[Illustration: Interior of the _Taylor_ during the Battle of Belmont. _From a painting by Admiral Walke._] By any reasonable standard here was as fair a fight as one could hope to find between ships and forts at that day, and at 12.30 o’clock on Friday, February 6, 1862, the _Cincinnati_ (the flagship) fired her three bow guns simultaneously at an estimated range of 1,700 yards. The wily gunners on the other ships, remembering Flag Officer Foote’s warning about wasting shot, waited to see the effect of these shots, and saw them all fall short. “So there was $24 worth of ammunition wasted,” writes an officer of the _Essex_; but the gunners had learned the range, and “Jack Mathews, an old tar who had seen much service on men-o’-war, and was always restive under the command of a volunteer officer,” was the first to get his gun elevated, and the first to fire when the word came. A fresh breeze athwart the bows drove the smoke away, and a shout arose as the shell from Jack’s gun burst in the parapet under one of the Confederate guns and covered it with the soft earth. The squadron advanced slowly but steadily, reducing the elevation of the guns from seven to six and then five degrees, and cutting the fuses of the shells shorter and shorter. Every shot reached home in the parapet, and some passed clear through to lodge in and fire the barracks of the Confederates. The Confederates fought back stubbornly. “The fort seemed a blaze of fire.” Their shells drove the officers of the boats down into the casemates, but when the casemates were struck the projectiles bounded clear, doing little or no harm until the battle had raged for nearly fifty minutes. Then the gunner in charge of the Confederate rifle got the range of the _Essex_ and drove his sixty-pound shell right through her bow armor just above a port. Continuing its flight, it took off the head of Master’s Mate Brittain and plunged into the middle boiler located amidships. In an instant the deck was deluged with steam and scalding water, and the crew who could reach them went plunging through the ports, while the ship herself began drifting with the current out of the fight. When the steam had exhausted itself the men from aft hastened forward. The deck was covered with men dead or writhing in their last agony. “Marshall Ford, who was steering, was found at the wheel, standing erect, his left hand holding the spoke and his right hand grasping the signal-bell rope,” dead at his post. [Illustration: Battle of Fort Henry. _From a painting by Admiral Walke._] The men who had been working the bow guns from the first had just been relieved and sent aft to rest, but Jack Mathews had his blood up and had obtained permission to stay at his gun. He was among those who crawled through the port and was picked up by the boats, but he died that night. In all, twenty-nine men were scalded, and more than half of them died. Captain Porter was one of the severely scalded.