NOTE F.
Sharpshooting.
Whatever may be said of the artillery of Wagner not having been sufficiently
active at all times, no objection on that score can be taken to her
sharpshooters.
At first the infantry of the garrison served in this capacity by detail,
and used their ordinary weapon—the Enfield rifle. Later, upon a suggestion
which General Hagood had the honor to make, a special detail of men
from the Twenty-first and Twenty-seventh South Carolina Regiments was
made under Lieutenant Woodhouse, of the Twenty-first, and armed with
Whitworth's telescopic rifles, a small lot of which had recently been
brought through the blockade. The detail was sent to Sullivan's Island
for a few days to become familiar by target practice with the weapon,
and were then put on duty in the fort. At night they slept undisturbed in
the hospital bomb-proof, and were excused from all fatigue duty at any
time. From dawn until dark they were incessantly at work with their
rifles, and of the value of their services the siege journal of the enemy
gives abundant proof. They were even at times used against the monitors.
In revolving their turrets, after a discharge, in order to bring the opposite
gun to bear, a man on each side of the turret would for a moment expose
himself, and would be complimented with the notice of a sharpshooter.
The men detailed became greatly interested in the duty and were not
relieved regularly as the rest of the garrison was. Later still in the siege,
when the enemy got nearer to the fort, the Whitworths were returned to
the city, and the Enfield resumed as better adapted to snap shooting at
close quarters.
The sharpshooters perched themselves wherever they could best get a
good view of the enemy from the fort, and sheltered themselves with little
andbag epaulements loopholed.
