. The naval history of the Civil War . berty to ascend theMississippi in steamers. On the 3d of Februarv, 1863, the ram, Queen of the West, Colonel Charles R. Ellet, was selected to perform the perilousduty of running the batteries and carryingout Admiral Porters orders. Ellet was agallant young fellow, full of dash and en-terprise, and was delighted with this oppor-tunity to distinguish himself; and, althoughhis vessel was a very frail one for suchan enterprise, he did not hesitate to acceptthe risk when this duty was proposed tohim. The admiral depended a great deal onthe darkness of the nig
. The naval history of the Civil War . berty to ascend theMississippi in steamers. On the 3d of Februarv, 1863, the ram, Queen of the West, Colonel Charles R. Ellet, was selected to perform the perilousduty of running the batteries and carryingout Admiral Porters orders. Ellet was agallant young fellow, full of dash and en-terprise, and was delighted with this oppor-tunity to distinguish himself; and, althoughhis vessel was a very frail one for suchan enterprise, he did not hesitate to acceptthe risk when this duty was proposed tohim. The admiral depended a great deal onthe darkness of the night to shield the ves-sel during the passage, and gave his ordersaccordingly. The •Queen of the Weststarted on her mission after midnight, butowing to the bad position of the wheel formanceuvering, Ellet stopped on his way toshift it to a point from which he thought hecould manoeuvre his vessel better, and lostso much time by the operation that the ad-vantages of the darkness were lost. It wasnearly daylight when he reached the first. ELLETS STERN WHEEL ••BAM. battery, which he passed at full alarm gun was fired from the fort andin an instant the gunners of the lower bat-teries were at their posts, and when theQueen arrived abreast of the city batteryafter battery opened upon her. As it wassupposed that Colonel Ellet would pass dur-ing the night-time, he had been ordered toram a large steamer (the Vicksburg)lying at the levee, and also to throw lightedtow balls on board of her to set her on could have been easily done at night,but it was almost certain destruction to at-tempt it in the day-time, but the gallantyoung fellow determined to carry out his or-ders at all hazards, rammed the vessel as di-rected and endeavored to set her on fire, butby this time the enemys shot were rattlingabout him, and the current carrying himpast the steamer, he was obliged to speedon. This being the first vessel to run theirbatteries the Confederate gunners were OF THE CIV
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Keywords: ., boo, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectunitedstatesnavy
