Floating Battery of Charleston Harbor - Fate

Fate

Damage was assessed with reports and twenty-two photographs “showing the condition of Forts Sumter and Moultrie and of the floating battery after the surrender of the former fort” and sent to LeRoy Pope Walker, Secretary of War for the Confederate States of America, in Montgomery, Alabama on April 27, 1861. Details of the battery's history beyond this point are somewhat elusive. According to a Coast and Geodetic Survey chart of 1863, the battery is depicted as anchored in the harbor between Middle Ground and Ft. Johnson but later charts rendered in 1865 do not indicate the existence of the battery. The Confederates apparently ended up stripping the iron off the battery at some point to construct a navigable ironclad. There may be evidence that the dismantled battery broke up later during a storm as early as the latter part of 1863. One diarist, serving on Morris Island, wrote that they had a shortage of fuel until one morning after a storm when they found logs purportedly from the battery washed up on the beach. In 1865, a visitor to Charleston described the harbor entrance with this description, "... Just beyond the ruin (of Ft. Sumter) at the left, lies the wreck of the famous old floating battery ... A portion of one of its sides, with four portholes visible, still remains above the water. ..."