Combat· American Civil War
Murrell's Inlet Raid
A neat little cutting-out raid on the South Carolina coast.
On New Year's Day 1864 Lieutenant Louis Fagan led about thirty Marines, with two light howitzers and a party of seamen, in a boat expedition into Murrell's Inlet, near Charleston, to deal with the blockade-runners using the place. They mounted the howitzers on a sandspit and fired several shells into a Confederate schooner lying in the inlet; the last round touched off her cargo of turpentine, and greasy smoke rolled over the mudflats as the vessel burned to the water. The raiders then withdrew. No casualties resulted. It was a model small operation of the blockade, a handful of Marines and sailors slipping in by boat to destroy an enemy vessel and her cargo. Fagan would carry the same coolness into the bloody Fort Fisher beach assault a year later, where he was wounded.
Podcast episodes on American Civil War
Record no. 423