The Big Gun Shoot: The 1861 Battle of Port Royal Sound

In late October 1861, a U.S. naval expedition set out from Annapolis, by way of Norfolk, for the coast of South Carolina. It was the largest fleet the United States had ever assembled. Its target was Port Royal Sound.

Order of battle and plan of attack, November 7, 1861. Credit: Naval History and Heritage Command.

A rough voyage

At sea, a storm lasting two days and three nights battered the fleet. Several ships went astray and many turned back; others, such as the steamer Winfield Scott, were so badly damaged they were judged unseaworthy. The weakened fleet had to change its plan for an amphibious landing.

The steamer Winfield Scott, blown ashore in the storm that struck the Port Royal expedition in early November 1861. Credit: Naval History and Heritage Command.

The defenders' troubles

The entrance to the sound lies between Hilton Head Island to the south and St. Phillips Island to the north, each guarded by a Confederate fort: Fort Walker on Hilton Head and Fort Beauregard on St. Phillips. The Confederate commander, General Drayton, had problems of his own:

• He called last-minute reinforcements from Savannah to Fort Walker.
• He ordered a company at Braddock's Point, on the western end of Hilton Head, to cross to Fort Beauregard by way of Fort Walker — but a courier failure delayed the order. The troops reached Fort Walker but couldn't cross the sound, leaving Fort Beauregard without them.
• The much smaller Confederate fleet was driven back into Skull Creek.
• Fort Walker had been built in haste and couldn't properly hold all the guns Drayton wanted; cannons were crammed together, and many turned out to be defective.

Drayton later blamed the defeat largely on the late deployments, the lack of preparation and the rushed construction of Fort Walker.

November 7, 1861

The battle — sometimes called the "Big Gun Shoot" — was a rout. Commodore DuPont had his ships steam through the sound in an elliptical loop as they bombarded the forts, which kept them moving and limited their exposure to return fire.

Fort Walker surrendered as the firing ended; the garrison of Fort Beauregard withdrew before U.S. troops arrived. Despite hours of combat, the U.S. fleet came through nearly unscathed.

What followed

White planters across the region fled their land. With the Confederate defeat, the abandoned plantations, and some 10,000 formerly enslaved people now free from bondage, the stage was set for the Port Royal Experiment, a forerunner of Reconstruction, in which freedpeople had the chance to buy land at tax auctions and work to establish their citizenship in the postwar South. The National Park Service's article on the 1863 Beaufort District tax sales tells that part of the story.

Sources

Based on "Big Gun Shoot," Reconstruction Era National Historical Park, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The article draws on the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, D. Eldredge's The Third New Hampshire and All About It (1893), and the Naval History and Heritage Command.