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My belief is that very little evil to the enemy will result from those mortar-boats, and that they cannot be used with much effect. Since that time they have been used on the Mississippi, but as yet we do not know with what results. Island No. 10 has been taken; but I do not know that the mortar-boats contributed much to that success.
But the work will go on, for it is God's work; and the earth will be prepared for the people and the fat rottenness of the still living forest will be made to give forth its riches. We found that two days at Cairo were quite enough for us. We had seen the gun-boats and the mortar-boats, and gone through the sheds of the soldiers.
Every one said that such a canal was impossible; but the men of the North were given to doing impossible things in those days, and while Foote's mortar-boats continued their thunder, fifteen hundred men were set to work cutting a way through the noisome swamps. A channel forty feet wide must be made.
On the eighteenth of April the mortar-boats began heaving shells at the forts. But, after six days of bombardment, the forts were nowhere near the point of surrendering, and the supply of shells had begun to run low. Meanwhile the squadron had been busy preparing for the great ordeal. The first task was to break the boom across the river.
But their case was hopeless: for Farragut was at New Orleans, and could cut off their supplies; while Porter, with his mortar-boats, was below them, putting escape out of the question. Every now and then a big shell would drop on the parade, and its flying pieces would remind the garrison that their enemies were getting impatient.
The passages between these islets had been carefully surveyed by Captain Sulivan, and on each of those nearest the fortress, mortar batteries were now placed, while the mortar-boats formed in a line outside them.
But the enemy suffered much more severly; they are computed to have lost, in killed and wounded, not less than between six and seven thousand men. The loss sustained by the Algerines by the destruction in the mole was four large frigates, of forty-four guns. Five large corvettes, from twenty-four to thirty guns. All the gun and mortar-boats, except seven; thirty destroyed.
All these waterways are of about the same nature so far as navigation is concerned, until the Sunflower is reached; this affords free navigation. Admiral Porter explored this waterway as far as Deer Creek on the 14th of March, and reported it navigable. On the next day he started with five gunboats and four mortar-boats. I went with him for some distance.
The port of Boulogne contained about seventeen hundred vessels, such as flatboats, sloops, turkish boats, gunboats, prairies, mortar-boats, etc.; and the entrance to the port was defended by an enormous chain, and by four forts, two on the right, and two on the left.
Other boats that were in more exposed positions had their hulls covered with grass and reeds, so that they seemed a part of the swamp that bordered the river. After the line of fire had been obtained by a careful mathematical survey, Porter got all his mortar-boats into position, and began his bombardment.
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