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Four of the line-of-battle ships were to destroy the fortifications on the Mole; while the fifth covered them from the batteries south of the town, and the heavy frigates, from those on the town wall. The bomb-vessels were to fire on the arsenal and town, assisted by a flotilla of the ships' launches, &c., fitted as gun, rocket, and mortar-boats.
East Svarto, which had before escaped, was now attacked by a division of English and French mortar-boats, placed by Captain Sulivan considerably nearer the fortifications than they had hitherto ventured. Their fire was replied to by some heavy guns, which the enemy had brought up, but no damage was received from them.
All spars and rigging that could be dispensed with were taken down; all hulls camouflaged with Mississippi mud; and all decks whitened for handiness at night. A weak point, however, was the presence of mortar-boats that would have been better out of the way altogether.
Had not the whole attention of the Danes been directed to strengthen their own means of defence, they might most materially have annoyed the invading squadron, and perhaps frustrated the impending attack; for the British ships were crowded in an anchoring ground of little extent: it was calm, so that mortar-boats might have acted against them to the utmost advantage; and they were within range of shells from Amak Island.
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.
They were low vessels which floated on the water like huge tortoises. These mortar-boats, which were destined to astound not only the Americans but the whole world, had been constructed in Japanese shipyards, to which no stranger had ever been admitted.
He had heard of gun-boats and mortar-boats, of forts built upon the river, of Columbiads, Dahlgrens, and Parrotts, of all the pomps and circumstance of glorious war, and entertained an idea that Cairo was the nucleus or pivot of all really strategetic movements in this terrible national struggle.
Could any city be safe when such implements of war were about upon the waters? But when we came to inspect the mortar-boats, our misgivings as to any future destination for this fleet were relieved; and our admiration was given to the smartness of the contractor who had secured to himself the job of building them.
The next day proving too rough for the ships to co-operate with the troops, the attack was postponed; but on the 17th the work was begun in earnest by the English mortar-boats, which first opened fire on the devoted fort.
The secret had just leaked out that the forts down the river were furiously engaged with the enemy's mortar-boats a few miles below them and that in the past forty-eight hours one huge bomb every minute, three thousand in all, had dropped into those forts or burst over them, yet the forts were "proving themselves impregnable." The lane turned and there stood Charlie.