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Next, the Jeff. Thompson was beached and fired, and
her crew shelled in the same manner; and then the Sumter, and
then the General Bragg - all on the Arkansas shore, nearly opposite
Fort Pickering. If these boats had had full crews, how alive
with running rebels the woods must have been.
The remaining rebel vessel, the Van Dorn, was hotly
pursued by two of our fleetest boats, as far as the foot of President's
Island, where the chase was given up. Her heels were all that
saved her, and she is the only one left to tell the tale of the
overwhelming disaster to the hemmed-in rebels below. No doubt
she will claim that the Lincoln Armada was entirely annihilated.
The most magnificent spectacle of the day was the
explosion of the Jeff. Thompson. Shortly after she was beached,
she was discovered to be on fire, and continued to burn fiercely
for more than an hour, when her magazine ignited, blowing all
that remained of the ill-fated craft into ten thousand atoms.
A large number of shells were on board, and many of these were
thrown high into the air, where they burst with a sound like the
firing of a feu de joie, scattering their fragments in
every direction. The spectacle was fine, even in the broad glare
of a June sun; but at night it would have rivaled in grandeur
the finest pyrotechnic display.
HOW THE GENERAL BRAGG WAS
SAVED.
One of the most formidable looking boats of
the rebel fleet was the General Bragg. She was originally the
Marquis de Habana, a condemned slaver, and more recently the New
Orleans and Galveston steamer Mexico. It was the Bragg that gave
the Cincinnati her heaviest blow in the gunboat fight above Fort
Pillow on the 10th of May. Soon after she was run ashore this
morning she was boarded by Lieutenant Bishop and a boat's crew
from the Benton, who found her boilers dry and red hot, and the
cotton between her outside and inside bulwarks in flames. With
the greatest difficulty they succeeded in extinguishing the fire
before any serious damage had been done, and after the fight she
was towed up to the city. Lieutenant Bishop, a gallant and gentlemanly
young officer, should be assigned to the command of the Bragg
at once.
RECAPITULATION.
From the foregoing it will be seen that seven of
the eight vessels composing the rebel flotilla were captured,
sunk and destroyed, as follows:
General Price, sunk in shoal water; can be raised.
General Beauregard, sunk in shoal water; can be raised.
General Lovell, utterly destroyed.
General Thompson, burned to the water's edge.
General Bragg, abandoned and captured.
Little Rebel, abandoned and captured.
Sumter, abandoned and captured.
General Van Dorn, escaped.
THE DAMAGE TO OUR FLEET.
Strange as it may seem, not one of our gunboats was
struck once, and not a man was injured on our side, except Colonel
Ellet. One shell exploded over the Benton, but did no harm.
Colonel Ellet's
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