Farragut now made up his mind to pass the forts at all hazards. It was a dangerous and heroic step. If he won, New Orleans must fall; if he failed—but he must not fail. Two gunboats were sent to cut the chain across the river. All night long the commander watched with intense anxiety the return of the boats, which under a galling fire had succeeded in breaking the chain, and thus making a passage for the fleet.
At half past three o'clock on the morning of April 24, the fleet was ready to start. The Cayuga led off the first division of eight vessels. Both forts opened fire. In ten minutes she had passed beyond St. Philip only to be surrounded by eleven Confederate gunboats. The Varuna came to her relief, but was rammed by two Southern boats, and sunk in fifteen minutes. The Mississippi encountered the enemy's ram, Manassas, riddled her with shot, and set her on fire, so that she drifted below the forts and blew up.
Then the centre division, led by the Hartford, passed into the terrific fire. First she grounded in avoiding a fire-raft; then a Confederate ram pushed a raft against her, setting her on fire; but Farragut gave his orders as calmly as though not in the utmost peril. The flames were extinguished, and she steamed on, doing terrible execution with her shells. Then came the last division, led by the Sciota, and Commander Porter's gunboats. In the darkness, lighted only by the flashes of over two hundred guns, the fleet had cut its way to victory, losing one hundred and eighty-four in killed and wounded.
"In a twinkling the flames had risen
Half-way to maintop and mizzen,
Darting up the shrouds like snakes!
Ah, how we clanked at the brakes!
And the deep steam-pumps throbbed under
Sending a ceaseless glow.
Our top-men—a dauntless crowd—
Swarmed in rigging and shroud;
There ('twas a wonder!)
The burning ratlins and strands
They quenched with their bare hard hands.
But the great guns below
Never silenced their thunder.
"At last, by backing and sounding,
When we were clear of grounding,
And under headway once more,
The whole Rebel fleet came rounding
The point. If we had it hot before,
'Twas now, from shore to shore,
One long, loud thundering roar,—
Such crashing, splintering, and pounding
And smashing as you never heard before.
"But that we fought foul wrong to wreck,
And to save the land we loved so well,
You might have deemed our long gun-deck
Two hundred feet of hell!
For all above was battle,
Broadside, and blaze, and rattle,
Smoke and thunder alone;
But down in the sick-bay,
Where our wounded and dying lay,
There was scarce a sob or a moan.
"And at last, when the dim day broke,
And the sullen sun awoke,
Drearily blinking
O'er the haze and the cannon-smoke,
That even such morning dulls,
There were thirteen traitor hulls
On fire and sinking!"
"Thus," says the son of Farragut, in his admirable biography, "was accomplished a feat in naval warfare which had no precedent, and which is still without a parallel except the one furnished by Farragut himself, two years later, at Mobile. Starting with seventeen wooden vessels, he had passed with all but three of them, against the swift current of a river but half a mile wide, between two powerful earthworks which had long been prepared for him, his course impeded by blazing rafts, and immediately thereafter had met the enemy's fleet of fifteen vessels, two of them ironclads, and either captured or destroyed every one of them. And all this with a loss of but one ship from his squadron."
The following day, he wrote:—