The flash of deadly small arms fire lit up the ship, clearly outlining the heads of the crew and allowing the raiders to mark their locations. Minie( balls smacked into wood and flesh. The marines stood in the bows of the rocking cutters and gave it their best shot. Then they were alongside! The coxswain of Wood's boat, a giant of a Virginian, shouted and sneered, guiding the tiller which his knees as he waved two pistols in the air. Suddenly he lurched and fell forward, dead with a bullet in his forehead. The rudder, now loose, caused the boat to swerve from the intended boarding position at the fore gangway and to strike near the wheelhouse. By then most of the cutters had closed, and the raiders had thrown their grapnels over the ship's rail, making the little boats fast with their prey. Westervelt had indeed felt oversecure: the anti-boarding nets were down.

Gift thought he saw the Underwriter trying to get underway and shouted to Midshipman John Scharf to disable her deck machinery with a bow howitzer. Scharf put his shell through the pilothouse without appreciable effect. As he readied to fire again, he saw the boarders swarming up the ship's side and over the rail. Fearful of hitting fellow Confederates, he desisted.

Wood intended to be first on deck as he had in all of his other midnight sorties, but the death of his coxswain changed that. Loyall, who lost his eyeglasses in boarding, was first aboard, with Engineer Emmett Gill right behind. The near sighted Loyall immediately stumbled and fell head long onto the deck. At that second a volley from the ship's crew cut down Gill and the next three raiders: They all fell on top of Loyall, each taking from four to six balls. By the time he struggled from beneath this bleeding mass of flesh, the battle had begun in earnest.

The dark ship was like something from a nightmare: men cheered, shouted, screamed with pain. The noise from small arms fire and the clashing of cutlasses was deafening. Lending an even more chaotic air to all was a crate of wildly cackling chickens. From near the ship's armory came and unending flash and roar as the armorer pressed loaded rifles into the hands of defenders who could then fire without reloading. Men fell all over the rain-and-blood-slick deck. A few of the ship's crew tried to man the small howitzer to sweep the deck, but Wood's sword never stopped slashing, and he cut them down.

Although the fighting was initially three to one against the Confederates, because only part of the force was engaged, the relentless pressure from the raiders began to tell. The marines who rallied as ordered on the hurricane deck poured a murderous fire into the Federal sailors. As the raiders from fore and aft linked up amidships, the defenders began to fall back into the companionways, some forced into the wardroom and others into the coal bunkers and steerage. Defenders and raiders alike picked up empty rifles and used them as clubs. The acrid black-powder smoke mixed with a light fog that rolled in to throw a ghostly haze over the dark deck. After ten or fifteen minutes of desperate, bloody fighting, a cheer rang out, 'She's ours! She's ours!'

It was then that Confederate Surgeon David Conrad's job began. He leaped from the hurricane deck to the lower deck and slipped in the pools of blood. Rising up, he grabbed the arm of Lieutenant Wilkinson to steady himself. Wilkinson, not recognizing the surgeon in the darkness, cocked his pistol and put it to Conrad's head, thinking he was an enemy sailor. Conrad slapped it away just in time. Wilkinson only said, 'I'm looking for you Doctor. Come here.' He led him in the dark and haze to a boy holding another in his lap. Having to examine the limp sailor by feel, he ran his hands over the boy's head until they disappeared into a great gash between his ears. Some brawny Federal sailor had cleft Midshipman Saunders' head completely in two.

Dead and wounded littered the deck, cut down by cutlass slashes, gunshots, and flying wood splinters gouged from the deck and rails by the hail of bullets. Loyall leaned exhausted against an aft cannon, himself bleeding from a splinter wound. Conrad ordered the men to lay out the dead on deck, as he went below to find more wounded. In the dim light of the wardroom lantern he found six more, all suffering from pistol wounds.

The brief action had been savage. The Confederates lost Engineer Gill, Midshipman Saunders, Seaman Hawkins, Seaman Sullivan, and Marine Bell. In addition they found fifteen wounded and discovered four missing. The Federals had twenty wounded and nine killed, including Captain Westervelt, who jumped overboard along with some of the crew at the beginning of the melee and was then shot while hanging on to a hawser.

By the time the doctor returned from below, the raiders were trying to get the Underwriter underway and instantly convert her into a Confederate cruiser. Every able man went to his preordered station. An engineer and five helpers hurried to the engine room to get up steam; Loyall and his command attempted to unshackle the chains from the moorings; Gift and the launches tried to tow the gunboat out into the river away from the forts; Lieutenant Hoge opened the magazines; his crew manned the deck guns; and the marines guarded approximately forty prisoners.

Then one piece of bad news after another reached Wood. The engine room reported the fires banked and that it would take at least an hour to raise enough steam. Loyall told him that the Underwriter was chained to a buoy and it would take hours to free her. Gift sent word that the ship would not budge; she was likely aground. At almost the same moment, Fort Stevenson, alerted by both the sounds of the battle and some escaped seamen, opened on the ship will small arms and cannon, heedless of Yankee sailors still aboard. The very first shell, either trough excellent gunnery or blind luck, penetrated the wheelhouse and burst amid the deck machinery, disabling the walking beam. It was all over. The Underwriter would never serve the Confederacy. She had suddenly become a deathtrap for her prize crew.

Wood, decisive as always, did not lose a second dwelling on the bad luck. Calmly ordering the Confederate dead and wounded and the Union wounded and prisoners put aboard the boats, he commanded Hoge to load all cannon and turn them on the town. As shells from Fort Stevenson and the other batteries began to fall heavily on the Underwriter, all the raiders and prisoners had left the gunboat except for four lieutenants. Wood told them to bring embers from the boilers and fire the ship. When the fire from the burning ship ignited the cannon, the Underwriter would fire her last broadside into New Bern. Soon great columns of flames shot out of the forward hatch and wardroom. Within five minutes of the first Federal shell-burst, all had abandoned the Underwriter, except the Union dead who would burn with her.

The raiders and their prisoners clustered on the lee of the gunboat, protected by its hull. The little boats again formed a double line for the dash to safety. As the flotilla cleared the gunboat, the men–prisoners and raiders alike–pulled for their lives. The fire from the fort was momentarily heavy but ineffective. From the light of the burning ship, the men could clearly see the depressed muzzles of the cannon and their crews at ready. But suddenly the fire slackened. The Confederates thought that the glare from the blazing gunboat had blinded the gunner, but they later learned that the officers and men had abandoned their guns, anticipating the momentary explosion of the tons of powder in the ship's magazine.

In the haste to load the boats for the escape, one of the small cutters took on eighteen or twenty prisoners and only two guards, one in the stern steering and one in the bow. Realizing that they could not make headway with this heavy load, one of the guards called out to a cutter about fifty yards ahead that they needed to discard some of the prisoners and take on a stronger guard. Seizing this unexpected opportunity, U.S. Engineer Edgar Allen grabbed the stern guard's cutlass and shouted for the prisoners to pull for shore with their lives. Instead, some of them, along with the bow guard, leaped overboard. But Allen and the remaining Yankees saved themselves from a Confederate prison, captured a cutter, and took a Rebel prisoner to boot

Wood, looking back at the flaming Underwriter from a half mile away, was not satisfied with the progress of the fire. She might still be saved by the Yankees. Therefore, he ordered Hoge back to the ship to better spread the fire. The lieutenant complied, and shortly a great ball of flame shot out of the window near the pilot house. He returned and Wood was then content to leave. Before the raiders rounded the bend and totally lost sight of the Underwriter, they looked back at her one last time. Wood later said that a burning ship was 'a picture of rare beauty.' So must have been the Underwriter. Enveloped in flames, she lit up the night sky for miles with her flashes. Even with the increasingly heavy rain, there was no chance of anyone saving her. After two hours, at 5:00 a.m., the flames reached her magazine, and she exploded with an earthshaking roar, scattering burning debris for hundreds of yard before settling to the river bottom.

About 3:00 a.m., Brigadier Palmer informed Lieutenant Graves, who was up the Trent River in the Lockwood, that the Underwriter had been captured. Shortly thereafter, he could see her burning in the distance. Although he wanted to come to her assistance, he was unable, because the fog had made the intricacy of the channel even more difficult. The Hull, of course, could not help, because she was still aground downriver.

As the raiders pulled up the Neuse about eight miles to Swift Creek, where they would make camp and again communicate with Pickett, Conrad, went from boat to boat tending the wounded.

Near sunrise, the Confederates landed their boats and made the wounded as comfortable as possible. As they examined the cutters, they no doubt thanked their carpenter for his white dowels. The boats probably would not have made it to safety without them, for an average of fourteen had been used in each craft to plug bullet holes. Now came their saddest duty: digging a long pit, they interred their dead and marked the graves.

All that day they rested from the fight, while Wood talked to Pickett. Typically Wood was undaunted. He tried to convince Pickett to let him ferry an infantry force back down the river in his small boats and make a night amphibious assault on New Bern while Pickett again attacked from the front. But Dearing had accomplished little and Barton practically nothing, so Pickett was afraid of Union reinforcements arriving and refused. It is entirely possible, though, that Wood's plan might have worked. By this time, the two remaining gunboats–the Hull now afloat–guarded the land approaches to New Bern, and relief ships sent by the Federal navy would not arrive for two days. The river was basically undefended. In addition, the demonstration ordered by Lee at Morehead City inadvertently accomplished Barton's task: it had cut the railroad, and major reinforcement was precluded. Even U.S. Admiral David Porter later agreed with Wood:

Had the enemy attacked the forts, the chances are that they would have been successful, as the garrison was unprepared for an attack on the river-flank, their most vulnerable side.

Wood refused to accept Pickett's decision. On February 2, after transferring all his wounded and prisoners to Colonel Dearing and leaving his men to rest, he rushed to Richmond to make a personal appeal to Davis to overrule Pickett and continue the assault. It did not matter to him that the raid was basically successful, even if it did not accomplish its major goals: the Confederates had secured considerable supplies near Morehead City and destroyed many Federal works; Pickett had killed or wounded over 100 of the enemy and captured over 300 more, all with minor losses; and the burned hulk of the Underwriter, one of the larger gunboats in the Union navy, now lay on the bottom of the Neuse. But Wood wanted total victory.

Following Wood's orders, Loyall and his men rowed for two nights and a day back to Kinston, awaiting further word from Richmond. They arrived on February 5 and received a wire from Wood on the 8th. The raiders were to stay in readiness at Kinston; the mission was not complete. Their wait was short. The next day Wood ordered most of the boats and men to return to Petersburg. The New Bern Raid was over.

Lionized for their work, Wood and his men received a 'Joint Resolution of Thanks' from the Confederate Congress. Most of the officers won immediate promotion, but Wood refused his, stating, 'The affair does not deserve it.'

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Civil War Times Magazine.

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