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.

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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.

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