That night an assault was planned, and 1,600 sailors and 400 marines were landed to help the soldiers. At 9 o’clock on the morning of January 15, 1865, the fleet once more opened fire. The soldiers, who had been lying at the river side of the arm of land, charged up to attack the extreme west end of the fort. The sea force, in three divisions, led by Cushing (he who destroyed the _Albemarle_), Lieut.-commander James Parker, and Lieut.-commander T. O. Selfredge, Jr., charged up the barren beach, where Butler did not dare to go, to attack the sea front. They had the post of greatest danger, for they were wholly uncovered. [Illustration: T. O. Selfredge. _From a photograph owned by Mr. C. B. Hall._] “The attacking column of the army was hid and protected by the river bank as it approached the left flank of the work, but the naval column came up the open beach upon our center. As its success would have been disastrous, I concentrated all available guns upon this column, and met its assault with the larger portion of my men, posting them upon the ramparts so as to fire down upon the sailors and marines.” The quotation is from a letter by Colonel Lamb, commanding the fort. Some of the sea force reached the row of palisades, and there found shelter, but when eighty-two had been killed and 269 wounded, the others broke and fled out of range. They were armed (except the marines) with cutlasses and revolvers only. It was not a good place for boarders. Nevertheless, this assault was not in vain, as W. R. Mayo, one of the Confederate officers in the fort, testifies in Scharf’s work. He says: “Though proving a great failure in itself, this assault occupied the nearly worn-out and depleted garrison, and had the direct result of admitting the army to the ramparts of the disabled land face of the fort before attention could be given to the assaulting column in that direction.” There were forty-two ships in the line bombarding Fort Fisher on January 15, 1865, of which six were ironclads--five monitors and the _New Ironsides_. The total number killed afloat during the three days of fighting was seventy-four, and 289 were wounded. Ammen estimates from the reports in the department that 21,716 shells were thrown at the fort. In the first attack 15,000 were thrown. [Illustration: Second Attack upon Fort Fisher by the U. S. Navy, under Rear-admiral D. D. Porter, January 13, 14, 15, 1865. ] Scharf has this to say of the capture of Fort Fisher: