In May
this fleet reached Wilmington, North Carolina, and took on board
two thousand men under General Sir Henry Clinton, who had been
sent by Howe from Boston in vain to win the Carolinas and who now
assumed military command of the combined forces. Admiral Sir
Peter Parker commanded the fleet, and on the 4th of June he was
off Charleston Harbor. Parker found that in order to cross the
bar he would have to lighten his larger ships. This was done by
the laborious process of removing the guns, which, of course, he
had to replace when the bar was crossed. On the 28th of June,
Parker drew up his ships before Fort Moultrie in the harbor. He
had expected simultaneous aid by land from three thousand
soldiers put ashore from the fleet on a sandbar, but these troops
could give him no help against the fort from which they were cut
off by a channel of deep water. A battle soon proved the British
ships unable to withstand the American fire from Fort Moultrie.
Late in the evening Parker drew off, with two hundred and
twenty-five casualties against an American loss of thirty-seven.
The check was greater than that of Bunker Hill, for there the
British took the ground which they attacked. The British sailors
bore witness to the gallantry of the defense: "We never had such
a drubbing in our lives," one of them testified.
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