Foreign Troops Hired by the British (Part 7)

In that battle--one of the most severe of the war--the British lost in killed and wounded two hundred and twenty-five men. Of the four hundred and thirty-five in the beleaguered fort, only ten were killed and twenty-two wounded, though thousands of shot and many shells were hurled against them. Charleston was saved, and South Carolina was defended from invasion by the valor of her own sons; and in honor of the brave colonel who commanded the garrison, the palmetto log-fortress was named Fort Moultrie. After remaining a few days at Long Island to repair damages, the British fleet, with Clinton's army, sailed for New York, where they joined the forces under General and Admiral Howe.

The loss on board the British ships, in this action, was frightful. Every man stationed on the quarter-decks of the vessels at the beginning of the battle was either killed or wounded. On board the flag-ship forty men were killed, and seventy-one were wounded. Governor Lord William Campbell, who was serving as a volunteer, was severely wounded at the beginning of the action. The commodore suffered a slight contusion. The Bristol had not less than seventy balls put through her. When the spring of her cable was cut, she swung round with her stern toward the fort, and instantly every gun that could be brought to bear upon her hurled deadly shot into the exposed vessel, for Moultrie, at the beginning, had said, "Mind the commodore and the fifty-gun ship."

Although the Thunder-bomb cast more than fifty shells into the fort, not one of them did any serious damage, for in the centre of the works there was a large moat, filled with water, which received nearly all of the shells, and extinguished the fuses before the fire reached the powder. Others were buried in the sand and did no harm. After the battle, the Americans picked up in and around the fort, twelve hundred shot of different calibre that were fired at them, and a great number of thirteen-inch shells.