Navy, gives a vivid description of the scene when the transports and other vessels fled down the river in panic: "Harassing the enemy and protecting the worthy fully occupied my time until the afternoon of June 27, 1862, when Quartermaster-General Ingalls came down the river on a boat provided especially for his use, and after directing an assistant to abandon the Point, immediately continued on his way to Yorktown. Soon afterward the Pamunkey, as far as the eye could reach, appeared crowded with a confused mass of side-wheel boats, propellers, brigs, and schooners, and as they dashed past my vessel there appeared to be as complete a stampede as it has ever been my misfortune to witness. In answer to the hail, 'What is the trouble?' I was greeted with, 'The rebels are coming! The whole country is full of them; go to the mast-head and you will see thousands of them!' Eliciting nothing further of a satisfactory nature, and seeing nothing but empty fields, I directed a count to be made of the fleeing vessels, and by evening's dusk six hundred {158} and eighty were reported as having passed, not counting several schooners left behind, which on touching the bottom had been abandoned, their crews escaping to more fortunate companions." On the following day the gunboats returned to West Point, towing the derelict schooners which they had floated, and also the half of a regiment which in the hurry of the previous day had been forgotten and left behind. At the last moment Casey embarked his men, and with what he had been able to save steamed down the Pamunkey and York Rivers, and up the James to the new base. At the close of a long despatch to the Secretary of War, on the 28th, General McClellan said: "If I save this army now, I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you or to any other persons in Washington. You have done your best to sacrifice this army." When Gen. John B. Magruder, who had been left in the defences of Richmond, found that the National army was retreating to the James, he moved out to attack it, and struck the rear guard at Allen's farm. His men made three assaults, and were three times repelled. Magruder complained that he lost a victory here because Lee had left him but thirteen thousand men.