How Gunboats can be Taken

(From the New Orleans Delta.)

The experience we have already had has demonstrated the impracticability of destroying the iron cased and strongly built gunboats of the enemy by the cannon of forts.  While large ships of war may be easily repelled and destroyed by the fire of forts, these small boats, with a few guns, and secured by iron casemates, can approach near the object of assault, defy the heaviest artillery, and throw shells into an open fort, which will render it untenable.  The only efficient mode of resisting and defeating such craft, in the absence of like vessels on our part, is to board and capture them.

That is it undoubtedly.  The way for the rebels to take the gunboats is to go close up to them, jump aboard and overpower the crews.  This is as bright a proposition as to salt the tails of shy birds before seizing them by the legs.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 8, 1862, p. 2