Inside the turrets, the gunners felt the continuous concussive effect as a heavy vibrating hum. The turrets on the monitors Catskill and Nahant rotated back to fire at close range into St. George. Behind them, Wabash’s heavy Dahlgren battery added its fire. St. George seemed to fly apart in clouds of wooden splinters under the impact, huge holes smashed into her sides, her masts crashing down over the sides. Wasbash’s broadside battery kept the fire hot as the monitors rotated their turrets to reload. One by one, then by whole sections, St. George’s guns fell silent amid their dead and dying crews, blood washing the decks. As her engines took her out of the fight, she was more a floating wreck than a fighting ship.
Black Prince now turned slowly hard to starboard to bring it broadside to broadside with the crippled American falling out of line. The Warrior class ship was especially difficult to steer with any precision given its small rudder, and the American ship had time to prepare for the next round. The little submersible tender was barely able to steam away from New Ironsides, its submersible boats nowhere in sight. Following Black Prince, ship of the line Sans Pareil also turned to starboard to sandwich New Ironsides and pound her to pieces between them. The American ship was now dead in the water as the battle split into two parts. The monitors ahead of Dahlgren’s flagship steamed on, engaging HMS Donegal and its following frigates, which were steaming into the same pulverizing hail of shells that had wrecked St. George.
From behind Wabash, the ram Atlanta emerged to swing wide and come in against the British 2nd Division line. She bypassed HMS Donegal, which was engaging the American line to aim squarely at HMS Shannon. This huge British frigate was the namesake of the ship that had taken the USS Chesapeake in 1813 and with its fifty-one guns approached the size of a small ship of the line. Her gunnery was as good as her renowned ancestor’s, and she sent a stream of iron at the former Confederate ironclad that repeatedly struck her bow and sides. Atlanta steamed on, her smokestack shot away and her broadside guns useless at that angle of approach. Lieutenant Cromwell, barely used to the title of captain, was intent on closing with the enemy and put his reliance in the ironclad’s spar torpedo. The gunpowder-filled torpedo extended beyond the prow just under water, its barbed point invisible in the muddy water around the bar. Shannon’s broadside of fifteen 8-inch shell guns and ten 32-pounders poured their fire into the oncoming ram, but they burst or bounced off her plate.36 The frigate had only one gun, a 68-pounder that could hope to defeat even Atlanta’s inferior armor, and it had only one shot as it closed the last hundred yards. It was a direct hit that that knocked the top off the pilothouse and killed the young captain. It was too late for Shannon, however; Atlanta itself now was the weapon. She crashed into Shannon, driving the spar torpedo point deep through the ship’s copper bottom and pushing the ship out of line.
Atlanta’s engineer ordered engines reversed, but the spar torpedo was sunk too deeply into Shannon, and the underpowered Confederate engines did not have the strength to pull it free. The torpedo man hesitated; his orders had been to connect the battery that would send the current into the explosive after the ship had disengaged. Shannon’s guns were firing at top speed at the immobilized ironclad. Atlanta’s bow gun was dismounted by a direct hit through its gun port. Now HMS Ariadne came up alongside to pound her with her broadside. Her expert gunners sent 68-pounder shot through Atlanta’s single broadside gun port, dismounting the gun and savaging the crew. The third frigate, Melpomene, came up as well to hammer Atlanta’s stern. The patches in her armor failed as shot penetrated the casemate, killing the torpedo man and wounding the engineer. The casemate was filled with smoke and screams as the armor plate rattled with shot and more shells exploded inside. The engineer crawled over to the torpedo man. Pushing the body off the battery, he made the connection. He fell back and counted-one, two, three-then the underwater force of the explosion surged back through Atlanta, pushing her back. Shannon shrieked as if in pain as the explosion ruptured her engine and broke her keel. An enormous hole sucked in the ocean. Almost immediately she started to list. She died fast, slipping beneath the water in minutes.
Many a man paused to stare at Shannon’s death. HRH Albert was not one of them. If anything his sharp tongue lashed the gawkers back to their duties aboard HMS Racoon as it led the smaller ships of the first division in the envelopment of the American right. His captain was so intent on the last ships in the American line that he did not notice the flotilla hugging the coast to the south. He had no idea the initiative had slipped from his fingers until an XV-inch shell landed amidships. The lookout that should have seen them was flung into the sea as the mast he was atop flew apart in a cloud of splinters. Another huge shell and then another arced toward the corvettes. Against wooden ships, Dahlgren’s shells smashed their way into the gun decks before exploding with such force to create shambles and a butcher’s yard.
Albert scanned the shore but could see only the faintest shapes close to the water. He scampered up the rigging to give height to his glasses. “By God,” he muttered to himself, “more of those damned monitors.” They were the three monitors whose repairs had been rushed forward at Port Royal, and they were slowly moving toward the corvettes. The second monitor shell to strike Racoon stove a great hole in her hull. The third killed the captain and sent Albert in a bloody heap on the shattered deck. Fires broke out to feed on the mass of new kindling, and the ship began to list strongly. Strong hands lifted the prince down into a boat. Despised or not, he was still Victoria’s son, and Racoon’s tars would not have it said they left her boy to die.
On the other flank the British envelopment had run into Dahlgren’s swarm of gunboats, which were rapidly closing on the main fight. There HMS Resistance had picked out USS Wabash for its duel as the largest American ship after New Ironsides. The two were pounding away at only fifty yards, the side of each ship spitting tongues of fire. Resistance’s heavy nineteen-gun broadside battery had a target it was designed for, a traditional wooden warship. Her gun crews were rapid and accurate. Big chunks of Wabash’s side and deck were smashed, but her own broadside battery of seven XI-inch Dahlgrens and a 150-pounder Parrot gun were just as destructive to the armored hull of the enemy. So close were the ships that Wabash’s shot was breaking through the ruptured armor and followed by a shell to explode inside the gun deck.