[
810]
Both
Whiting and
Lamb, who were in command of the fort, say that on the first day they fired from the fort — not from mound battery--“six hundred and seventy-two shells by count,” firing slowly and deliberately.
1
Colonel Lamb says they fired on the two days six hundred shells, exclusive of grape and canister.
(See page 816.) What becomes of
Porter's statement that only one gun was fired by one or two desperate men, and that from the mound battery?
General Weitzel went on shore, determined what the report of the defences would be, for General Butler had made an opinion for him.2 . . .
If this temporary failure succeeds in sending General Butler into private life it is not to be regretted, for it cost only a certain amount of shells, which I would expend in a month's target practice anyhow.
Again he says:--
The firing this day [the 25th] was slow, only sufficient to amuse the enemy while the army landed.3
In his plan of the first attack accompanying his report, and by his
general order, the new ironsides and monitors were to lie in not less than three and one half fathoms of water, which he says would place them about three quarters of a mile from the fort.
The plan itself shows that the ironsides ranged in a line from a little over three quarters of a mile to a mile from the fort.
The next division of vessels lay at a distance of a mile from the fort, and the rest of the fleet, with the exception of the reserves, ranged from about a mile and an eighth to a mile and a half distant from the fort, the reserves being between a mile and a quarter and a mile and a half away.
If the plan is a true one, and had been followed, full too long range, as will be seen, was given for the fire on the fort.
But it was not followed, as it appears that some of the vessels did not go up within those lines, so that they had to be placed nearer the fort on the attack on the 25th in order that they might be able to throw their shells onto the land, “as they had fallen into the water on the day before,” more than a hundred yards short of the fort.
4 
