Daily National Republican

Second Edition

FOUR O'CLOCK, P. M.

THE IRONSIDES IN THE LATE FIGHT

We have been permitted to read a private letter from an officer on board the New Ironsides, in which he gives some interesting facts. Although subjected to the fire of one hundred and fifty guns at once, three quarters of an hour, not one shot penetrated her and the only damage she sustained was the displacement of an iron port and a few indentations. In two places where the plates joined a small piece of the plating was broken and sunk slightly in the wood. In consequence of bad maneuvering she did not commence firing until four o'clock, and then fired only one broadside. She was exposed to the enemy's fire two and a half hours. She was struck forty times in and about the plating and eight or ten times about the rails and smoke stack.

The writer of the letter says "If we had been firing all the time, as we might have been, we should not have been struck so often; and our ship's company is ready down on the Admiral for keeping his ship in the position he did, and not allowing them to fire." He also says it was the almost universal belief in the fleet that the Ironsides and the others might have battered down Fort Sumter in two hours' time; that Admiral Dupont expected that the enemy would destroy and evacuate Charleston after but little resistance, and that he ought to have gone into the fight with a determination to win victory if it cost half his fleet. He says "Do not let any one make you believe that Sumter could not have been reduced, for it certainly could have been, if a determined effort had been made for that purpose."