Charleston was evacuated by the Confederate forces on the 18th of February, 1865. Several days previous to the evacuation a detachment from the squadron of about three hundred men, under the command of Lieutenant Commanding James Henry Rochelle, consisting of the officers and crews of the _Palmetto State_, _Columbia_, and the recruits from the receiving-ship _Indian Chief_, were dispatched by rail to Wilmington, which the detachment reached only a few days before it was, in turn, abandoned by the Confederate Army. The Charleston naval detachment was ordered to co-operate with the Army as a body of infantry, and was assigned to duty with General Hoke's division, of which it formed the extreme right, resting on Cape Fear river. The position was exposed to an annoying fire from the Federal gunboats in the river, to which no reply could be made, but from which some loss was suffered. The evacuation of Wilmington took place on the 22d of February, 1865, and the Charleston squadron's naval battalion marched out with Hoke's division, to which it remained attached until somewhere in the interior of North Carolina it reunited with Tucker's command. With the officers and crews of the _Charleston_ and _Chicora_, Tucker left Charleston on the 18th of February, 1865, the day of the evacuation of the city by the Confederate Army. As far as Florence in South Carolina the Charleston naval brigade traveled by rail, but at that point Tucker received a telegram informing him that the Federal forces were about cutting the railway communication between Florence and Wilmington. This was the last message that came over the wires, and Tucker, knowing that the enemy had succeeded in seizing the railroad, abandoned his intention of making for Wilmington, and marched his command across the country to Fayetteville, where he received orders from the Navy Department to bring his force to Richmond. On the way from Fayetteville to Richmond the detached Charleston naval battalion was reunited to the main body under Tucker, and the whole brigade proceeded together to Richmond, and from Richmond it was sent to garrison the Confederate batteries at Drewry's Bluff, of which place Tucker was ordered to assume command, the naval forces afloat in James river being under the command of Rear Admiral Raphael Semmes.