“Back her up,” he heard the pilot whisper.

Spinning her prop in the mud, the big ironclad struggled to break free.

After a few minutes of rocking the ship back and forth, she was freed.

Two hundred yards away, Weehawken was closest to the Confederate ram. Her lookout was struggling to stay awake and losing the battle. Time after time as he peered through the port upriver, his head nodded as sleep overtook him.

It was warm, and there was little fresh air. His head bobbed up and down.

Atlanta backed up and started downriver again. Jesse Merrill continued to peer into the distance. There it was again. Low to the water and dark in color, he might have missed it except for the rounded sweep of the gun turret.

Climbing down from the nest, he alerted the captain.

“Take it slow,” the captain ordered. “The lookout sees a Yankee ironclad.”

Seconds later, the pilot ran Atlanta hard aground again.

First light poked through the view port and stabbed the lookout in the eye like a saber. Shaking his head, he wiped the slobber from his mustache, then scanned the water. Like a ghostly apparition some two hundred yards distant, Atlanta came into view. The lookout stared for a second, then sounded the alarm.

He continued ringing the bell for a full three minutes.

At the sound of the bell, Captain Rodgers leapt from his bed and ran to the pilothouse, still in his nightclothes. His second in command, Lieutenant Pyle, was already at his station.

“She hasn’t moved, sir.”

Rodgers scanned the water with his spyglass. “The crew is scurrying on deck,” Rodgers said. “If I had to guess, I’d say she’s run aground.”

“I took the liberty of signaling Nehant, the lieutenant said, “and ordered a full head of steam from the engine room.”

“Head straight at her,” Rodgers ordered.

“Guns at ready,” Lieutenant Pyle said.

“Commence firing” Rodgers said.

It was impossible to miss. The first shot from Weehawken’s fifteen-inch gun scored a hit. It tore apart Atlanta’s casement like a fireman’s ax through a flimsy front door. And the rebel ironclad was powerless to reply. The grounding had keeled her over. Even with her guns depressed as far as they would go, when she tried to return fire, her shells sailed over the treetops along the riverbank. Weehawken’s second volley bashed in ten square feet of Atlanta’s armor and blew the gun crew off their feet.

Number three tore off the top of the pilothouse. That was all it took.

The captain hauled down the flag and surrendered.

Later, Atlanta was taken to the Philadelphia Naval Yard, where she was refitted and returned to service as a Union navy vessel. Rodgers was hailed as a hero and promoted to commodore. As captain of the first monitor to defeat an ironclad in individual combat, he returned to Charleston to continue the fight against Fort Sumter.

Eight months after capturing Atlanta, Weehawken was a seasoned veteran. Her crew was honed by combat and their on-board routine entrenched. Day after day, she lobbed shells toward Sumter. So it was nothing unusual when she anchored off Morris Island to refill her magazine.

Harold McKenzie was an ordinary seaman. And ordinary seamen followed orders. Even so, McKenzie could not help but mention his apprehensions to his friend Pat Wicks.

“The weight is not being distributed correctly,” he whispered, as the two men carried a wooden crate filled with shells. “We’re putting too much forward.”

But Wicks had other matters on his mind.

“We’re taking on a full load. The officers must be planning another run at the forts.”

Wicks had been wounded by shrapnel in the first attack on Sumter, and ever since he had been more than a little gun-shy. By contrast, McKenzie had just transferred to Weehawken. He was still itching to see combat.

“Good,” McKenzie said. “It’s high time we taught the rebels a lesson.”

But that was not to be, for McKenzie’s worst fears would soon be realized.

That evening, as the sailors slept in their berths, a stiff wind came from land. The misplaced load of fresh munitions was making Weehawken ride low in the bow, and it took only a matter of moments for serious trouble to arise. As the first series of waves washed over the bow, the water flooded into an unsecured hatch. As the bow dropped a few inches lower, water raced into the anchor chain hawse pipe. As the water filled the lower hold, the bow quickly settled lower. Now the bilge pumps in the stem were of no use, and the ones forward could not handle the volume of water.

A simple mistake, but it doomed Weehawken to an early grave.

Wicks was in the top bunk, and he felt it first. A sharp jolt as the bow slipped down made his head strike the deck above, jarring him awake.

“Mac,” Wicks shouted, “wake up.”

McKenzie struggled to free himself from his berth, but Wicks’s warning would come a moment too late for either man. Weehawken was already going through her death throes. As the flow of water increased, her trim was upset. The water flowed into the lower hold, then quickly to one side. Like a toy ship in a bathtub, Weehawken rolled onto her starboard beam. Within seconds, the sea flooded in through the open turret ports and deck hatches and made contact with the boilers with a burst of steam.

Then Weehawken slipped beneath the waves, taking thirty-one souls to their graves.

It was January 15, 1865, and the long and bloody war was drawing to a close. On board the monitor Patapsco, Commander Stephen Quackenbush looked forward to going home. His vessel had seen nearly constant action since the first assault on Fort Sumter, and he and his crew were weary from war. While similar in design to the rest of the monitor class, Patapsco had heavier armament that kept her constantly utilized. With the only big Parrot gun in the fleet, Patapsco could lie out of reach of the forts’ guns and fire without fear of damage. Because of this fact, Patapsco had fired more shells at the rebel defenders than any other vessel.

With her record of accomplishments well recognized, it was little surprise that in early 1865 Patapsco was assigned the dangerous task of picket duty. Picket duty was no picnic; it was a dangerous combination of nightly scouting sorties and minesweeping in the outer harbor. Captain and crew hated it soundly.

“We have a strong flood tide,” executive officer Ensign William Sampson said to Quackenbush, as the two men stood on the top of the turret, staring through the moonless night.

“We’ll escort the launches and minesweeping boats inside the channel before we drift back out and provide fire support,” Quackenbush said quietly.

“Shall I go below and give the order to the helmsman and chief engineer for slow speed?” Sampson asked.

“Do that. I’ll remain here and keep watch.”

It was a choice that would save Quackenbush’s life.

Patapsco steamed closer to the Confederate forts. Behind came the small, steam-powered launches equipped with grapnels and drags. Slowly, they passed the monitor and began the tedious task of sweeping for mines.

Sampson reappeared topside. “I’ve ordered the guns run out, sir.”

Quackenbush nodded. His command was now ready to provide fire support.

The night passed with agonizing slowness as the Union ironclad drifted in and out of the channel. It is said the third time is a charm, but this did not ring true with Patapsco and her crew. As the tidal current carried the ship out of the harbor entrance for the third time after midnight, the hull struck a floating mine set only a day before.