Captain Bailey led off with his division of eight vessels, whose objective was Fort St. Philip, and all of them passed through the opening in the cable. Both forts opened fire upon his flagship, the Cayuga, soon after she had passed the hulks. Five minutes later she was pouring grape and canister into St. Philip, and in ten minutes more she had passed beyond range of that work, to find herself surrounded by eleven Confederate gunboats. Three of them attempted to board her at once. An eleven-inch shot was sent through one of them at the close range of thirty yards, and she immediately ran aground and burned up. The Parrott gun on the forecastle drove off another; and Bailey was preparing to close with the third, when the Oneida and the Varuna, which had run in close to St. Philip, thus avoiding the elevated guns of the fort while they swept its bastions with grape and shrapnel, came up to the assistance of the Cayuga. The Oneida ran under full steam into one of the Confederate ships, cut her nearly in two, and left her to float down-stream a helpless wreck. She fired right and left into the others, and then went to the assistance of the Varuna, which was ashore on the left bank, hard pressed by the Governor Moore and another, said to be the Manassas. The Varuna was rammed by them both, and sank at the end of fifteen minutes; but in that time it is said that she put three eight-inch shells into the Governor Moore, and so crippled her with solid shot that she surrendered to the Oneida; and she drove five eight-inch shells into another, which sent her ashore. Still another of her shells exploded the boiler of a Confederate steamer.
The Pensacola steamed steadily but slowly by, firing with great deliberation and regularity, doing special execution with her eleven-inch pivot gun and rifled eighty-pounder. But this was not done without receiving a heavy fire in return, and her losses (thirty-seven men) were the greatest of any in the fleet. She promptly sent her boats to the assistance of the sinking Varuna.
The Mississippi was fought regularly in line, like the Pensacola, but escaped with light losses. She encountered the ram Manassas, which gave her a severe cut on the port quarter below the waterline and disabled her machinery. But she riddled the ram with shot, boarded her, and set her on fire, so that she drifted below the forts and blew up.
The Katahdin ran close to the forts, steamed by rapidly, and got near the end of the line, where she put a few shots into the ironclad Louisiana. The Kineo ran by close under St. Philip, and then assisted the Mississippi in handling the ram Manassas; but she was afterward attacked by three gunboats at once, and, her pivot-gun carriage becoming injured, she withdrew and continued on up-stream. The Wissahickon ran ashore before she reached the forts, got off, passed them, and above ran ashore again. Most of these operations were carried on in darkness occasioned by the thick smoke, lighted, however, by the lurid flashes of more than two hundred guns.
The Hartford, bearing Flag Officer Farragut, led the second division of the fleet. She was under way at 3.30 A.M., and twenty-five minutes later opened with her bow guns on Fort Jackson, receiving a heavy fire from both forts. Twenty minutes thereafter, in attempting to avoid a fire-raft, she grounded on a shoal near Fort St. Philip. At the same time the ram Manassas pushed a raft upon her port quarter, and in an instant she was on fire. A part of the crew went to fire quarters and soon subdued the flames, while the working of her guns was steadily continued and she was then backed off into deep water. This movement turned the ship's head down-stream, and it was with some difficulty that she was turned around against the current; but this was finally accomplished, and she continued to steam up the river, firing into several of the enemy's vessels as she passed. Among these was a steamer full of men, apparently a boarding party. She was making straight for the Hartford when Captain Broome's gun, manned by marines, planted a shell in her, which exploded, and she disappeared.
“God hath caused many wants and weaknesses in us that we may be useful to one another; and has purposely given a diversity of gifts and graces, that we may be helpful to each other.”
–The Works of George Swinnock