The Arkansaw traveler., 1883-12-01
FIELD, FORT AND FLEET
The sho, and Shell From Glea, Guns


 NJ Quad. in Detroit Free Frcss
 battle is full of inconsistencies. A s;Yay bullet seems to devlate from it's curse to strike down a general Of brigade, while battery plays upon a -r7lment for an hour without killing a dosen men \ vollev of musketry may >;rike down scores Of men al one point, while like volley delivered al even loser range al another point does not make a single victim. The shell that salled Rosecrans chief of stall a, Stone Ever few on and exploded in the midst ei marching column and did no further .n,ury. In that same battle General uaten had hall dozen men killed be- sde him. and he escaped without d 5-r4,ch. One gun may fire for an hour and accomplish nothing: the very first missile from another may work ,rcmend- eHs injury.
 h the great tlsht m Albcmarle Sound, when the federal gunboat Sassaeus at .acked the confederate ram .Albemarle. me latter fired seven or eight shots which ried shell. which crashed through the sde of the gun-boat, entered her star board boiler. and killed two. wounded ne and scalded seventeen or eighteen men, while the damage to the boat was several hundred dollars.
 In the second bembardmen, of tert Fisher a shell from a federal gun-boa, exploded in the midst of group. One soldier had two buttons cut from his coal, another had his hat shot away, and ye, the only damage inflicted from one shell was more than had occurred from me previous 200 missiles.
 During one ot the monitor bombard- nlenis of Eort Sumter August i-) Com mander Rogers took the Catskill into the Hght. She was hit about twenty times without having a man wounded or suffer ing any serious irlur'. when, as she was about to steam away. shot struck the ipp of the pilot.house, and the flying nuts and iron splinlers killed the commander and his paymaster and wounded the two pilots. \; later date the ren-elad NeehaWken hred. shell into foit Moultrie which dismoun,ed one gun, broke of the muztle of another. knocked town several feet of vail. and killed six teen and wounded twelve men. At .a,er hour in thi; fight Il confederate
 lieutenant was hurled l distance of fifty feet by the explosion of a shei., and yet ais only injury was the direct result of the fall. While men ,o the right and left and oehind him were Allled or wounded. he Few through the ar in the company of the iron splinters and was untouched.
 During the bembardment oi Fort iienry a shot from a gun sighted by
 ,eneral Tilghman himself q, the federal sGa boa; Essex broke through her plates Ath an a~ful crash. killed one man and wounded two and entered the middle boiler. The results were most disas- ,rous. Ofthc entire crew not more than ,en escaped soaldins, and many were literally steamed to death. The one thought was to escape from the terrible steam, and every one who could gc: ou, ot the trap jumped overboard and lei, the vessel to float out of action Had the Essex been two ice, nearer 10 or further from the fort the acciden, could not have happened A delay of three or four seconds in loading and firing the gun would have preven,edit. She could have been struck ;if,y times without iniilcting tenth of the damage done by the one shot.
 In he gun boa, .h; before Memphis ave shots were thrown away for every one which hit. The fight was brought m rather sooner than was expee,e by either side, and the boats had To man. eaver with strong current. The federal raft Benton fired i've or siN shots which m.ssed, and followed them with another which crashed into the Beauregard. en. tered her boiler and placed her helpless Hardly any of her crew escaped scalding and the same shot killed and wounded several men before striking the boiler lust another such lucky shot struck the steam chest of the Little Rebel and took her out of the fight. While I5o or 200 shots were fired during the fight, the two missiles mentioned had much to do with winning the victory.
 At least one of the great shells thrown from the federal gun-boa,s in Turkey Send at the battle of Malvern Hill was yet lying within half mile of the Mall nern farmhouse in the spring of ISSc. \ few failed to explode, and this was orc of them. Perhaps there was no other in stance in war where the navy helped the army out so successfully From the sig nal station ai the Malvern house the li,,le iags directed the gun-boats ,we miles away just where 10 throw their ponder ous prolectiles to do the most good. The lower read 10 Richmond was under the ire of these guns. and troops coming down ,ha, way were thrown into great confusion by the bursting shells. 0u, ii was over in the woods on the Crews farm that they played the grea,es, havoc. Here Magruder was massing his troops as they came up. They were perfectly safe from the shells flung at them by the field artillery on the plateau, but there was no escape from the screaming mon- sters which came wh;rling through the air from the James River and dropped into the flores, with terrific crash. While the number of killed and wounded was small, the effects of the fire were fel, throughout whole corps. The fall of a single shell would destroy the alignmen, of a whnle hri1ade and if has hefn as-