In April, 1863, the powerful squadron of Federal ironclads opened their attack on Fort Sumter. This fleet numbered nine, Admiral Du Pont flying his flag from the frigate New Ironsides. Seven monitors were of the Passaic type, mounting in their single turrets (in addition to the 15-inch Dahlgren smoothbore) either an 11-inch Dahlgren or an 8-inch Parrott rifle. The eighth monitor was the Keokuk, mounting two 11-inch Dahlgren’s, each in its own turret.
It is a familiar story, how the vessels more than met their match in the fierce engagement of 21 hours’ duration. Opposed to their armored hulls and powerful ordnance the Confederates could bring only obsolete 10-inch smoothbore Columbiads and 7-inch banded Brooke rifles. Of the fleet, five were disabled, one sinking the following morning.
This vessel, the Keokuk, under the command of Commander A. C. Rhind, advanced directly towards Sumter and came within 700 yards. Within 5 minutes she received 90 direct hits, firing only 3 shots, all from her forward turret before it was jammed. For a few minutes her engines were stopped and she drifted helplessly, but by great skill Commander Rhind was able to withdraw her to a safe distance. Nineteen times had rifle bolts and solid shot crashed through her hull armor in the vicinity of the water line. As a result she sank at her anchorage, 4 miles from Sumter and 2 from Morris Island, early the morning of April 8.
Several surveys were made of the wreck and each reported that she was unsalvagable, resting on a sand bottom in 18 feet of water with only a foot of her turret tops exposed at low water. It was also the expressed opinion of the survey boards that the first light blow would either break her up or cover her with sand and that in any eventuality she was not accessible to the Confederates. With this information at hand, Admiral Du Pont ordered the wreck to be blown up, but after several failures on the part of the divers the destruction was abandoned.
A day or so after the engagement the monitors sought a new anchorage and left the Keokuk’s wreck some two miles away. Almost as soon as the Federal surveys were made, the Confederates sent Major Harris of the Engineers to inspect the hulk, with a view to salvage. His report was similar to the findings of the Northern boards. He related the terrific damage done by the Confederate fire and considered that any attempts at salvage would be quite dangerous and the chances of success so slight as to make the try unjustified.
With the South devoid of new and heavy ordnance, the thought of that pair of guns was all the stimulus needed to initiate an effort to recover them; and immediately a carefully chosen expedition of mechanics and engineers with their tools was taken to the wreck. These men had to work immersed in cold water, in the dark, and with the knowledge that noise would lead to their capture. They could work only during the night when the tide and moon conditions were exactly right, and then only for the last stage of the ebb and first of the flood. In addition, the results of their night’s labor had to be concealed from discovery by Yankee observers during the day.
The turret was 20 feet in diameter at the deck and 14 at its top. It was covered by several inches of armor, backed by I- beams every few feet. Within this was the gun, 13 feet 6 inches from muzzle to cascabel, 3 feet in diameter at the breech, and weighing 16,000 pounds. Its length, coupled with the inside diameter of the turret, made it necessary to raise it vertically, breech first. Finally, when the job of ripping and chiseling was done and the turret was ready to open, the gun was wrapped in a cable sling, its retaining fastenings removed, and the stage was set for the final attempt to remove it.
The recovery of the first gun was unbelievably dramatic. The working party, °n an old lightship’s hull, fitted with a crane from its forward mast and 1,500 sandbags for ballast, made short work of attaching the gun to the hoist and pulling it up until the blocks touched. But the gun still lacked 2 feet of clearing the turret s rim. Immediately, A. W. LaCoste, the man in charge, ordered the men and ballast shifted to the other side. When this was done, the muzzle still lacked clearance by inches and, to further complicate matters, the lookouts warned that their time had been used up and they must leave the wreck. As LaCoste was Preparing to return the gun to its place and try the next night, a swell lifted the hull and the gun grated over the rim and swung free!
With this experience, it only required three nights to recover the other gun, and May 6 saw the task completed.
Needless to say, Admiral Du Pont received some very embarrassing correspondence from the Navy Department for the guns were the largest in the Confederates’ possession.
The guns were immediately equipped with mounts and put into service, one at Sumter and one at Bee, on the right flank of Moultrie. A week after the first great bombardment of Sumter, in August, the fleet made a night attack and 5 monitors moved up to within 800 yards and shelled the fort. There were only 2 serviceable guns left in Sumter, a 10-inch Columbiad and the 11-inch Dahlgren recovered from the Keokuk. The monitors withdrew the next morning after having been struck repeatedly. This gun was later removed from Sumter when all its guns were dismounted and was mounted in Fort Johnson where it saw action for the rest of the war. This gun has since been lost.
The gun which was mounted at Battery Bee on Sullivan’s Island was to play an important role in protecting Fort Sumter from small-boat attacks at night. The bombardment of the fort had so reduced its walls that they had made an inviting inclined slope from the water’s edge up which troops could storm the fort. To offset this, the guns at Bee and Moultrie were trained during the day on the slope and marks were made on their traversing tracks and elevating screws for night fire. Several such attacks, launched by troops from small boats, were severely repulsed by the deadly enfilading fire from Bee and Moultrie, the most powerful gun of which was the Dahlgren. This gun is now mounted at the extreme north of the row of Confederate guns on the Battery in Charleston.