During that morning we got them all out, our last achievement being the rescue of the pilot, an immense negro with a wooden leg,--an article so particularly unavailable for mud travelling, that it would have almost seemed better, as one of the men suggested, to cut the traces, and leave it behind.
A naval gunboat, too, which had originally accompanied this vessel, and should never have left it, now came back and took off the survivors, though there had been several deaths from scalding and shell.

It proved that the wreck was not aground after all, but at anchor, having foolishly lingered till after daybreak, and having thus given time for the enemy to bring down then: guns.

The first shot had struck the boiler, and set the vessel on fire; after which the officer in command had raised a white flag, and then escaped with his men to our shore; and it was for this flight in the wrong direction that they were shelled in the marshes by the Rebels.

The case furnished in this respect some parallel to that of the Kearsage and Alabama, and it was afterwards cited, I believe, officially or unofficially, to show that the Rebels had claimed the right to punish, in this case, the course of action which they approved in Semmes.

I know that they always asserted thenceforward that the detachment on board the George Washington had become rightful prisoners of war, and were justly fired upon when they tried to escape.
This was at the tune of the first attack on Charleston, and the noise of this cannonading spread rapidly thither, and brought four regiments to reinforce Beaufort in a hurry, under the impression that the town was already taken, and that they must save what remnants they could.