Union forces captured Port Royal Island on the South Carolina coast. A Navy fleet under Samuel F. Du Pont bombarded the protecting forts, Beauregard and Walter, which were then overrun by Army troops under Lieutenant Col. Thomas W. Sherman. The victory was important to the North, for it now had a base on the flank of the South. From this base its South Atlantic Blockading Squadron under Du Pont proceeded to capture or render inoperative nearly all the South's Atlantic ports below North Carolina.