This day in Charleston

March 13

2 entries · 1863–1864

1863Torpedoes

A canoe, a spar and thirty pounds of powder

Under Beauregard’s instructions an officer tried a boat torpedo in Charleston Harbor: a twenty-foot canoe carrying a spar that projected twenty-two feet beyond her bow, with nearly thirty pounds of powder at the end, against an abandoned gunboat ballasted with rubbish from the burnt district. A northwest gale and the ebb tide spoiled the moorings, and he made the trial anyway. Charleston was inventing the torpedo boat by experiment.

Official Records, Series I, Vol. 14

1864Fort Sumter

The whole garrison changed in a night

The entire infantry garrison of Fort Sumter was relieved in one night: Captain Hopkins with 53 men of the 27th South Carolina, Captain Tarrh with 50 of the 21st, Captain Mazyck with 48 of the 25th and Captain Covington with 49 of the 23rd. Four hundred and fifty rowed miles, in the dark, to change two hundred men.

Fort Sumter post returns, OR I, 35, Pt. 1

Entries are dated from the War of the Rebellion official records, the naval official records and contemporary Charleston sources. Browse the whole year.