tion from the flag-ship Colorado, under
Lieutenant J.H. Russell, assisted by Lieutenants Sproston and Blake,
with subordinate officers and seamen, amounting in all to four boats
and one hundred men, seized and destroyed an armed schooner lying
alongside the wharf of the Pensacola Navy Yard, under the protection
of a battery. The service was gallantly carried out; the schooner's
crew, after a desperate resistance, were driven on shore, whence, with
the guard, they resumed their fire on the assailants. The affair cost
the flag-ship three men killed and nine wounded.

Under Mervine's successor, Flag-Officer W.W. McKean, more of interest
occurred. The first collision was unfortunate, and, to some extent,
humiliating to the service. A squadron consisting of the steam-sloop
Richmond, sailing-sloops Vincennes and Preble, and the small
side-wheel steamer Water Witch had entered the Mississippi early in
the month of October, and were at anchor at the head of the passes. At
3.30 A.M., October 12th, a Confederate ram made its appearance close
aboard the Richmond, which, at the time, had a coal schooner
alongside. The ram charged the Richmond, forcing a small hole in her
side about two feet below the water-line, and tearing the schooner
adrift. She dropped astern, lay quietly for a few moments off the
port-quarter of the Richmond, and then steamed slowly up the river,
receiving broadsides from the Richmond and Preble, and throwing up a
rocket. In a few moments three dim lights were seen up the river near
the eastern shore. They were shortly made out to be fire-rafts. The
squadron slipped their chains, the three larger vessels, by direction
of the senior officer, retreating down the Southwest Pass to the sea;
but in the attempt to cross, the Richmond and Vincennes grounded on
the bar. The fire-rafts drifted harmlessly on to the western bank of
the river, and then burned out. When day broke, the enemy's fleet,
finding the head of the passes abandoned, followed down the river, and
with rifled guns kept up a steady but not very accurate long-range
fire upon the stranded ships, not venturing within reach of the
Richmond's heavy broadside. About 10 A.M., apparently satisfied with
the day's work, they returned up river, and the ships shortly after
got afloat and crossed the bar.

The ram which caused this commotion and hasty retreat was a small
vessel of three hundred and eighty-four tons, originally a Boston
tug-boat called the Enoch T