However, when the _Cossack_, with the 176th Pennsylvania militia on board, reached the bar at 8.30 o’clock, it found all but two or three of the blockading squadron in the usual places, as her officers and the officers of the regiment testified. Neither the _Unadilla_ nor the _Housatonic_ had passed beyond the usual line of blockade. No blockade-runner passed in or out during the fight, and, according to Tucker’s report, the retreating rams anchored under the shore batteries at 8 o’clock. And that was the only service rendered by these rams. All this is important only because Robert Bunce, the British consular agent; Baron de St. Andre, consul for France, and Señor Francisco Moncada, consul for Spain, “at a joint conference concurred in the opinion that the blockade had been legally raised.” Wilson, the British author of “Ironclads in Action,” says of the surrender of the _Mercedita_: “The ram, without stopping to take possession, ran north, and the _Mercedita’s_ captain promptly rehoisted his flag. This very questionable proceeding he could scarcely justify on any grounds.” There is nothing in any report on either side to show that the flag was “promptly” rehoisted. There is nothing to show that Ingraham had any idea of taking possession of the _Mercedita_. In fact, he had no such idea. Scharf’s “Confederate States Navy” says (and, fortunately for this occasion, Scharf is a violent partisan rather than a historian) that “other vessels of the fleet assisted her to Port Royal for repairs.” The Confederates followed this success by capturing the gunboat _Isaac Smith_ in the Stono River, where, when scouting, she got among the Confederate batteries. Then the Union forces had a turn of good luck. The Confederate cruiser _Nashville_ had been lying blockaded for a long time in the Great Ogeechee River. Fort McAllister guarded the river, and a line of piles prevented a dash past the fort, but Capt. John L. Worden, who commanded the _Monitor_, took a new monitor, the _Montauk_, to the line of piles, on February 28th, and while four other Union vessels fired on the fort, Worden shelled the _Nashville_ at a range of 1,200 yards. The fort gunners kept up a furious but wild fire on Worden’s boat, but he got the range and burned the cruiser. Worden was always at least as proud of this event as he was of his fight with the _Merrimac_, and he had a right to be, for the marksmanship of his gunners was very much better on this occasion. [Illustration: Ironclads and Monitors Bombarding the Defences at Charleston. _From an engraving._] After all this preliminary work came the first serious attack on the Charleston defences.