Waterbury evening Democrat., 1903-03-13

machinery, bad at best, were working horribly now, and it was as much as | life was worth to stay in the engine l room in the face of the repeated shocks of collision and gun fire. All of the port shutters had been damned by shot, rendering it impossible to fire any of her guns Still she would not give up.
 Aum1ral Bucnanan ana machlnist
 were at one of the ports endeavoring to
 release damned shutter when heavy
 shot from the Hartford struck the port sill and, exploding, tore the gunner into bits, so that his remains were actually
 shoveled up and put in bucket. A
 bit of iron driven in by the shell struck l the leg of the admiral, fracturing it,
 and shower of splinters did great
 damage.
 The Hartford at the same time steam
 ed away from the ram and made cir cle to starboard in order to ram her again. As she completed the turn and bore down upon the Tennessee, out of
 the smoke enshrouding the bay came the bows of the Lackawanna, also en-
 deavoring to ram second time. At
 full speed she bore down upon the port
 quarter of the Hartford. There was a l terrible sound of crashing timbers
 heard even above the roar of the guns
 as the two ships came together. In
 the awful impact the Hartford was | hurled over nearly on her beam ends and was cut down to within two feet
 of the waters edge. It was thought
 for moment that the flagship was
 sinking.
 l The old admiral, with the agility of
 boy, ran across the deck, leaped into
 the mizzen chains and clambered down
 the sides to take in the extent of the damage. Finding that the Hartford
 would still float he sprang back to the
 deck and repeated his former order
 that she should ram the Tennessee again.
 As the Lackawanna struck the Hart
 ford a cry had arisen all over the flag ship which touched Farragut more than perhaps anything that ever hap pened in his career. Save the admf-
 ralw .Get the admiral out of the ship!' |
 the Hartford.
 1 But the admiral was in no need of saving then. Shattered and battered though she was, the Hartford was
 still rapidly approaching the Tennes- see, by this time reduced to a mere
 wreck. The ram had not discharged a single gun since those she had fired in- to the Hartford at the moment of im-
 pact. Several of them had been dis
 abled, and others had been put out of action by the jamming of the port shutters. The exposed rudder chains
 had been shot away by the Chickasaw, and the relieving tackles, with which the attempt had been made to steer the ship, had met the same fate. ! The decks of the Tennessee were swept by perfect storm of shot from a dozen ships. No one could have ven- tured out there to repair the rudder
 chains without meeting instant death. She could no longer be steered. She
 drifted on completely surrounded by the ships, which were pouring in broad
 sides upon her with relentless and in- creasing fury. Then the last misfor- l tune overlook her. A shot from the Chfckasaw or the Manhattan carried away her racked and battered smoke
 stack. It broke short off just below the casemate, and the smoke poured 1 into the casemate, nearly suffocating the men; the temperature, over 100 de-
 grees at best, rose to over 120. Minus the stack, her fires went down, and she
 could not make enough steam to drive
 the engines. She rolled like a helpless 1 log in the water. She could neither
 steam nor steer nor fire. It was hot as l hell itself in the casemate and the tenn
 perature of the fireroom was past be-