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| Excerpt from Map of Bermuda Hundred by N. Michler (LOC) |
ON THIS DAY, 1864.
Early on Sunday morning, October 22, 1864, two Union batteries, including seven heavy Parrott guns in a new work along Signal Hill, opened fire on the Confederate James River Squadron resting within easy range. Placed during the night, the guns surprised the crews of the thin-skinned gunboats, which steamed out of danger, tucking under the river bank at Chaffin’s Bluff. The ironclads also sought cover and, for a time, hid under the bank downstream from the Union guns. The shelling blew a hole in the Fredericksburg’s smokestack, which protruded from the river bank’s cover. The wood splinters from a shattered screen wounded five men aboard. The ironclads eventually escaped upstream, out of range. Across the river, Confederate shore batteries joined in, but the boats engagement soon ended. Discussed in Chapter 7 of Richmond Must Fall: The Richmond-Petersburg Campaign, October 1864 (Kent State Press, 2013).