The weather continued very bad, with a heavy sea. No tugboats had arrived; the tug _Freeborn_ did not leave New York; the _Uncle Ben_ was driven into Wilmington by the gale; the _Yankee_ did not arrive off Charleston bar until April 15th, too late for any service; neither the _Pawnee_ nor the _Harriet Lane_ had boats or men to carry supplies; the _Baltic_ stood out to the rendezvous and signalled all night for the expected _Powhatan_. The next morning, the 13th, was thick and foggy, with a heavy ground-swell, and the _Baltic_, feeling her way in, touched on Rattlesnake Shoal, but without damage; a great volume of black smoke was seen from Sumter. No tugboats had yet arrived, and a schooner near by, loaded with ice, was seized and preparations made to load her for entering the following night. Going aboard the _Pawnee_, Fox now learned that a note from Captain Mercer of the _Powhatan_ mentioned that he had been detached by superior authority and that the ship had gone elsewhere; though Fox had left New York two days later than the _Powhatan_, he had no intimation of the change. At 2 P.M., April 13th, the _Pocahontas_ arrived, and the squadron, powerless for relief, through the absence of the _Powhatan_ and the tugs, was obliged to witness the progress of the bombardment.[199] “About 4 A.M. on the twelfth,” says Doubleday, “I was awakened by some one groping about my room in the dark and calling out my name.” This was Anderson, who had come to inform his second in command of the information just received of the intention of the Confederates to open fire an hour later.[200] At 4.30, the Confederates being able to make out the outline of the fort, a gun at Fort Johnson was fired as the signal to open; the first shotted gun was then fired from Morris Island by Edmund Ruffin, an aged secessionist from Virginia, who had long, in pamphlet and speech, advocated separation from the Union. The fire from the batteries at once became general.