“What’s the trouble?” came through his speaking trumpet to the men on the monitor nearest the sinking craft.
“Torpedoes!” was the reply.
What was to be done? Should he risk the whole fleet in a harbor filled with lurking mines? The good admiral sought help from above. “O God,” he whispered, “direct me what to do.”
Farragut heard the answer in his heart. Without an instant’s delay he shouted to the captain of his own ship, the Hartford, “Go ahead! give her all the steam you’ve got.”
The Hartford took the lead and became the chief target of forts and batteries on shore as well as of the Southern gunboats in the harbor. As if that was not dangerous enough, the heroic admiral took his place in plain sight high above the deck, where he could better direct the battle; and so that he could still keep his commanding place if struck by a cannon-ball, his devoted men lashed him to the rigging.
That is one of the heroic pictures in the history of patriotism: Admiral Farragut tied up in the rigging of his flagship and borne amid the whizzing of cannon-balls and the bursting of shells, carrying the Stars-and-Stripes through the fire and smoke of battle to one of the grandest victories ever won in naval warfare.