This day in Charleston
2 entries · 1864–1865
Weather too thick at Fort Sumter for Colonel Elliott to count the fleet; two 42-pounders had gone off the fort in the night. Down the coast the lookouts counted ninety-four vessels of all classes in Port Royal harbor and thirty-one in the Stono. Charleston’s defense was, above all, an exercise in watching.
Journal of Operations in Charleston Harbor, OR I, 35, Pt. 1
Covering picket boats sweeping for torpedoes off Fort Sumter, the monitor USS Patapsco struck one and sank almost at once — witnesses said fifteen to twenty seconds. Sixty-two of her people were lost, the heaviest single loss the Federal navy suffered at Charleston. The wreck lay in the main channel for the rest of the century.
Official Records of the Navies, Series I, Vol. 16
Entries are dated from the War of the Rebellion official records, the naval official records and contemporary Charleston sources. Browse the whole year.