---Battle of Charleston Harbor, South Carolina – Admiral Samuel Du Pont and his fleet sortie into Charleston Harbor in order to capture Fort Sumter. Beauregard’s well-designed defensive battery emplacements in the harbor have a dominating overlapping field of fire on every spot in the channel: therefore, Rebel heavy artillery rains down a monsoon of shot and shell on the Yankee ships. Mostly ironclad, the Union ships withstand the battering at first, but the USS Passaic, a double-turret monitor, is disabled, and the USS Keokuk is badly damaged in a similar way---at one point, Keokuk fired only three shots to the ninety shots that struck her. Her turrets inoperable, the Keokuk drifts out of action. Du Pont finally calls off the debacle and orders a withdrawal. The Weehawken, the Montauk, the Patapsco, and the Nantucket are all badly hit, also. Confederate Victory.
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| Rear Admiral Samuel Du Pont, USN
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