Admiral Farragut

by A. T. Mahan

At the time the Tennessee went about to encounter the remaining vessels of the fleet, which was about eight o'clock, the course of the channel enabled the Hartford to turn sufficiently to bring her broadside to bear on her puny assailants. By the fire she then opened, one, the Gaines, was so much injured as to be with difficulty kept afloat until she could take refuge under Fort Morgan, where she was that night burned by her commander. All three retreated rapidly toward the shoal water on the east side of the bay. Farragut then signaled for the gunboats of his fleet to chase those of the enemy. Jouett, being alongside, received the order by word of mouth, and the admiral often afterward spoke with enthusiasm of the hearty "Ay, ay, sir!" he received in reply, and of the promptness with which the fasts were cut, the men being already by them, hatchet in hand. The Metacomet backed clear at once and started rapidly in pursuit. The gunboats in the rear followed as soon as the signal was made out; but, both from their position and from the inevitable delay in reading signals, they were at a disadvantage. A thick rain squall coming up soon after hid both pursuers and pursued from each other's sight. The Morgan and the Gaines took advantage of it to change their course for Fort Morgan; the third Confederate, the Selma, kept straight on, as did the Metacomet. When the squall cleared, the latter found herself ahead of her chase. One shot was fired, killing the first lieutenant and some of the crew of the Selma, whose flag was then hauled down. The Morgan made good her retreat under the fort, and that night succeeded in escaping up the bay to the city, although she was seen and fired upon by several of Farragut's vessels.

At half-past eight o'clock, three hours after the first signal was made to get under way and an hour and a half after the action began, the flag-ship anchored in the upper part of the deep pocket into which the channel expands after passing the entrance. She was then about four miles from Fort Morgan, and the crew were sent to breakfast. The admiral had come down from his post in the main rigging and was standing on the poop, when Captain Drayton came up to him and said: "What we have done has been well done, sir; but it all counts for nothing so long as the Tennessee is there under the guns of Morgan." "I know it," replied Farragut, "and as soon as the people have had their breakfasts I am going for her." These words were exchanged in the hearing of the first lieutenant of the Hartford, now Rear-Admiral Kimberly, and at present the senior officer upon the active list of the United States Navy. In writing home a few weeks later, the admiral said: "If I had not captured the Tennessee as I did, I should have taken her that night with the monitors, or tried it." The latter undoubtedly represents the more deliberate opinion, that would have guided him had Buchanan not played into his hands by attacking the fleet; for if the Tennessee had remained under Morgan and there been sought by the monitors, the fight would have been at such close quarters that in the darkness the fort could scarcely have joined without imminent risk of hurting friend as well as foe.

As it was, the Confederate admiral seems never to have contemplated any more prudent or sagacious course than a single-handed free fight with the fleet. As soon as the Tennessee had passed the rear of the enemy's column, Buchanan said to the captain of the ram: "Follow them up, Johnston; we can't let them off that way." In turning, the Tennessee took much room, appearing from the fleet to have gone back under the guns of Fort Morgan; and the various ships, as they came up, were anchoring near the Hartford, expecting a few quiet hours. They were soon undeceived. The brief conversation above reported between Farragut and his flag-captain had scarcely ended when the ram was seen to be moving out from under the fort. Captain Drayton reported the fact to the admiral, saying that she was going outside to attack the United States vessels still remaining there. "Then," said Farragut, "we must follow him out." The remark indicates an alternative to the course actually adopted by Buchanan, and one whose issue would depend less upon the United States commander-in-chief than upon the conduct of the vessels outside. If these were so imprudent as not to retire, Farragut might have been forced to run twice again the gantlet of Fort Morgan and of the torpedo line—once to protect them, and afterward to regain the position he had just achieved.

It must be admitted that the question before the Confederate admiral, what to do with one unwieldy though powerful vessel opposed to fourteen enemies, was hard to solve; nor did he have, in a precise knowledge of the speed, battery, and other qualities of his opponents, the data needed for an accurate solution. In a general way, however, he must have known that the guns of the United States fleet were mainly smooth-bores, with but moderate penetrative power upon iron-plating such as the Tennessee's; and during the morning's encounter he had acquired experimental knowledge of their impotence against her sides, unless by a continuous pounding such as he was now about to invite. He knew also that several of the hostile vessels were of too heavy draught to take any efficient part, if he refused, as was in his power, to enter the pocket in which they were now anchored; while the general gentle shelving of the bottom enabled a foot's difference in draught to secure a very considerable separation in distance. Every wooden ship was vulnerable to him and impotent against him at the ranges which his rifles permitted him to use.

With the monitors Buchanan had not yet come into collision; but one of the most formidable was sunk, and until he had learned something about their endurance and the power of their guns relatively to those of his own vessel, it would seem that his action, though immediate, should have been only tentative. If it proved on trial that the speed of the Tennessee was greater than that of the monitors, she might yet prove master of the situation. Despite the beak, which her wretched speed and exposed steering chains rendered untrustworthy, her great defensive strength and the fact of carrying rifled guns indicated that long range, and not close quarters, was the first game of the Tennessee. There she could hurt, and she could not be hurt. Had she, for instance, hovered at a distance, firing deliberately at the Union vessels, Farragut must have attacked; and she could then have retired either into shoaler water, retaining her advantage in range, or else under the guns of Morgan, which would have strongly re-enforced her fight. The fact that Farragut, whose instinct for war was commonly accurate, proposed to attack her at close quarters and by night, is the best argument that Buchanan should have sought long range and daylight for his action. As it was, his headlong charge into the Union fleet was a magnificent display of inconsiderate bravery, in which such advantages as he had were recklessly thrown away. Its purpose is not clear. If, as Farragut thought, it was to sink his flag-ship, it can only be replied that an admiral's flag is not a red rag for a bull to charge. Had the Hartford been sunk when the column doubled up an hour or so before, the loss of the leader at so critical a moment might have decided the day; but to sink her in the mêlée within would have been a barren, though brilliant, feat of arms.

As soon as it was ascertained that the Tennessee was really coming up to attack, the mess-gear was hurried aside and the orders given to get under way. Some of the fleet had not yet anchored, and the monitors were not yet arrived at the place where the others were gathered. Dr. Palmer, the fleet surgeon, was just leaving the flag-ship in a steam-launch, for the purpose of making a round among the other vessels to see to the condition of their wounded. Farragut called him alongside and directed him to go to the monitors with orders to attack the Tennessee. These Palmer delivered in person to each ironclad. "Happy as my friend Perkins (of the Chickasaw) habitually is," he wrote in his diary, "I thought he would turn a somersault overboard with joy when I told him, 'The admiral wants you to go at once and fight that Tennessee.'" The wooden vessels at the same time were directed to charge the ram, bows on, at full speed, as well as to attack her with their guns.

The monitors being, like the Tennessee herself, very slow, the ramming contest first began. The first to reach the hostile ironclad was the Monongahela, Captain Strong, which struck her squarely amidships on the starboard side, when she was still four hundred yards distant from the body of the fleet. Five minutes later the Lackawanna, Captain Marchand, going at full speed, delivered her blow also at right angles on the port side, abreast the after end of the armored superstructure. As they swung round, both United States vessels fired such guns as would bear, but the shot glanced harmlessly from the armor; nor did the blow of the ships themselves produce any serious injury upon the enemy, although their own stems were crushed in for several feet above and below the water line. Upon them followed the Hartford, approaching, like the Lackawanna, on the port side; but toward her the Tennessee turned, so that the two met nearly, though not exactly, bows on. The Hartford's anchor, which there had not been time to cat, was hanging at the water's edge; it took the brunt of the collision, which doubled it up, and the two antagonists scraped by, their port sides touching. At that close range seven nine-inch guns were discharged against the sloping sides of the ironclad, but without effect. The admiral had clambered again into the rigging, on this occasion into the port mizzen-rigging, whence he watched the effects of this encounter. Both the Lackawanna and the Hartford now made a circuit to get a position whence they could again charge the enemy; but in the midst of their sweep the Lackawanna ran square into the flag-ship, striking near where Farragut stood, and cutting the vessel down to within two feet of the water. The immediate impression among the ship's company was that the injury was fatal; and the general cry that arose, "Save the admiral! Get the admiral on board the Lackawanna!" by its ignoring of their own danger, testified how Farragut's martial and personal qualities had won a way into the affections of his subordinates. With an activity for which he had been remarkable in middle life, and retained even now when in his sixties, the admiral jumped into the chains to ascertain the extent of the injury; then, finding that the ship was in no present danger, he ordered her again to be headed for the Tennessee.

Meanwhile the monitors had come up, and the battle had begun between them and the enemy. One of the Manhattan's fifteen-inch guns had been disabled; and the slow firing of those unwieldy weapons, with the imperfect mechanical appliances then used for loading them, prevented her doing the injury that might have been expected. One shot struck square, breaking through the port side of the armor; but even so the missile itself did not enter the vessel, a strong evidence of the power of the Tennessee to resist a single shot. But she was not equally invulnerable to the sustained and continuous hammering of even lighter projectiles. The Winnebago's turrets, being out of order, could not be turned, and consequently the guns could be brought to bear only by moving the helm; a circumstance which materially reduced her fire. The Chickasaw, however, was in better case. Lieutenant-Commander Perkins got her into position under the stern of the Tennessee just after the latter's collision with the Hartford; and there he stuck to the end, never over fifty yards distant, and keeping up a steady rapping of eleven-inch shot upon the fabric which they could not at once penetrate, but which they visibly shook. Fifty-two of these projectiles were fired from the Chickasaw in the short half-hour of her attack. The exposed rudder-chains were shot away, and at nearly the same time the smoke-stack came down. Admiral Buchanan was wounded by an iron splinter, which broke his leg and otherwise injured it to such an extent that the limb was with difficulty saved. He turned over the command to Captain Johnston, who stood the pounding for twenty minutes longer and then reported to his superior that the ship was helpless, could not be steered, and that for half an hour he had not been able to bring a gun to bear. "Well," replied Buchanan, "if you can not do them any further damage you had better surrender."

The Tennessee's flag had been several times shot away, and was now flying from a boat-hook. Not being very conspicuous, its removal was not immediately noticed, and Johnston had to show a white flag to put a stop to the firing. "She was at this time sore beset," said Farragut in his dispatch to the Navy Department; "the Chickasaw was pounding away at her stern, the Ossipee was approaching her at full speed, and the Monongahela, Lackawanna, and Hartford were bearing down upon her, determined upon her destruction. Her smoke-stack had been shot away, her steering chains were gone, compelling a resort to her relieving tackles, and several of her port shutters were jammed. Indeed, from the time the Hartford struck her until her surrender she never fired a gun." No stronger evidence can be offered than this last sentence, which Johnston's account corroborates, of how completely Buchanan miscalculated, or disregarded, the capabilities of the important vessel he controlled. Great as was her power to resist a single shot, or the end-on charge of a heavy vessel, when she surrendered nearly all the plating on the after side of the casemate was found to be started, and the after gun-carriage was disabled; there being distinct marks of nine eleven-inch solid shot having struck within a few square feet of that port. Three of her port shutters also were so damaged that their guns could not be fired.

Thus ended the great battle of Mobile Bay, the crowning achievement of Farragut's naval career; "one of the hardest-earned victories of my life," to quote his own words, "and the most desperate battle I ever fought since the days of the old Essex." "You may pass through a long career and see many an action," he remarked to one of the junior officers of the Hartford, in the interval between first anchoring and the conflict with the Tennessee, "without seeing as much bloodshed as you have this day witnessed." The loss of the flag-ship herself had been twenty-five killed and twenty-eight wounded out of a ship's company of some three hundred souls. The Brooklyn, a ship of the same force, had almost exactly the same number of casualties—eleven killed and forty-three wounded. Contrasting the equal suffering of the latter—delayed so long under the numerous guns of the fort, but supported by the fire of the other vessels—with that of the flag-ship, inflicted by the batteries of the enemy's gun-boats, few in number, but worked for the time with impunity, we find an excellent illustration of Farragut's oft-repeated maxim, that "to hurt your enemy is the best way to keep him from hurting you." The total loss of the United States fleet in the battle was three hundred and thirty-five; of whom one hundred and thirteen were at the bottom of the bay, coffined in the iron hull of the Tecumseh.