On November 16, 1863, Lehigh was in Charleston Harbor providing support for Union troops on shore when the ship ran aground on a sand bar and came under heavy fire from Fort Moultrie.

Several attempts were made to pass a hawser to another Union ironclad, the USS Nahant, but each time the cable snapped due to friction and hostile fire.

Officers were about to give an "abandon ship" order when Williams and two other sailors, Landsman Frank S. Gile and Seaman Horatio Nelson Young, volunteered to make one more attempt.

Despite intense Confederate artillery fire, the men rowed a small boat from Lehigh to Nahant, trailing a line attached to a hawser.

Two sailors involved in the earlier attempts to save Lehigh, Coxswain Thomas Irving and Gunner's Mate George W. Leland, also received the medal at the same time.