“We approached very close to the obstructions extending from Fort Sumter to Fort Moultrie--as near, indeed, as I could get without running upon them. They were marked by rows of casks very near together. To the eye they appeared almost to touch one another, and there was more than one line of them. “The _appearance was so formidable_ that, upon deliberate judgment, I thought it right not to entangle the vessel in obstructions which I did not think we could have passed through.” The obstructions were really of no account, and there was, moreover, an opening through them. “After braving the fire of sixty-nine guns for about an hour, the ironclads retired, some of them seriously injured. The _Keokuk_ had drifted much nearer than she intended to do. She was struck ninety times in thirty minutes, and nineteen shots pierced her armor.” “In short, the vessel was completely riddled.” She went down next day. The _Nahant_ was disabled for one day, and was not in good order for a month. The _New Ironsides_ was for a long time over an electrical torpedo containing 3,000 pounds of powder, but the firing apparatus had been improperly adjusted, and she escaped. The Confederates thought she escaped through treachery, and it is said they executed the man in charge. The Confederate ironclads had no part in this battle. And the Confederates had fewer guns than at Mobile. Dupont wrote regarding this attack: “During the few minutes that we were under the heaviest fire of the batteries, half of our turret-ships were in part, or wholly, disabled. We have only encountered the outer line of defence, and if we force our way into the harbor, we have not men to occupy any fort we may take, and we can have no communication with our force outside except by running the gauntlet.... We have met with a sad repulse; I shall not turn it into a great disaster.” Chief Engineer A. C. Stimers, who had been in the original _Monitor_, was so disgusted with the result of the battle that he could not help expressing his opinion forcibly in Dupont’s presence. He was court-martialled and acquitted. There was no Caldwell to break the chain running from Sumter to Moultrie, and there was no Farragut to plan to go in, as at Mobile, where he believed that six of his squadron must be sacrificed to make the passage, or to say “Damn the torpedoes!” when once the start was made. [Illustration: Confederate Ironclad _Atlanta_, Captured at Wassaw Sound, June 17, 1863. _From “The Navy in the Civil War.”_]