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Robert E. Lee Portrait |
THE
FIRST PHOTOGRAPH
OF IRONCLADS
IN ACTION
A
DARING
CAMERA TRIUMPH
OF 1863
On the highest point of the
battered dust heap that was the still untaken fortress of Sumter, the
Confederate photographer, Cook, planted his camera on September 8, 1863, and
took the first photograph of ironclads in action—the monitors Weehawken, Montauk
and Passaic, as they were actually firing on the Confederate batteries at Fort
Moultrie. The three lowfreeboarded vessels, lying almost bows-on, at the
distance of nearly two miles, look like great iron buoys in the channel, but the
smoke from their heavy guns is drifting over the water, and the flames can
almost be seen leaping from the turret ports. Although Fort Moultrie was the aim
of their gunners, Cook, with his head under the dark cloth, saw on the ground
glass a shell passing within a few feet of him. Another shell knocked one of
his plate-holders off the parapet
into the rain-water cistern. He gave a soldier five dollars to fish it out for
him. He got his picture and was ordered off the parapet, since he was drawing
upon the fort the fire of all the Union batteries on Morris Island. It seems
incredible that such a daring photographic feat, and one of such historic
interest, could have remained unpublished for nearly half a century—until one
recalls the absence of any satisfactory method for reproducing photographs
direct during the generation succeeding the war. Before photo-engraving became
perfected, thirty years or more had passed, and most of the few negatives taken
by Confederates had vanished through fire, loss, and breakage. Fortunately, this
has been preserved—one of the most vivid of any war.
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