Military scholarship is a good thing; military genius is sometimes a better thing. When it was resolved by the authorities to attempt the capture of New Orleans it was assumed that the two forts on the river below the city must be first destroyed or compelled to surrender. The chief engineer of the Army of the Potomac, whose ability was unquestioned, made a long report to the Navy Department, in which, after describing the forts and their situation, he said: "To pass these works merely with a fleet and appear before New Orleans is merely a raid, no capture." And in describing the exact method of attack he said: "Those [vessels] on the Fort Jackson side would probably have to make fast to the shore; those on the Saint Philip side might anchor." Substantially the same view was afterward taken by Captain David D. Porter, who was to have an important part in the enterprise. It was also assumed that the forts could be reduced by bombardment, if this was only heavy and persistent enough. In accordance with this idea, twenty-one large mortars were cast for the work. They threw shells that were thirteen inches in diameter and weighed two hundred and eighty-five pounds. For each of these mortars a schooner was built; and so great was the concussion of the atmosphere when one was fired, that no man could stand near it without being literally deafened. Therefore platforms projecting beyond the decks were provided, to which the gunners could retreat just before each shot. The remainder of the fleet, when finally it was mustered, was made up of six sloops of war, sixteen gunboats, five other vessels, and transports carrying fifteen thousand soldiers to co-operate in the attack or hold the forts and the city after it should be captured. The number of guns in the fleet was more than two hundred.
| Farragut and Dewey. |
After this expedition (the most powerful that ever had sailed under the American flag) was planned and partly organized, and the mortar schooners nearly completed, the Navy Department looked about for a suitable officer to command it, and Secretary Welles finally chose Captain David G. Farragut. This officer had his own ideas of the best way to effect the capture. He would have preferred to dispense with the mortars, in which he had no faith; but they had been prepared at great expense, and that part of the fleet was to be commanded by his friend Porter, and so he accepted them, and as soon as it could be got ready the expedition sailed from Hampton Roads.
When it arrived at the mouths of the Mississippi there was a gigantic task to be performed before the fleet could enter the stream. An American poet has thus described the delta of the great river:
| "Do you know of the dreary land, If land such region may seem, Where 'tis neither sea nor strand, Ocean nor good dry land, But the nightmare marsh of a dream— Where the mighty river his death-road takes, Mid pools and windings that coil like snakes— A hundred leagues of bayous and lakes— To die in the great Gulf Stream?" |
There are five mouths or passes, spread out like the fingers of a hand. Of course no one of them was as large and deep as the river above, and the entrance of each was obstructed by a bar. The smaller vessels—mortar schooners and gunboats—were taken in without difficulty, but the larger ones required enormous labor to get them over the bar. The Mississippi—of which Captain Melancton Smith was the commander, and Lieutenant George Dewey the executive officer—was lightened of everything that could be taken off, and even then had to be dragged over by tugboats, with her keel a foot deep in the mud. She was the only side-wheel war vessel in the fleet. It required two weeks' labor to get the Pensacola in; and the Colorado could not be taken in at all, as she drew seven feet more of water than there was on the bar.
The masts of the mortar schooners were dressed off with bushes so that they could not be distinguished easily from the trees along the shore; and as soon as they were moored in their chosen position the bombardment was begun. The forts could not be seen from them, and the gunners fired with a computed aim, throwing the immense shells high into the air, that they might fall almost perpendicularly into the forts and explode. The bombardment was kept up steadily for six days and nights, nearly six thousand shells being thrown. They fell in and around the fortifications, destroyed buildings, cut the levee, and killed fourteen men and wounded thirty-nine. It is said that in modern warfare a man's weight in lead is fired for every man that is killed; in this instance about sixteen tons of iron were thrown for every man that was injured. The main object, however, was not to disable the garrisons, but to dismount the guns and render the fortifications useless; and this result was not accomplished. The forts and their armaments were in almost as good condition for service as ever.
Meanwhile, Farragut had made up his mind that to anchor abreast of these fortifications and attack them would simply be to lose his vessels. It is only in its ability to keep moving that a war ship (at least a wooden one, and there was not an ironclad in this fleet) has an advantage over land works of equal armament. To surrender this advantage at the beginning is to lose the fight at the end. Furthermore, he believed that as the sole purpose of the forts was to protect the city, if he could lay the city under his guns the forts would be abandoned. Consequently, in spite of the advice of the eminent army engineer and his friend and brother officer, Porter, he determined to pass the forts with his whole fleet (except the mortar schooners) and appear before New Orleans.
This was a new thing in warfare, and it is important to note it here, because George Dewey, who had been promoted to a lieutenancy at the beginning of the war, was in that fleet, and Farragut was his instructor as well as his commander.