“Torpedoes,” was the response.
“Damn the torpedoes,” said Farragut, “go ahead.”
Go ahead the fleet did and at length had passed Fort Morgan and was in the sheltering waters of the bay. The cost of this operation in the Union fleet was 335 men. Of the 130 men in the Tecumseh when she was struck only 17 were saved.
Fort Gaines, the works on the western side of the channel, now surrendered. But Fort Morgan kept on fighting. The Union vessels were in Mobile Bay, but they had not yet forced the indomitable fort on Mobile Point to its knees. Admiral Farragut wrote to a friend:
We are now tightening the cords around Fort Morgan. Page is as surly as a bull-dog and says that he will die in his ditch....
How little people know the risks of life. Drayton made his clerk stay below because he was a young married man. All my staff,—Watson, McKinley and Brownell,—were in an exposed position on the poop deck but escaped unhurt while poor Heginbotham was killed.
For seventeen days Fort Morgan held out, though bombarded continuously. Then at length she surrendered, her citadel destroyed and her walls nearly blown to pieces. It is this pathetic shell that now greets the visitor’s eye on Mobile Point.