Today in History:

214 Series I Volume I- Serial 1 - Charleston

Page 214 OPERATIONS IN CHARLESTON HARBOR, S. C. Chapter I.

or, as on the left face, with two courses laid in mortar; some few were only half closed. One 32-pounder was mounted, for experimental purposes, on the right flank.

First tier.---Eleven 32-pounders were mounted on the left face. Guns could be mounted throughout. The forty-one embrasures were closed with the ordinary 6-inch wooden shutters, secured with a wooden brace and rope lashing. Two small posterns in the gorge angles were closed, each with two doors, the outer hooked, the inner barred. The soldiers' quarters were unfinished, and as those portions that were tenable were occupied by workmen, the transferred garrison was placed in the officers' quarters, which were completed.

The parade was crowded with temporary wooden buildings (6), used as shops and storehouses, with a large amount of flagging, lumber, sand, shell, and brick, and with the ordnance, consisting of sixty-six guns with their carriages and 5,600 shot and shell. The communications through these encumbrances were very difficult.

The main postern was closed by two gates, each of two 4-inch leaves, secured with wooden cross-bars; they were loopholes and were weak and insecure.

On the gorge seven loopholes doors were closed with 5-inch wooden shutters; twelve magazine ventilators with wooden shutters at the throat; fifty-one loopholes windows were not closed. The esplanade and wharf were much incumbered with flagging, sand, and brick, and by two apparatuses, twelve feet high and attached to the scarp wall, for hoisting boats.

The garrison transferred from Fort Moultrie consisted of seven officers, seventy-six enlisted men, and forty-five women and children. There were three officers, one enlisted man, two hundred and five laborers, and one woman at Fort Sumter. One hundred and fifty of the laborers were discharged within a few days, and the women and children were shipped to New York early in February, 1861, leaving at this date a garrison consisting of ten officers, seventy-five enlisted men, and fifty-five laborers. There has been and is an ample supply of water and a sufficiency of fuel, principally in the shape of lumber, flooring, and gun carriages.

Immediately after the transfer of the garrison to this place, and your assuming command, instructions were given to limit the defense to the barbette and first tier, closing all openings in that tier, except three or four at each angle, where guns were to be mounted, and all openings in the second tier, permanently and securely. The first labors were directed to mounting the proposed armament, and to closing these openings, after which such defenses were prepared as the situation of the garrison suggested, until this date, when the condition of the work is as follows:

Barbette tier.-The armament is fully described in the accompanying figure.* It consists, in all, of twenty-seven guns, one of which, a 42-pounder, is mounted at the left shoulder angle on a caseate carriage placed on the chassis of a 10-inch columbiad, and a 24-pounder at the left gorge angle is so arranged and the parapet so cut away that it can be depressed to 18 deg. and fired upon the end of the wharf. Several machicoulis galleries of 1 1/2-inch plank (five lined with 1/2-inch iron plate) are placed on the parapet, one on the center of each face and flank, and three on the gorge, over and commanding the main postern; 225 shells, mostly 8-inch, are arranged as grandes, to be rolled off the parapet and exploded by means of a lanyard of proper length. Thunder-barrels are placed at each angle and over the main gate; fragments of stone, brick,

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*These diagrams are supplies by those following Foster to Totten, March 27, p. 225.

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Page 214 OPERATIONS IN CHARLESTON HARBOR, S. C. Chapter I.