Mortar Boats.
From an engraving.
Meantime Lieut. C. H. B. Caldwell had requested permission to break the chain barrier, and on the night of the 20th he was sent with his boat, the Itasca, and the Pinola, Lieut. Pierce Crosby commanding, to do so. While the mortar schooners dropped their shells in a shower on Fort Jackson to keep down the fire as much as possible, two of the barrier hulks were boarded, and on one of them it was found possible to slip her anchor chain. This was done, and she drifted away, leaving the barrier chain to sag down under water. Then Caldwell got above the barrier with his shoal-draft Itasca, passing through a narrow space between the hulks and what remained of the old raft barrier. Running up far enough for good headway, he turned back at full speed with the current to aid him, and headed for the place where the released hulk had been. As the Itasca struck the sagging chain with her curved bow, she rose more than three feet out of water, and then the chain snapped under her weight, and away she went. The barrier was effectually broken, and the route to New Orleans was open. All this was done under heavy fire, but there was no picket boat guarding the chain.
At this time the British frigate Mersey, Captain Preedy, and a Frenchman were lying with Farragut’s fleet. These two foreigners steamed up the river to examine the barrier, and on coming back were at great pains to inform the Union forces that the forts were in perfect order and the barrier absolutely impassable. The French were at that time planning to establish an emperor on a throne in Mexico.
As said, for six days the mortar flotilla hurled shells high in air to drop in and around Fort Jackson. By day each mortar threw a shell every ten minutes—the flotilla of twenty threw 120 per hour—and at night they threw one every half-hour each. On the 19th one of the schooners was sunk by a shot from the fort, and another was thrown out of the fight later on; but on an average about 1,900 shells were thrown each day. The effect of these shells was to destroy all the buildings in the fort, and, by cutting the levee, to flood the floors of the bomb-proofs. They kept the men under cover, and rendered them so uncomfortable that in the end they became desperate. What they did then will be told further on. The garrison lost fourteen killed and thirty-nine wounded in the course of the fighting.
Having the way clear, Farragut, on the 23d of April, 1862, issued his orders for an advance that night. The squadron was divided into two divisions, and Capt. Theodorus Bailey had the honor of commanding the first division. His division flag was hoisted on the Cayuga, that was to lead the line in what was supposed to be the post of real danger. A ship’s cutter under Caldwell rowed up to the break in the barrier and found it still open. The Confederates had a big wood-fire burning, and the cutter crossed its light, but was not attacked. It was a dark, still night—not the best for the work—but at 2 o’clock in the morning of the 24th two red lanterns were hoisted at the peak of the flagship Hartford, and a moment later the shrill piping of the boatswain’s whistle was heard throughout the squadron with the call “All hands up anchor!”
The merry click of the pawls as the men walked around the great capstans soon rose on the still air—rose so high that it reached up to the sentinels on Fort Jackson and roused the garrison to a knowledge that an important action impended. It was a long task to get the anchors of the largest ships, for they were breasting a three-knot current, but soon after 3 o’clock they all got under way, and Porter’s mortars, firing as fast as the men could tong the shells into them, began drawing an almost unbroken arch of fiery bombs from the schooners to Fort Jackson. The nation had never seen such a display of fireworks as that. At 3.30 o’clock precisely the division leader Cayuga passed in silence through the barrier, followed by the huge Pensacola, and then a flaming storm broke loose from the forts. Huge piles of wood were lighted on the shore to illuminate the river, and away upstream the blaze of fire-rafts opened the murk of night to reveal the Confederate ships, weird and indistinct of outline, scattered along the shores. The Union gunboats dashed ahead at full speed, but the Pensacola and Mississippi steamed slowly, their black hulls at regular intervals sheeting the air with lurid fire as they replied to the forts. Abreast of St. Philip, where the Confederate fire was hottest, they drew in so close that the gunners afloat and those ashore heartily cursed each other as they worked. With fierce energy the men ashore drove shot and shell into the wooden ships, while those afloat dusted the rampart with hurtling showers of grape and canister. And these were showers that no man could face, and the garrison fled to cover for a moment, but they returned again as the blasts ceased with the passing of each ship.
For the first division it was at first but a simple journey. They were through the barrier and away before the Confederates fully realized what was upon them. But for Farragut, at the head of the second division, it was another matter. The clouds of smoke from the batteries settled low upon the water to blind the pilots, and then came the blazing fire-rafts to add to the confusion and the danger. As it happened, it was the Hartford that caught the first of these rafts. She had grounded in the smoke and was trying to back off, when the Confederate tug Mosher shoved the flaming barge against her. In an instant the paint on the whole side of the ship was flaming up almost to the lower yards.
