It had become an article of faith among the people of Charleston that the mere arrival of the Royal Navy would practically usher in the Second Coming. They had pinned such hopes on foreign intervention to save them from Lincoln’s remorselessness that hope became faith and faith a dream.
CROSSING THE CHARLESTON BAR, 4:55 PM, OCTOBER 8, 1863
Seymour crossed the bar on the afternoon tide just as Dahlgren expected. He came in two divisions line abreast. The first division was led by the Black Prince followed by ship of the line Sans Pareil; the big frigates Mersey and Phaeton; the corvettes Racoon, Challenger, and Cadmus; the sloop Bulldog; and the gunboat Alacrity. The armored frigate Resistance, captained by William Charles Chamberlain, led the second division, followed by ships of the line St. George and Donegal; the big frigates Shannon, Ariadne, and Melpomene; the corvette Jason; the sloops Desperate and Barracouta; and the gunboat Algerine.
Just as Dahlgren expected, Seymour was determined to break the American line in the spirit of Nelson. Once the line was broken, his weight of fire could be used to overwhelm the American ships one by one. While the big ships broke the line in two columns, he would envelop the Americans as well with his sloops and corvettes. But what had worked so well for Horatio Nelson in 1805 against demoralized French and Spanish ships at Trafalgar was not as applicable in 1863 against experienced American ships whose crews were as instinctively combative and jealous of victory as their British kin. It would be hard pounding then, and Seymour’s ships had the great advantage in numbers and overall weight of metal.
The Americans’ ironclads in the first line were steaming slowly at a right angle to the approaching British; the monitors were lucky to do five knots. The two British columns were aiming to cut right through the American line. Seymour signaled to break the American line fore and aft of the New Ironsides. At two thousand yards the forward pivot Armstrongs on their lead ships opened an accurate fire, striking the New Ironsides and the turrets on several monitors. Seymour had directed that priority of fire to the ironclads. The excellence of British guns and gunnery were immediately evident. Unfortunately, they were completely without effect as their shot barely dented the American armor. Within minutes the vent piece from the Black Prince’s Armstrong blew out, silencing the gun.
As the range closed to eight hundred yards, the Dahlgrens opened up. The ironclads concentrated the fire of four XV-inch and twelve XI-inch Dahlgren guns on the Black Prince and Resistance in the lead. The Wabash and her sloops behind the ironclads fired over the decks of the low-slung monitors, with a broadside of another twenty-five IX-inch, one X-inch, and three XI-inch Dahlgrens as well as four 100- and 150-pounder Parrot rifles. The Wabash alone was a veritable spitfire. The huge frigate, at 4,650 tons, was larger than two of Seymour’s three ships of the line. It carried one X-inch and forty-two IX-inch Dahlgrens, one 150-pounder and two 100-pounder Parrot rifles, as well as a smaller 30-pounder rifle and one 12-pounder gun howitzer. Despite her wooden body, the Wabash contained a significant part of Dahlgren’s firepower that day.
The storm of American shells converged on the two lead British ships in a visible stream of black dots against the blue sky. Months of practice in bombarding the forts in Charleston Harbor had honed a precision accuracy in the ironclad gun crews.
Black Prince staggered under the hail of 350- and 136-pound shells; her bow and forecastle disintegrated. The casemate armor that protected the gun decks did not extend around the bow or stern. The shells had ripped and torn her metal hull plates down to the water line, and she began to drink in the sea in great gulps as her powerful engines sped her forward toward New Ironsides. But watertight compartments, one of her design innovations, limited the amount of water gushing through the smashed bow that would have otherwise flooded the entire ship.
Seymour’s flagship was about to experience the layered gunnery Dahlgren had instructed his captains to employ. As Black Prince and Resistance closed the distance with the enemy line, the American ships switched to solid shot to bear on the armored sides of the British ship. The large shot converged on both sides of the British ships. From within the 8-inch armored pilothouse on the New Ironsides, Admiral Dahlgren watched the huge shot arc over the sea or skip across the waves to ensure a crippling hull strike. It was the Atlanta all over again. The low-velocity Dahlgren shot ruptured the armor plates, detaching three-foot sections of the armor’s teak backing and inner metal skin in showers of wooden splinters and metal shards that wiped out whole gun sections. The concussion sent the shot flying from their racks within the casement. Here the design innovations of the Warrior class came to Black Prince’s aid. Her gun deck had been designed as a series of compartments with armored 4.5-inch bulkheads between them, limiting the damage done by each shot to single compartments.
By the time Black Prince broke the American line astern of New Ironsides, a third of her guns were out of action. The crews of the rest had not lost their nerve and fired accurately as she passed the American ship’s stern. The Royal Navy believed its 68-pounders were the only ordnance it had that would shatter armor plate but at no more than two hundred yards. Black Prince halved that distance, firing its starboard battery almost point-blank into New Ironsides, each surviving gun firing as it bore. The New Ironside’s unarmored stern crumpled under the impact, its rudder shot to pieces. But even at a hundred yards, the British shot just bounced off New Ironsides’s armored casemate. A subtle advantage to the American ship was its seventeen-degree outward slopping hull, which presented an angled instead of a flat surface to the British shot. Its armor had been forged rather than rolled, giving it even more strength than the usual plating. Coupled with the strength of the casemate, the angle deflected the British hits with wild, deep, echoing clangs. The monitor Catskill swung its turret to follow Black Prince and fired both of its guns into the larboard battery as the enemy passed, wrecking another fighting section.
At almost the same time, Resistance cut across New Ironside’s bow, raking the latter as her guns bore. She then passed Wabash and fired into her stern. Resistance had suffered almost as much as Black Prince in its race to close with the enemy, and its crew now worked like men possessed to even the score. The fighting spirit of the island race was never keener as they worked the guns.
Attempting to follow Resistance through the American line was St. George. Her wooden bow and forecastle simply disintegrated from the explosive power of the shells converging on it. Shells spread havoc down the quarterdeck, turning it into an abattoir of blood and shattered bodies, its captain dead and wheel shattered. In a moment this venerable ship of the line, with its three gun decks counting 120 pieces of ordnance, had been stunned. But she plunged on, her screws spinning and pulling to starboard in the absence of the wheel’s control. Her gun crews hauled away the dead and wounded and fought the fires that seemed to have ignited everywhere. The ship was now pulling unintentionally parallel to the American line, and for the first time she could fire back. The crews rushed to their larboard guns and fired as they bore. Her guns were accurate at this range, and the British gun crews, oblivious to the carnage on the quarterdeck, fought like demons, their famed gun drill taking charge, their motions fluid and powerful like the piston arms of powerful steam engine. Yet their skill and courage were wasted as the shot just bounced off the ironclads whose turrets had reversed to reload.