10 August (afternoon)
Establishment of a 110-lber battery on Cummings Point approaches completion. The work is being done just behind the crest of a sand dune, making use of some of the remnants of a Charleston defence battery here, and the guns will be exposed to enemy fire only once they are ready to be employed.
As such, a signal is sent to the flag, which in turn passes the order to all other RN ships to engage as ordered.
Royal Oak, Victoria, Victor Emmanuel and Agamemnon - incidentally all exposing their formerly unengaged side to the forts - open fire with their rifles, aided by the frigates Glasgow and Galatea using their own rifles. Their accurate fire, fired strictly only on the mid-roll or later, peppers the South Carolina forts with occasional hits and draws a vigorous response - much of it at ranges too long to be confident of scoring a hit.
While this is taking place, the remaining undamaged Philomel-class gunboats - Ranger, Nimble, Torch, Griffon and Mullett - move at high speed down the northern side of the channel. They come under fire, and return it with their 20-lber Armstrongs (much smaller weapons, but at this close a range still quite useful) and their pivot guns.
More importantly, however, all five boats are towing every spare boat anchor the RN fleet could scrape up. While far too small to adequately stop the Royal Navy vessels at full power, especially with the relatively obstruction-free bottom, they still dig into the sand and mud a few inches and strain hard, so the speed reached is only some 7.5 knots at most.
Griffon is hit by a shell and begins taking on water right forward, and slews out of line but keeps her power up.
About a minute after entering the first part of the run, there is a sudden loud twang as two of Ranger's anchors dig in. They strain hard, and then Nimble comes up alongside and the combined force breaks something under the water.
The commander of the South Carolina detachment of the Torpedo Bureau spots this, and communicates to his subordinates that they must get ready to blow their torpedoes - the place Ranger and Nimble stopped is on the charts as the rough position of the outer line of their torpedo defences, and while this mine string is inoperable (largely due to the fact a mortar shell landed on it earlier in the day and destroyed the electrical equipment) the breaking of the control wire also strongly implies that the British will be able to do this to all three lines.
Fortunately for him, however, the effect of breaking the cable has made Ranger and Nimble slow relative to Torch, and all three gunboats are in effect in a gaggle not far off being line abreast.
Half a dozen submarine bombs explode almost at once as the second string of mines is detonated. They are irregularly spaced, partly because these are the ones which survived their prolonged immersion, and only two are close to the RN gunboats - of these, however, one is close enough to Torch to inflict severe casualties and burst her boiler. The second is further from Nimble and Ranger, and they take only relatively minor damage.
The force of the blasts draws battery attention to the gunboats, and they become the primary focus for sustained fire. Though slower than might be expected as many of the guns are large-calibre and none are breechloaders, this still causes progressive damage to the gunboats until they withdraw - minus Torch, as well as Mullett which is in a sinking condition.
Their clearing the area is reason enough for Stopfort to signal that all guns should now engage, and the volume of fire aimed at the South Carolina batteries increases considerably.
By the end of the cannonade at quarter past three, the defending batteries are not in very good shape either. In particular, the RN Cummings Point battery has found the range and is delivering repeated accurate shells, while Superb's mortar - now in action again with a cracked ring replaced - has collapsed the southern wall of Fort Moultrie. Superb has also sunk the wood-and-sandbag floating battery to the northwest of Sullivan's Island, sending a shell three feet across straight in through the roof and out through the floor just prior to detonation.
As the more minor damage inflicted by the batteries in this latest bombardment is put to rights, Stopfort finds himself faced with a trilemma. He cannot tell whether the gunboats acting as improvised minesweepers managed to disable all the Confederate infernal devices, and he is - in callous terms - out of gunboats, so his options now are to either call off the attack for the day, or make a second landing on Sullivan's Island, or sail right in.
After a little thought, he decides on the third option. Pisces, his shallow draft ironclad, will lead the fleet out on the starboard flank and will shell anything that looks like a mine bunker with her 110-lbers. Royal Oak will follow in the main channel, then the other liners and frigates. (It is assumed that there are no mine bunkers left on Cummings Point as the 67th Regiment of Foot has investigated, in some cases under mild shellfire.)
As the Pisces comes within one and a half miles of Fort Sumter, the thus far relatively intact fort begins to fire. Most of the guns it has are not capable of meaningful damage to the British ironclad at such long range - the armour is good quality and thick - but the 10" smoothbores and 7" rifles are a little more efficacious, and as Pisces steams closer the potential for damage increases. Royal Oak takes a few casualties from well aimed rifle fire, though her thick battery armour protects her at the oblique angle at first, and in any case the day is warm and the armour is strong.
Pisces mainly focuses her attention at first on Sullivan's Island until she has passed the likely point of any further mines (correctly - the final string of mines have simply suffered a failure of insulation and will not detonate), then begins to fire her port broadside at Fort Sumter. The 110-lbers and 68-lbers of Pisces and Royal Oak begin to do their usual execution to a masonry fort, though before much can be done the Confederate defence vessels come out from behind Point Pleasant to the north.
The Chicora and the Palmetto State, two locally built ironclads, are in the lead. They are accompanied by the Berkeley, just finished, and the sloop Florida, and with them a gaggle of smaller gunboats.
The resultant engagement is an odd one. Continuous rifle fire pounds into Fort Sumter, deranging the walls and causing the casemate tier to collapse, while at the same time the ironclad Berkeley aims in Nelsonian vein to break the British line as her somewhat more lightly armoured fellow ironclads pass well to the north of the British line and trade broadsides with the Pisces before turning in to come from this direction.
Berkeley takes the first and heaviest fire out of the Charleston ironclads, and is in fact the first ironclad in the world to be fired upon in anger with Palliser shells. The result is shocking and unexpected for the crew, as a heavy shell with a good angle punches through the bow casemate and detonates in the fighting compartment to deadly effect.
The devastation wrought by the British ships within a couple of minutes renders the Berkeley unfightable and drifting, though this is partly due to shock and - worse - something which results in poor tactics from Stopfort.
Seeing the two ironclad rams to his north as the greater problem, he has Royal Oak slow further to turn and open her broadside, seeking to engage the other two ironclads, only to run aground on a sandbar. While it is nearly low tide and he will not be stuck for long, the greater problem is that - though able to engage Palmetto State and Chicora with the main guns - he only has the two 110-lber bow pivots to ward off the Confederate gunboats coming in.
Fort Sumter's southern face explodes as the fire from Victoria and Victor Emmanuel finds a ready powder magazine, and the side of the fort slumps down to the sea.
Chicora is disabled by heavy fire, and Palmetto State gets close enough to Pisces - now slowed significantly by damage to her funnel - to ram. The sharp ram holes Pisces below the waterline, though the blow is a glancing scrape rather than a heavy impact, and close-range 68-lber Palliser fire effectively renders the Palmetto State hors d'combat in return - the two ironclads back off from one another, with much of the crew of Pisces focusing on damage control.
To the southeast, the David is holed and left sinking by a shell (Palliser again, this time from the 110-lber pivots) but the low-slung spar torpedo boats have not been identified as the primary threat to the Royal Oak and Saul is not engaged until she is alongside. Her commander drives his spar torpedo into the side of the British ironclad eight feet below the waterline - going low enough that the barbs stick into wood rather than sliding off the waterline armour - then backs away at speed to trigger the torpedo, sending a plume of water rising into the air and crashing down in all directions, including disabling the Saul's boilers.
Saul is promptly sunk by return fire.
The damage to Royal Oak is not actually as bad as an older ship would have suffered - her sides are over two feet thick, she has fair subdivision and damage control on wooden ships is the subject of literally centuries of experience - but over two hundred tons of water still flood in, and she settles by a few inches before the problem is put under control. (That the area holed is not void space helps, as there is less space for the water to take up.)
By the time the smoke and dust clears, the Royal Navy squadron has suffered progressive minor damage to the Pisces, temporarily disabling damage to Royal Oak, and the three liners are also moderately battered from the various shot and shell they have been hit with over the course of the day. The smaller ships have also taken plenty of damage.
Despite this, however, there is now little to prevent the landing of troops inside Charleston Harbour, and with the forts essentially all disabled further minesweeping can be done at leisure to capture the city itself.
(sorry, this one kind of kept going!)
