From a photograph owned by Mr. C. B. Hall.
And then came the Confederate squadron from behind the fort to take a position above the line of torpedoes to help repel the fleet. As the Tennessee opened fire the monitor Tecumseh, at the head of the Union line, had her turret turned with portholes from the fort while the guns were loaded. Captain Craven, intent on reaching the Tennessee as quickly as possible, saw that if he had to pass between the red buoy and the fort, his route would be a crooked one, and turning to the pilot at his side in the pilot-house, he said:
“It is impossible that the Admiral means us to go inside the buoy; I cannot turn my ship.” He knew that outside the red buoy lay the torpedoes, but saying “starboard” to the man at the wheel, he headed the Tecumseh straight for the Confederate ram. For a few minutes she held her course undisturbed, but as the red buoy was brought abeam, her bow was suddenly lifted out of water, she lurched heavily from side to side, and then down she went bow first, her screw lifted up to view, and with a minute or two of time between the shock and the sinking. A torpedo had ripped open her hull. A few men in the turret climbed out. Craven and Pilot John Collins both started for the opening in the pilot-house, and then Craven drew back and said:
“After you, pilot.” But there was no afterward for Tunis Augustus Craven. There was a chance for one, but not for two. “When I reached the uppermost round of the ladder,” said Collins, “the ship dropped from under me.” In all, ninety-two good men went down with their immortal captain.
Farragut, who had climbed into the port main rigging of the Hartford, where he could see over the smoke of battle, saw the Tecumseh sink, and turning to Capt. J. Jouett, of the little Metacomet alongside, asked him to send a boat to rescue some of the Tecumseh’s crew. But Jouett had already ordered the boat away, and it carried another hero of that battle—Ensign H. C. Neilds. Neilds was only a lad, but he sat unmoved in the stern of the frail craft as it passed out from the shelter of his ship into the hurtling storm that ripped the water into a misty spray. A moment later he remembered that his flag was not flying, and standing up, as a Perry might have done, he unfurled the flag, set it to its staff in the face of friend and foe, and then sat down quietly to guide the boat on her mission.
Over on the monitors was still another hero—Commander Stevens, of the Winnebago. He was of the old school of seamen, who believed that the captain’s place was on the quarter-deck. The double-turreted monitor had no quarter-deck, but Stevens, restive in the iron box, got out on the deck between the turrets, and pacing to and fro alone in the storm, gave his orders now to one turret and then another. And what was more, the monitors were all driving ahead in the wake of the lost Tecumseh—driving toward the torpedoes.
But just then the captain of the Brooklyn, being in the lead of all, saw some little floats that marked the location of a nest of torpedoes, and first stopped and then backed his engines. It was not the right move for a ship in Farragut’s squadron to make, and it threw the line into confusion, and held the ships under the hottest fire of the fort—held the Hartford in particular where the shot from the enemy turned her gun-deck into a slaughter pen so that blood ran in streams from her scuppers, and the splinters of her walls and bits of flesh and clothing from the dead were scattered in a shower over the deck of the gunboat lashed alongside.
As the Hartford ranged up near the Brooklyn, Farragut, from his perch in the rigging, asked what was the trouble, and the one word “torpedoes” came back to him.
“D——n the torpedoes! Follow me,” said the admiral, and as the Hartford took the lead of her column, he signalled for “close order.”
A moment more, and the Hartford had reached the torpedo nest. The torpedo cases were distinctly heard striking against her bottom, and their primers were heard snapping, but not one exploded.