March 18, 1861; The Charleston Mercury
(Extract from a private letter.)
Yesterday Col. Forney was placed in full command of all the forces at this place–Colonel Chase having resigned–and he has commenced his operations with energy. A sand battery is a cellar dug in the sand, three feet deep and eighteen by twenty four wide. The sand which comes to of this place is piled up so as to make a sort of wedge shaped defence eighteen feet long and four feet high at the edge of the pit, which, being itself three feet deep, makes the whole, from the bottom of the pit to the top of the parapet, seven feet–high enough to protect a man’s head. Col. Forney is constructing three of these sand batteries, distant, the extreme one from the other, about a mile and three quarters. The right extreme one is to have four 8 inch columbiads; two of these are already mounted and ready for action. The left extreme one four 8 inch columbiads; and the central one three 10 inch columbiads. Although this is Sunday, there have been 300 men engaged all day in building these batteries. With good luck, I think that in a few days we can have all the guns mounted. The 10 inch guns weigh, each, 15,000 pounds, and it is a vast labor to get them here through this sand. You see the gun is much bigger at the butt than the muzzle, and, therefore, will not roll forward, but Forney has had an arrangement made to go round the muzzle, so as the equalized the diameters, and then talking about 50 men, to each gun, they will be rolled along on skids, and in time will reach their destination. One hundred and twenty pounds of iron flung by twenty pounds of powder will batter down any brick work, I don’t care how thick, which is only one and a quarter miles distant; and, if the enemy will stand still, and let us pound away upon them, we will inevitably knock down Fort Pickens. Its walls are not of granite, as we have heard, but of brick, just like all the other forts here, and they have only two 10 inch guns while we have three. Then every brick we knock out of them is a brick gone, but they may fling 1000 ten inch balls into our sand and it will do no harm an hurt nobody, and make not an inch of progress, unless they hit our gun itself, a very unlikely possibility. They may fire a week and do little mischief. I cannot understand why the services of troops are not accepted and they sent here. If we had 3000 men properly armed we could reduce Pickens and take it, I think, without the ruinous sacrifice of life we have heard so much apprehended. I have no idea that the men of war can come into the bay. They have to pass within 600 yards of Fort McRee…. Six hundred yards is just as near as is wanted. We can sink them from McRee a dead moral certainty. Then, if they should get by McRee, they have to face our three tremendous sand batteries, besides the guns of Fort Barrancas. Fort McRee is a pretty strong place, about as much so, in my opinion, as Fort Pickens, but Fort Barrancas is much weaker, and is not, I think, tenable.
You ought to have seen Pugh and Bullock working in the sand pits and rolling the wheel barrows. Bullock works hard and blows mightily, and I tell you he rolls sand beyond belief and stands back from nothing that a soldier is required to do.
This is the most beautiful place in the world. This bay is as splendid a sheet of water as glistens under the sun. The beach is white as snow, the bluff high, the air sweet and the sky when clear as fine as Italy. The improvements here are perfectly amazing to me. The Navy Yard if located in the North would have been as well known as Bunker Hill monument or the Metropolitan Hotel. It is one of the loveliest places–the walks are all of brick, most smoothly and beautifully laid–live oak groves, flower gardens, hot houses, vistas, splendid houses–all that money could do have made this sand bar blossom like the rose. Then there are fish and game and oysters. Every body is getting fat, even my lank jaws are becoming round, and my cheeks are almost as red as my nose, which I can compare to nothing short of a light house. I don’t think a razor has been open in this camp since our arrival; even Bullock has a beard! Pugh’s thin and fiery bristles aggravate the inflamed expression of his countenance, and has communicated his grimness to our visages in a manner that would fill you with admiration.