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At sea was the usual "bar," changing slightly from year to year, but generally the main ship-channel came from the south, parallel to Morris Island, till it was well up to Fort Moultrie, where it curved, passing close to Fort Sumter and up to the wharves of the city, which were built mostly along the Cooper River front.
Along the margin of the ship-channel, there was not yet soil of the right quality for cultivation, though it was slowly forming, as the sands that lay thick on the adjacent rocks received other substances by exposure to the atmosphere. The Anne and her consorts had been anchored about an hour, when the strangers hove-to in the roads, distant about half a mile from the battery.
Both patrol boats and petty officers had their private orders, and I fancy that these steps resulted in very few soundings being taken, and in the ship-channel remaining uncharted by our German visitors. I was returning myself, after dark, in the ferry-boat plying between the Dockyard and Hamilton, when there were four German officers on the bridge.
Mate, who though pleased with the Captain's determination to make the nearest port, seemed to dread that all would not be right in Charleston that the bar was a very intricate one water very shoal in the ship-channel, and though marked with three distinctive buoys, numbered according to their range, impossible to crops without a skilful pilot.
The two men in the chains reported the depth as rapidly as they could heave the lead, and it was soon evident that the steamer could not pass the extensive bar to the westward of the ship-channel. "Steamer ahoy!" shouted the captain of the tug, as he stopped his screw within hailing-distance of the Bellevite. "Reply to that hail, Mr. Percy," said the commander to the young gentleman in uniform.
At sea was the usual "bar," changing slightly from year to year, but generally the main ship-channel came from the south, parallel to Morris Island, till it was well up to Fort Moultrie, where it curved, passing close to Fort Sumter and up to the wharves of the city, which were built mostly along the Cooper River front.
Dashington to head the vessel to the eastward, through Sand Island Channel; and she was now moving towards the main ship-channel, which passed under the very guns of Fort Morgan. The tug had picked up the boat from the fort on the other side of the bay, and was following the Bellevite, though she had fallen a long way behind her in a very short time.
On the left, some two miles distant, was Fort Gaines, a small brick-and-earth work, mounting a few heavy guns, but too far away from the ship-channel to cause much uneasiness to the fleet. Fort Morgan was on the right, one of the strongest of the old stone forts, and greatly strengthened by immense piles of sand-bags covering every portion of the exposed front.
Here, from Point Clear, the bay, broadening south-westward, doubled its width, and here, by and by, this eastern shore-line suddenly became its southern by returning straight westward in a long slim stretch of dazzling green-and-white dunes, and shut its waters from the Gulf of Mexico except for a short "pass" of a few hundred yards width and for some three miles of shoal water between the pass and Dauphin Island; and there on that wild sea-wall's end Mobile Point a dozen leagues due south from the town sat Fort Morgan, keeping this gate, the port's main ship-channel.
At one time Mulford thought the channel would bring him out into open water again, on the northern side of the reef, and more than a mile to the eastward of the point where the ship-channel in which the Swash was plying commenced; but an accidental circumstance prevented his standing in far enough to ascertain the fact.
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