lads Palmetto
State and Chicora steamed out of Charleston Harbor, in a dense fog, and
attacked the blockading fleet of wooden vessels. After ramming one ship
and sending a shot through the boiler of another, they put back to port.

In April, Admiral Dupont tried to seize Charleston Harbor with his fleet
of seven monitors and two iron-clads. In a two hours' action the
monitors were seriously injured by the heavy guns of the forts, and the
fleet withdrew. In August, land batteries reduced Fort Sumter almost to
ruins, and in the following month Fort Wagner was abandoned. June 17th,
the iron-clad Atlanta, armed with a torpedo at the end of a spar, ran
down from Savannah to engage with two monitors guarding the mouth of the
river. She got aground, rendering the torpedo useless. The fifteen-inch
guns of the monitors pierced her armor, and in a few minutes she
surrendered.

[1884]

The Albemarle proved a more dangerous foe. The last of April, 1864, it
descended Roanoke River, smashed the gunboats at the mouth, and
compelled the surrender of the forts and the town of Plymouth. A few
days later it attacked a fleet of gunboats below the mouth of the river.
After a severe tussle, inflicting and receiving considerable damage, it
steamed back to Plymouth. Here it lay at the wharf till October, when it
was sunk by Lieutenant Cushing, already famous for daring exploits under
the very noses of the enemy. On the night of October 27th, young Cushing
approached the ironclad in a steam launch with a torpedo at the end of a
spar projecting from the bow. Jumping his boat over the log boom
surrounding the ram, in the thick of musketry fire from deck and shore,
Cushing calmly worked the strings by which the intricate torpedo was
fired. It exploded under the vessel's overhang, and she soon sunk. At
the moment of the explosion a cannonball crashed through the launch.
Cushing plunged into the river and swam to shore through a shower of
bullets. After crawling through the swamps next day, be found a skiff
and paddled off to the fleet. Of the launch's crew of fourteen, only one
other escaped.

[Illustration: Outside view.]
The Original Monitor.

The stronghold of the Confederacy on the Gulf was Mobile. Two strong
forts, mounting twenty-seven and forty-seven guns, guarded the channel
below the city, which was further defended by spiles and torpedoes. In
the harbor, August 5, 1864, lay the iron-clad ram, Tennessee, and three
gunboats, comm