[CHAPTER L]
The Bay Fight at Mobile
In the meanwhile another important blow had been struck in pursuance of Grant's comprehensive plan of destroying the Confederate capacity of resistance.
The reader will doubtless remember that when Farragut captured New Orleans in April, 1862, he desired at once to move against Mobile in the hope and confident expectation of capturing and closing all those Confederate ports upon which, as blockade running centers, the Southerners relied for the export of their cotton, and the import of arms, ammunition and clothing. From this purpose Farragut was diverted by the peremptory orders of civilians in the navy department at Washington, and it was not until more than two years later that he was permitted to act upon a plan which common sense had dictated from the beginning. In the meanwhile the Confederates, with that energy and ceaseless determination which characterized all their activities, had been daily and hourly rendering the capture of their ports more and more difficult. At Mobile they had strengthened the fortifications and mounted destructively heavy guns in their casemates and upon their parapets. They had strewn the harbor thick with torpedoes of every kind then known to the military science of destruction. When at last in August, 1864, Farragut was permitted to undertake that enterprise against Mobile which would have been easy and nearly bloodless, if he had been allowed to undertake it two years and three months earlier, he had before him one of the most difficult tasks that was set for any naval commander in this war to accomplish.
Early on the morning of August fifth, Farragut put his fleet in motion to enter Mobile bay. The entrance is a narrow one and was obstructed by every device that engineering ingenuity could place in the pathway of an invading fleet. The only passageway into the harbor lay between Fort Morgan on Mobile Point, and Fort Gaines on Dauphin Island, three miles away. Two miles of this narrow passageway had been completely obstructed by the driving of innumerable piles into the sands, thus forming a fence through which the stoutest ship could not force its way. From the end of this pile fence eastward toward Fort Morgan there extended a quadruple line of destructive torpedoes. The only open way into the harbor was a narrow passage left for the use of blockade runners, directly under the guns of Fort Morgan.
Inside the bay there was a Confederate fleet of considerable strength, including one ironclad ram, and many heavily armed wooden gunboats. The bay was also thickly strewn with mines and torpedoes, the exact location of which was known of course to the Confederate officers, but entirely unknown to Farragut and his captains.
On the fourth of August a strong land force under General Gordon Granger succeeded in making a landing on Dauphin Island. This gave to Farragut the support he had desired from the land side. His time had at last come, and with four ironclad monitors, seven wooden vessels, all heavily armed, and a fleet of gunboats he advanced toward the mouth of the bay, a little after daylight on the morning of August 5, 1864.
During almost half an hour before Farragut's ships were in a position from which they could render their own fire effective, the fire from the Confederate forts and still more from the Confederate fleet that lay just inside the entrance line, played havoc with the wooden ships of Farragut's squadron. His flagship, the Hartford, had her mainmast shot away and many of her crew destroyed. Still Farragut pushed onward without a moment's hesitation at any point until he brought his ships into a position from which they could effectively return the Confederate fire. The heavier metal of his guns quickly and disastrously told upon the Confederate defenses. But these continued to belch out destruction in spite of any crippling that had been done to them, and for a time the fleet suffered terribly.
In order that he might see everything that occurred and direct the conflict with full knowledge of all its details, Farragut mounted to the rigging of his flagship, and a quartermaster lashed him to the spars in order that he might not fall to the deck, in the event of his receiving a wound.