On the night of the 23d the powder-boat was towed in by a gunboat as near to the fort as it was safe to run.  She was then propelled by her own machinery to within about five hundred yards of the shore.  There the clockwork, which was to explode her within a certain length of time, was set and she was abandoned.  Everybody left, and even the vessels put out to sea to prevent the effect of the explosion upon them.  At two o’clock in the morning the explosion took place—­and produced no more effect on the fort, or anything else on land, than the bursting of a boiler anywhere on the Atlantic Ocean would have done.  Indeed when the troops in Fort Fisher heard the explosion they supposed it was the bursting of a boiler in one of the Yankee gunboats.

Fort Fisher was situated upon a low, flat peninsula north of Cape Fear River.  The soil is sandy.  Back a little the peninsula is very heavily wooded, and covered with fresh-water swamps.  The fort ran across this peninsula, about five hundred yards in width, and extended along the sea coast about thirteen hundred yards.  The fort had an armament of 21 guns and 3 mortars on the land side, and 24 guns on the sea front.  At that time it was only garrisoned by four companies of infantry, one light battery and the gunners at the heavy guns less than seven hundred men with a reserve of less than a thousand men five miles up the peninsula.  General Whiting of the Confederate army was in command, and General Bragg was in command of the force at Wilmington.  Both commenced calling for reinforcements the moment they saw our troops landing.  The Governor of North Carolina called for everybody who could stand behind a parapet and shoot a gun, to join them.  In this way they got two or three hundred additional men into Fort Fisher; and Hoke’s division, five or six thousand strong, was sent down from Richmond.  A few of these troops arrived the very day that Butler was ready to advance.

On the 24th the fleet formed for an attack in arcs of concentric circles, their heavy iron-clads going in very close range, being nearest the shore, and leaving intervals or spaces so that the outer vessels could fire between them.  Porter was thus enabled to throw one hundred and fifteen shells per minute.  The damage done to the fort by these shells was very slight, only two or three cannon being disabled in the fort.  But the firing silenced all the guns by making it too hot for the men to maintain their positions about them and compelling them to seek shelter in the bomb-proofs.

On the next day part of Butler’s troops under General Adelbert Ames effected a landing out of range of the fort without difficulty.  This was accomplished under the protection of gunboats sent for the purpose, and under cover of a renewed attack upon the fort by the fleet.  They formed a line across the peninsula and advanced, part going north and part toward the fort, covering themselves as they did so.  Curtis