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The Enemy’s Raid Down The Tennessee River—The Situation Of Affairs Near Fort Henry
Memphis, Tenn. February 11.—There has been a heavy loss in steamboats on the Tennessee river, owing to the raid of the enemy’s gun-boats Lexington and Conestoga. The Sam Orr, Containing 170 pounds of powder and two submarine batteries, was set on fire at 8 o’clock on Friday evening, two miles above the Tennessee river bridge. On Friday and Saturday, the Appleton, Belle, and Lynn Boyd, were burned by the Confederates at the mouth of Duck River. The Sam Kirkman, the Julius and the Time (the last named containing $100000 worth of Government stores) were abandoned and burned on Saturday. The Dunbar was sunk in Cypress Creek. The Eastport was also sunk. The Cerro Gordo and the Sallie Ward were the only boats captured by theenemy; and the Robb is the only one that escaped uninjured. The Federal gun-boats have left the Tennessee River, but are expected to return soon. They took with them 20,000 pounds of Confederate salt pork, which they found at Florence; but refused to touch private property, or even the cotton which they found. Passenger trains have resumed their trips on the Memphis and Charleston Railroad.
Boston, Feb. 10—Several craft were aground tonight in Boston harbor as the result of trying to find their way through the dense fog which almost without intermission has shrouded the shipping channels today.
The British steamer City of Boston, carrying a cargo from the Orient and bound for New York, edged out of dock this morning. After being held in the upper harbor until this afternoon, she attempted to run out when the vapor bank lifted momentarily. The fog suddenly descended again and the ship grounded on the mud of the lower middle. It was believed that she would be re-floated at high tide tonight.
A navy no more than anything else may stand still, it either is being improved or is deteriorating. The British Government, for instance, which under the limitations of armament was authorized to build the two battleships, has tried to improve on the old model, there being no restrictions pertaining to the design but only with regard to gun caliber and tonnage. The improvements made are said to render the old type obsolete, for one thing because they concentrate forward overwhelming gun power.
The following description of more obvious features indicates the departure in construction that has been made:
A gentleman in DeKalb county, Indiana, writes to us that he is ready to serve Uncle Abe by entering the gunboat service, and inquires for the rendezvous. We have had several letters of the same import. In reply, we say that Cairo is the place. If our friends want to serve their country in earnest, let them call at once upon Commodore Foote, at Cairo. They will find him a most estimable man—a gentleman, in every sense of the the term, a son of old Connecticut, who is a stranger to fear, who believes in fighting, who has been under hot fire several times in his life, who is also cool, deliberate, judicious, earnest; whose whole soul is in this war, and who will, provided he can get ordnance and men, force the rebels to make quicker time from Columbus than the chivalric South Carolinians made from Tybee.
Boston, Jan. 21.—Salvage operations on the submarine S-19, stranded on a sandbar at the entrance of the Orleans Harbor on Cape Cod, have been postponed until the return of clear weather, naval officials announced here tonight. Heavy seas kicked up by yesterday’s storm have driven the submarine further onto the bar, it was said.