FARRAGUT AT MOBILE BAY

Ha, old ship, do they thrill,
The brave two hundred scars
You got in the river wars?
That were leeched with clamorous skill
(Surgery savage and hard),
At the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

* * * *

How the guns, as with cheer and shout,
Our tackle-men hurled them out,
Brought up in the waterways . . .
As we fired, at the flash
'T was lightning and black eclipse
With a bellowing sound and crash.

* * * *

The Dahlgrens are dumb,
Dumb are the mortars;
Never more shall the drum
Beat to colors and quarters--
The great guns are silent.
--Henry Howard Brownell


FARRAGUT AT MOBILE BAY

During the Civil War our navy produced, as it has always produced
in every war, scores of capable officers, of brilliant
single-ship commanders, of men whose daring courage made them fit
leaders in any hazardous enterprise. In this respect the Union
seamen in the Civil War merely lived up to the traditions of
their service. In a service with such glorious memories it was a
difficult thing to establish a new record in feats of personal
courage or warlike address. Biddle, in the Revolutionary War,
fighting his little frigate against a ship of the line until she
blew up with all on board, after inflicting severe loss on her
huge adversary; Decatur, heading the rush of the boarders in the
night attack when they swept the wild Moorish pirates from the
decks of their anchored prize; Lawrence, dying with the words on
his lips, "Don't give up the ship"; and Perry, triumphantly
steering his bloody sloop-of-war to victory with the same words
blazoned on his banner--men like these, and like their fellows,
who won glory in desperate conflicts with the regular warships
and heavy privateers of England and France, or with the corsairs
of the Barbary States, left behind a reputation which was hardly
to be dimmed, though it might be emulated, by later feats of mere
daring.

But vital though daring is, indispensable though desperate
personal prowess and readiness to take chances are to the make-up
of a fighting navy, other qualities are needed in addition to fit
a man for a place among the great seacaptains of all time. It was
the good fortune of the navy in the Civil War to produce one
admiral of renown, one peer of all the mighty men who have ever
waged war on the ocean. Farragut was not only the greatest
admiral since Nelson, but, with the sole exception of Nelson, he
was as great an admiral as ever sailed the broad or the narrow
seas.

David Glasgow Farragut was born in Tennessee. He was appointed to
the navy while living in Louisiana, but when the war came he
remained loyal to the Union flag. This puts him in the category
of those men who deserved best of their country in the Civil War;
the men who were Southern by birth, but who stood loyally by the
Union; the men like General Thomas of Virginia, and like
Farragut's own flag-captain at the battle of Mobile Bay, Drayton
of South Carolina. It was an easy thing in the North to support
the Union, and it was a double disgrace to be, like Vallandigham
and the Copperheads, against it; and in the South there were a
great multitude of men, as honorable as they were brave, who,
from the best of motives, went with their States when they
seceded, or even advocated secession. But the highest and
loftiest patriots, those who deserved best of the whole country,
were the men from the South who possessed such heroic courage,
and such lofty fealty to the high ideal of the Union, that they
stood by the flag when their fellows deserted it, and
unswervingly followed a career devoted to the cause of the whole
nation and of the whole people. Among all those who fought in
this, the greatest struggle for righteousness which the present
century has seen, these men stand preeminent; and among them
Farragut stands first. It was his good fortune that by his life
he offered an example, not only of patriotism, but of supreme
skill and daring in his profession. He belongs to that class of
commanders who possess in the highest degree the qualities of
courage and daring, of readiness to assume responsibility, and of
willingness to run great risks; the qualities without which no
commander, however cautious and able, can ever become really
great. He possessed also the unwearied capacity for taking
thought in advance, which enabled him to prepare for victory
before the day of battle came; and he added to this. an
inexhaustible fertility of resource and presence of mind under no
matter what strain.

His whole career should be taught every American schoolboy, for
when that schoolboy becomes a voter he should have learned the
lesson that the United States, while it ought not to become an
overgrown military power, should always have a first-class navy,
formidable from the number of its ships, and formidable still
more from the excellence of the individual ships and the high
character of the officers and men. Farragut saw the war of 1812,
in which, though our few frigates and sloops fought some glorious
actions, our coasts were blockaded and insulted, and the Capitol
at Washington burned, because our statesmen and our people had
been too short-sighted to build a big fighting navy; and Farragut
was able to perform his great feats on the Gulf coast because,
when the Civil War broke out, we had a navy which, though too small
in point of numbers, was composed of ships as good as any afloat.

Another lesson to be learned by a study of his career is that no
man in a profession so highly technical as that of the navy can
win a great success unless he has been brought up in and
specially trained for that profession, and has devoted his life
to the work. This fact was made plainly evident in the desperate
hurly-burly of the night battle with the Confederate flotilla
below New Orleans--the incidents of this hurly-burly being,
perhaps, best described by the officer who, in his report of his
own share in it, remarked that "all sorts of things happened." Of
the Confederate rams there were two, commanded by trained
officers formerly in the United States navy, Lieutenants Kennon
and Warley. Both of these men handled their little vessels with
remarkable courage, skill, and success, fighting them to the
last, and inflicting serious and heavy damage upon the Union
fleet. The other vessels of the flotilla were commanded by men
who had not been in the regular navy, who were merely Mississippi
River captains, and the like. These men were, doubtless,
naturally as brave as any of the regular officers; but, with one
or two exceptions, they failed ignobly in the time of trial, and
showed a fairly startling contrast with the regular naval
officers beside or against whom they fought. This is a fact which
may well be pondered by the ignorant or unpatriotic people who
believe that the United States does not need a navy, or that it
can improvise one, and improvise officers to handle it, whenever
the moment of need arises.

When a boy, Farragut had sailed as a midshipman on the Essex in
her famous cruise to the South Pacific, and lived through the
murderous fight in which, after losing three fifths of her crew,
she was captured by two British vessels. Step by step he rose in
his profession, but never had an opportunity of distinguishing
himself until, when he was sixty years old, the Civil War broke
out. He was then made flag officer of the Gulf squadron; and the
first success which the Union forces met with in the southwest
was scored by him, when one night he burst the iron chains which
the Confederates had stretched across the Mississippi, and,
stemming the swollen flood with his splendidly-handled
steam-frigates, swept past the forts, sank the rams and gunboats
that sought to bar his path, and captured the city of New
Orleans. After further exciting service on the Mississippi,
service in which he turned a new chapter in the history of naval
warfare by showing the possibilities of heavy seagoing vessels
when used on great rivers, he again went back to the Gulf, and,
in the last year of the war, was allotted the task of attempting
the capture of Mobile, the only important port still left open to
the Confederates.

In August, 1864, Farragut was lying with his fleet off Mobile
Bay. For months he had been eating out his heart while undergoing
the wearing strain of the blockade; sympathizing, too, with every
detail of the doubtful struggle on land. "I get right sick, every
now and then, at the bad news," he once wrote home; and then
again, "The victory of the Kearsarge over the Alabama raised me
up; I would sooner have fought that fight than any ever fought on
the ocean." As for himself, all he wished was a chance to fight,
for he had the fighting temperament, and he knew that, in the
long run, an enemy can only be beaten by being out-fought, as
well as out-manoeuvered. He possessed a splendid self-confidence,
and scornfully threw aside any idea that he would be defeated,
while he utterly refused to be daunted by the rumors of the
formidable nature of the defenses against which he was to act.
"I mean to be whipped or to whip my enemy, and not to be scared to
death," he remarked in speaking of these rumors.

The Confederates who held Mobile used all their skill in
preparing for defense, and all their courage in making that
defense good. The mouth of the bay was protected by two fine
forts, heavily armed, Morgan and Gaines. The winding channels
were filled with torpedoes, and, in addition, there was a
flotilla consisting of three gunboats, and, above all, a big
ironclad ram, the Tennessee, one of the most formidable vessels
then afloat. She was not fast, but she carried six high-power
rifled guns, and her armor was very powerful, while, being of
light draft, she could take a position where Farragut's deep-sea
ships could not get at her. Farragut made his attack with four
monitors,--two of them, the Tecumseh and Manhattan, of large
size, carrying 15inch guns, and the other two, the Winnebago and
Chickasaw, smaller and lighter, with 11-inch guns,--and the
wooden vessels, fourteen in number. Seven of these were big
sloops-of-war, of the general type of Farragut's own flagship,
the Hartford. She was a screw steamer, but was a full-rigged ship
likewise, with twenty-two 9-inch shell guns, arranged in
broadside, and carrying a crew of three hundred men. The other
seven were light gunboats. When Farragut prepared for the
assault, he arranged to make the attack with his wooden ships in
double column. The seven most powerful were formed on the right,
in line ahead, to engage Fort Morgan, the heaviest of the two
forts, which had to be passed close inshore to the right. The
light vessels were lashed each to the left of one of the heavier
ones. By this arrangement each pair of ships was given a double
chance to escape, if rendered helpless by a shot in the boiler or
other vital part of the machinery. The heaviest ships led in the
fighting column, the first place being taken by the Brooklyn and
her gunboat consort, while the second position was held by
Farragut himself in the Hartford, with the little Metacomet
lashed alongside. He waited to deliver the attack until the tide
and the wind should be favorable, and made all his preparations
with the utmost care and thoughtfulness. Preeminently a man who
could inspire affection in others, both the officers and men of
the fleet regarded him with fervent loyalty and absolute trust.

The attack was made early on the morning of August 5. Soon after
midnight the weather became hot and calm, and at three the
Admiral learned that a light breeze had sprung up from the
quarter he wished, and he at once announced, "Then we will go in
this morning." At daybreak he was at breakfast when the word was
brought that the ships were all lashed in couples. Turning
quietly to his captain, he said, "Well, Drayton, we might as well
get under way;" and at half-past six the monitors stood down to
their stations, while the column of wooden ships was formed, all
with the United States flag hoisted, not only at the peak, but
also at every masthead. The four monitors, trusting in their iron
sides, steamed in between the wooden ships and the fort. Every
man in every craft was thrilling with the fierce excitement of
battle; but in the minds of most there lurked a vague feeling of
unrest over one danger. For their foes who fought in sight, for
the forts, the gunboats, and, the great ironclad ram, they cared
nothing; but all, save the very boldest, were at times awed, and
rendered uneasy by the fear of the hidden and the unknown.
Danger which is great and real, but which is shrouded in mystery,
is always very awful; and the ocean veterans dreaded the
torpedoes--the mines of death--which lay, they knew not where,
thickly scattered through the channels along which they were to
thread their way.

The tall ships were in fighting trim, with spars housed, and
canvas furled. The decks were strewn with sawdust; every man was
in his place; the guns were ready, and except for the song of the
sounding-lead there was silence in the ships as they moved
forward through the glorious morning. It was seven o'clock when
the battle began, as the Tecumseh, the leading monitor, fired two
shots at the fort. In a few minutes Fort Morgan was ablaze with
the flash of her guns, and the leading wooden vessels were
sending back broadside after broadside. Farragut stood in the
port main-rigging, and as the smoke increased he gradually
climbed higher, until he was close by the maintop, where the
pilot was stationed for the sake of clearer vision. The captain,
fearing lest by one of the accidents of battle the great admiral
should lose his footing, sent aloft a man with a lasher, and had
a turn or two taken around his body in the shrouds, so that he
might not fall if wounded; for the shots were flying thick.

At first the ships used only their bow guns, and the Confederate
ram, with her great steel rifles, and her three consorts, taking
station where they could rake the advancing fleet, caused much
loss. In twenty minutes after the opening of the fight the ships
of the van were fairly abreast of the fort, their guns leaping
and thundering; and under the weight of their terrific fire that
of the fort visibly slackened. All was now uproar and slaughter,
the smoke drifting off in clouds. The decks were reddened and
ghastly with blood, and the wreck of flying splinters drove
across them at each discharge. The monitor Tecumseh alone was
silent. After firing the first two shots, her commander, Captain
Craven, had loaded his two big guns with steel shot, and, thus
prepared, reserved himself for the Confederate ironclad, which he
had set his heart upon taking or destroying single-handed. The
two columns of monitors and the wooden ships lashed in pairs were
now approaching the narrowest part of the channel, where the
torpedoes lay thickest; and the guns of the vessels fairly
overbore and quelled the fire from the fort. All was well,
provided only the two columns could push straight on without
hesitation; but just at this moment a terrible calamity befell
the leader of the monitors. The Tecumseh, standing straight for
the Tennessee, was within two hundred yards of her foe, when a
torpedo suddenly exploded beneath her. The monitor was about five
hundred yards from the Hartford, and from the maintop Farragut,
looking at her, saw her reel violently from side to side, lurch
heavily over, and go down headforemost, her screw revolving
wildly in the air as she disappeared. Captain Craven, one of the
gentlest and bravest of men, was in the pilot-house with the
pilot at the time. As she sank, both rushed to the narrow door,
but there was time for only one to get out. Craven was ahead, but
drew to one side, saying, "After you, pilot." As the pilot leaped
through, the water rushed in, and Craven and all his crew, save
two men, settled to the bottom in their iron coffin.

None of the monitors were awed or daunted by the fate of their
consort, but drew steadily onward. In the bigger monitors the
captains, like the crews, had remained within the iron walls; but
on the two light crafts the commanders had found themselves so
harassed by their cramped quarters, that they both stayed outside
on the deck. As these two steamed steadily ahead, the men on the
flagship saw Captain Stevens, of the Winnebago, pacing calmly,
from turret to turret, on his unwieldy iron craft, under the full
fire of the fort. The captain of the Chickasaw, Perkins, was the
youngest commander in the fleet, and as he passed the Hartford,
he stood on top of the turret, waving his hat and dancing about
in wildest excitement and delight.

But, for a moment, the nerve of the commander of the Brooklyn
failed him. The awful fate of the Tecumseh and the sight of a
number of objects in the channel ahead, which seemed to be
torpedoes, caused him to hesitate. He stopped his ship, and then
backed water, making sternway to the Hartford, so as to stop her
also. It was the crisis of the fight and the crisis of Farragut's
career. The column was halted in a narrow channel, right under
the fire of the forts. A few moments' delay and confusion, and
the golden chance would have been past, and the only question
remaining would have been as to the magnitude of the disaster.
Ahead lay terrible danger, but ahead lay also triumph. It might
be that the first ship to go through would be sacrificed to the
torpedoes; it might be that others would be sacrificed; but go
through the fleet must. Farragut signaled to the Brooklyn to go
ahead, but she still hesitated. Immediately, the admiral himself
resolved to take the lead. Backing hard he got clear of the
Brooklyn, twisted his ship's prow short round, and then, going
ahead fast, he dashed close under the Brooklyn's stern, straight
at the line of buoys in the channel. As he thus went by the
Brooklyn, a warning cry came from her that there were torpedoes
ahead. "Damn the torpedoes!" shouted the admiral; "go ahead, full
speed; and the Hartford and her consort steamed forward. As they
passed between the buoys, the cases of the torpedoes were heard
knocking against the bottom of the ship; but for some reason they
failed to explode, and the Hartford went safely through the gates
of Mobile Bay, passing the forts. Farragut's last and hardest
battle was virtually won. After a delay which allowed the
flagship to lead nearly a mile, the Brooklyn got her head round,
and came in, closely followed by all the other ships. The
Tennessee strove to interfere with the wooden craft as they went
in, but they passed, exchanging shots, and one of them striving
to ram her, but inflicting only a glancing blow. The ship on the
fighting side of the rear couple had been completely disabled by
a shot through her boiler.

As Farragut got into the bay he gave orders to slip the gunboats,
which were lashed to each of the Union ships of war, against the
Confederate gunboats, one of which he had already disabled by his
fire, so that she was run ashore and burnt. Jouett, the captain
of the Metacomet, had been eagerly waiting this order, and had
his men already standing at the hawsers, hatchet in hand. When
the signal for the gunboats to chase was hoisted, the order to
Jouett was given by word of mouth, and as his hearty "Aye, aye,
sir," came in answer, the hatchets fell, the hawsers parted, and
the Metacomet leaped forward in pursuit. A thick rainsquall came
up, and rendered it impossible for the rear gunboats to know
whither the Confederate flotilla had fled. When it cleared away,
the watchers on the fleet saw that one of the two which were
uninjured had slipped off to Fort Morgan, while the other, the
Selma, was under the guns of the Metacomet, and was promptly
carried by the latter.

Meanwhile the ships anchored in the bay, about four miles from
Fort Morgan, and the crews were piped to breakfast; but almost as
soon as it was begun, the lookouts reported that the great
Confederate ironclad was steaming down, to do battle,
single-handed, with the Union fleet. She was commanded by
Buchanan, a very gallant and able officer, who had been on the
Merrimac, and who trusted implicitly in his invulnerable sides,
his heavy rifle guns, and his formidable iron beak. As the ram
came on, with splendid courage, the ships got under way, while
Farragut sent word to the monitors to attack the Tennessee at
once. The fleet surgeon, Palmer, delivered these orders. In his
diary he writes:

"I came to the Chickasaw; happy as my friend Perkins habitually
is, I thought he would turn a somerset with joy, when I told him,
'The admiral wants you to go at once and fight the Tennessee.'"

At the same time, the admiral directed the wooden vessels to
charge the ram, bow on, at full speed, as well as to attack her
with their guns. The monitors were very slow, and the wooden
vessels began the attack. The first to reach the hostile ironclad
was the Monongahela, which struck her square amidships; and five
minutes later the Lackawanna, going at full speed, delivered
another heavy blow. Both the Union vessels fired such guns as
would bear as they swung round, but the shots glanced harmlessly
from the armor, and the blows of the ship produced no serious
injury to the ram, although their own sterns were crushed in
several feet above and below the water line. The Hartford then
struck the Tennessee, which met her bows on. The two antagonists
scraped by, their port sides touching. As they rasped past, the
Hartford's guns were discharged against the ram, their muzzles
only half a dozen feet distant from her iron-clad sides; but the
shot made no impression. While the three ships were circling to
repeat the charge, the Lackawanna ran square into the flagship,
cutting the vessel down to within two feet of the water. For a
moment the ship's company thought the vessel sinking, and almost
as one man they cried: "Save the admiral! get the admiral on
board the Lackawanna." But Farragut, leaping actively into the
chains, saw that the ship was in no present danger, and ordered
her again to be headed for the Tennessee. Meanwhile, the monitors
had come up, and the battle raged between them and the great ram,
Like the rest of the Union fleet, they carried smooth-bores, and
their shot could not break through her iron plates; but by
sustained and continuous hammering, her frame could be jarred and
her timbers displaced. Two of the monitors had been more or less
disabled already, but the third, the Chickasaw, was in fine trim,
and Perkins got her into position under the stern of the
Tennessee, just after the latter was struck by the Hartford; and
there he stuck to the end, never over fifty yards distant, and
keeping up a steady rapping of 11-inch shot upon the iron walls,
which they could not penetrate, but which they racked and
shattered. The Chickasaw fired fifty-two times at her antagonist,
shooting away the exposed rudder-chains and the smokestack, while
the commander of the ram, Buchanan, was wounded by an iron
splinter which broke his leg. Under the hammering, the Tennessee
became helpless. She could not be steered, and was unable to
bring a gun to bear, while many of the shutters of the ports were
jammed. For twenty minutes she had not fired a shot. The wooden
vessels were again bearing down to ram her; and she hoisted the
white flag.

Thus ended the battle of Mobile Bay, Farragut's crowning victory.
Less than three hours elapsed from the time that Fort Morgan
fired its first gun to the moment when the Tennessee hauled down
her flag. Three hundred and thirty-five men had been killed or
wounded in the fleet, and one vessel, the Tecumseh, had gone
down; but the Confederate flotilla was destroyed, the bay had
been entered, and the forts around it were helpless to do
anything further. One by one they surrendered, and the port of
Mobile was thus sealed against blockade runners, so that the last
source of communication between the Confederacy and the outside
world was destroyed. Farragut had added to the annals of the
Union the page which tells of the greatest sea-fight in our history.

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