April 14, 1863, The New York Herald
THE FIFTH OF APRIL.
OUR SPECIAL NAVAL CORRESPONDENCE.
FLAGSHIP JAMES ADGER,
NORTH EDISTO, S.C., April 5, 1863.
READY TO START.
After long weeks of anxious waiting, during which time the preparations for the contemplated expedition against Charleston have been ceaselessly pushed forward, night and day, to a final completion, the expedition is now fairly off.
No one not cognizant of all the multitudinous details necessary to be carefully observed and carried out to insure success can imagine the immense proportions which Admiral Du Pont’s labors have assumed in placing his part of the expedition on a complete basis. Other men of less determination would have quailed before the prospect; but he grappled with the difficulty and needs, and overcame the one and fully met the others.
THE PREPARATIONS.
The preparations were necessarily on a scale of gigantic proportions. No boy’s play was his, to enter the harbor of Charleston and capture the city, begirt with hundreds of guns of the heaviest description and of the most modern style, gathered from the first manufactories of the world by long continued and expensive efforts, to defend a city to which the eyes of all the world were turned, and about the final fate of which hung the hopes and fears of a continent. He was not to risk an attack with the ordinary means at his disposal. He called to his aid the hitherto invincible iron-clads, and his demand was met as promptly as the position of affairs would permit. Seven Monitor iron-clads and the Whitney battery Keokuk, besides the iron-clad frigate New Ironsides, were sent to him, and an untold quantity of ordnance stores, sufficient to serve every gun in the squadron twenty days’ continuous firing. The manufacture of this immense amount of ammunition, shot, shell, grape and cannister was not the work of a day or week. Months have elapsed, and yet the preparations were uncompleted; and while the nervous and demanding public have laid the blame of the delay, as they are pleased to call it, at the door of Admiral Du Pont, he was anxiously awaiting the arrival of consignments of munitions, without which the attack on Charleston would be a terrible farce, a futile attempt.
THE REBEL DEFENCES AND OBSTRUCTIONS.
Numerous batteries, armed with hundreds of guns, were not all the defences which were to be overcome before the proud city of Charleston should lay at the mercy of our death-dealing guns. The ingenuity of brave, intelligent and scientific rebel officers had devised other plans for defeating our object. Within the channels huge torpedoes, made of boilers of steamboats seized for the purpose, were anchored, filled with twenty-five hundred pounds of powder – a sleeping volcano, ready at a touch to eject its internal fire, and let loose the confined herculean forces, which should blow to fragments the unfortunate object which came in contact with it. Between these huge infernal machines were hundreds of lesser torpedoes, strung like beads upon a thread of a necklace, across the channel, pregnant with instant destruction; and before them, as skirmishers, before the main force, are line after line of fishermen’s nets, gathered by force from North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to disable the propellers of the iron-clads, and render them helpless and a prey to the rebels. Not satisfied with these precautions, lines of spiles have been driven into the bottom across the channels above Fort Sumter and between it and the city, and these protected by torpedoes, making access to them difficult as well as highly dangerous. These are a few of the obstacles to be overcome before our iron-clads can get within shelling distance of the city. Indeed, every device which science and intelligence can suggest and the resources of the rebel States or foreign nations can carry out have been adopted to make the Sebastopol of America impregnable. If it is possible the city will be taken; but I am in duty bound to say that the success of the expedition is not placed beyond a doubt.
THE LACK OF TROOPS.
If we should fail in our efforts it will not be owing to the want of skill or a determination to grasp victory, if it may lay in the power of men, but solely to the lack of adequate means. Let that be clearly understood, and we stand or fall upon the throwing of the die. But here let us disabuse the North of many errors which seem to have become firmly fixed in the public mind. In the first place, instead of having an indefinite number of men in the land force to co-operate with the navy, we have only about thirteen thousand all told, and only nine iron-clads, one a frigate, to carry out that part of the plan which requires invulnerable vessels. The people North seem to be under the impression that we have five or six hundred iron-clads and wooden frigates. It is not so. Farther on will be found a correct statement of the number of vessels and guns which are to do all the work. If we fail the cause will be apparent to the dullest comprehension. But we do not intend to fail. We shall be successful.