Flag Officer Samuel du Pont with the 'Wabash', 8 other heavy frigates and sloops, and 5 gunboats attacked and reduced Ft Walker and Ft Beauregard at the mouth of Port Royal Sound, South Carolina. He accomplished this by a novel use of his steam-powered ships sailing repeated, elliptical courses into and out of the sound, passing the forts at short range and pounding them from all angles with repeated broadsides. The forts were designed to protect against sailing ships making a steady, straight course into the sound, not steamships able to position the guns to their flanks and rake the battery. When Fort Walker had only 3 of it's 32 guns remaining in action, it was abandoned. Ft Beauregard struck it's colours soon after and the Union had gained an important, deep-water harbour from which to launch operations against blockade runners.