The USS Weehawken sustained fifty-three hits during 40 minutes of action, the Passaic had thirty-five hits and had her 11-inch gun knocked out. The USS Patapsco lost headway and became a sitting duck, receiving forty-seven hits.
After heavy fighting over the whole afternoon, with all the federal monitors receiving a severe beating, the Keokuk ran ahead of the crippled Nahant and was blasted by more than ninety hits from a range of less than 600 yards from Fort Sumter.
Anchored overnight, it filled with water and sank the next morning. The Keokuk's guns were salvaged by the Rebels, who mounted them in what is now Battery Park in Charleston and used them during future operations.
"The monitors are not intended to lose life except by sinking as a general rule," Du Pont lamented to his wife. " They are iron coffins; once perforated they go down."
The quest to capture Charleston would be delayed indefinitely as it now turned out.
--Old B-Runner
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