L. P. Brockett, The camp, the battlefield, and the hospital: or, lights and shadows of the great rebellion

After spiking nearly every gun with his own hands, and seeing that the survivors of his crew were fairly clear of the wreck, Captain Smith, accompanied by Lieutenant Dewey, Ensign Bachelder, and Engineer Tower, sadly took their leave, abandoning the proud fabric to the flames. Scarcely had they left, when two shells came crashing through the sides of the “Mississippi,” overturning, scattering, and enkindling into flame some casks of turpentine. The ship was almost instantly enveloped in billows of fire. A yell of exultation rose from the rebels as they beheld the bursting forth of the flames. The ship, lightened by the removal of three hundred men, and by the consuming power of the fire, floated from the sand bar and commenced floating, bow on, down the river.

The scene presented was indeed magnificent. The whole fabric was enveloped in flame. Wreathing serpents of fire twined around the masts and ran up the shrouds. Drifting rapidly downward on the rapid current, the meteor, like a volcanic mountain in eruption, descended as regularly along the western banks of the stream as if steered by the most accomplished helmsman. As the ship turned round, in floating off, the guns of her port battery, which had not been discharged, faced the foe. As the fire reached them the noble frigate, with the stars and stripes still floating at her peak, opened a new bombardment of the rebel batteries. The shells began to explode, scattering through the air in all directions. The flaming vision arrested every eye, on the land and on the ships, until the floating mountain of fire drifted down and disappeared behind Prophet's Island. And now came the explosion of the magazine. There was a vivid flash, shooting upward