1884.]
��Captain George Hamilton Perkins, U.S.N.
��217
��officers and crew, who eagerly waited the order to spring to their guns and make reply to the withering fire pour- ing in upon them as yet unavenged.
" Noticing," said Perkins, " that the enemy's guns were all aimed for mid- stream, I steered right close under the walls of St. Philip, and although our masts and rigging were badly shot through, the hull was hardly damaged. After passing the last battery, I looked back for some of our vessels, and my heart jumped into my mouth, when I found I could not see a single one. I thought they must all have been sunk by the forts. Looking ahead, I saw eleven of the enemy's gunboats coming down upon us, and I supposed we were gotie. Three made a dash to board us, but a charge from our eleven- inch settled one, the Governor Moore. The ram Manassas just missed us astern, and we soon disposed of the other. Just then, some of our gun- boats came to the assistance of the Cayuga, and all sorts of things hap- pened ; it was the wildest excitement all round. The Varuna fired a broad- side into us instead of the enemy. Another attacked one of our prizes ; three had struck to us before any of our ships came up, but when they did come up we all pitched in and sunk eleven vessels in about twenty minutes."
The brief encounter with the Moore had been very exciting. The vessels were alongside each other, and both were reloading, — the guns muzzle to muzzle, and but a few feet apart. The gun that could fire first would decide the fate of one or the other. Perkins sprang down, and, taking personal charge of the smoking eleven-inch, put fresh vigor into its loading, and firing the instant the rammer was withdrawn,
��swept the Moore's gun from its car- riage, and killed or disabled thirteen of its crew.
The Cayuga still leading the way up the river came upon a regiment at daylight encamped close to the bank, and Perkins, as the mouthpiece of the captain, hailed them and ordered them to come on board and dehver up their arms or he would " blow them to pieces."
It proved to be the Chalmette regi- ment, and, surrendering, the officers and men were paroled and the former allowed to retain their side-arms, "except," said Perkins, "one captain, whom I discovered was from New Hampshire. I took his sword away from him and have kept it!"
Now Farragut came up in the Hart- ford and signalled the fleet to anchor. This was near Quarantine, some five miles above the forts. All the vessels had succeeded in running the gauntlet of their fire except three gunboats, and New Orleans was now practically at the mercy of the fleet ; but the Varuna had been rammed and sunk in the hot fight with the enemy's flotilla just above St. Philip.
The Cayuga had received forty-two hits in mast and hull, and six men had been wounded.
The hurricane of projectiles had passed mostly too high to do mortal harm to her crew, due in part to the skilful manner in which Perkins had sheered in toward the bank from mid- stream so early in the fight.
Resting until the next morning to care for the dead and wounded, and the repair of damages, the fleet again weighed, the Cayuga still in advance; and when the spires of the city hove in sight from her deck, "three rousing cheers and a tiger " went up from her
��Vol. I. — No. IV. — B.
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