DESTRUCTION OF FEDERAL GUNBOAT.
BY MISS CLARA BACOT, U. D. C. AUXILIARY, CHARLESTON.
In the spring of the year 1862, just before Charleston was evacuated, the people were annoyed by a small Yankee gunboat that ran up Warpool Cut and fired on the city from the rear. General Beauregard picked twelve of the Stone Scouts that had done heroic work in defense of the forts and the city of Charleston to put a stop to this boat's destructive work.
These scouts, with Mr. Jerney for captain, at the dead of night carried the only old cannon that could be spared from the forts in a rowboat to an old barn that overlooked the cut; there they cut a door in the back of the barn, hauled the old cannon in, loaded her to the muzzle with grape and canister, and silently awaited the coming of the Yankee boat. Soon the boat rounded the curve into the cut and began throwing shells into the city.
Upstream she came till in front of the old barn, where she turned to go back; but as her prow directly turned to the barn she stuck, throwing the pilot house about twelve yards from the muzzle of the old cannon in the barn. As quick as lightning the barn door was thrown open and the old cannon, with a roar like thunder, belched forth its contents into the hoat; and when the smoke cleared away, the scouts saw that the pilot house was gone and that most of the men were dead or dying on board and that the boat was tossing from side to side, while the remaining men were trying to get her turned and started downstream to get back to the fleet, thus giving the scouts time to load the old cannon again. Just as the boat started Captain Jerney pulled the lark string, and with another roar the old cannon burst, but sent its c=:tents as true as before; and this was the first, last, and only Yankee boat that threw shells into Charleston from the rear.