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.

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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.

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