Lincoln's Admiral

by James P. Duffy

  A few minutes after 4:00 p.m. on Friday, March 13, Farragut’s fleet left Baton Rouge and steamed upriver for about fifteen miles. It was a crisp, clear afternoon, and the cool breeze refreshed the men working on the decks. Anchors were dropped, and the crews given a brief respite before proceeding. Before dawn on Saturday, they were under way again and arrived at a small piece of land in the river called Prophet’s Island at 8:00 a.m. Two hours later, all boat commanders and senior officers attended a war council on board the Hartford. The strength of the river current and the sharp turn above the batteries were major concerns of all in attendance. The river was running at about five knots, meaning that the sloops would be slowed by the current to a speed almost equal to that of a walking man. Exacerbating the challenge was the 100-degree turn to the west just above the batteries. Because of a large shoal at the bend, there was only a narrow channel with sufficient depth to allow the larger ships to pass. Its width was barely enough for the passage of one ship at a time.

  To compensate for the drag of the current and to help the sloops maneuver at the bend, Farragut ordered that each of the three sloops have a gunboat secured to her port side. This would also help protect the gunboats from the shelling of the batteries, which were on the starboard side of the ships. It also provided emergency power to the larger ships, should their boilers suffer damage. Lashed to the side of the Hartford was the gunboat Albatross, Lieutenant Commander John E. Hart; to the Richmond was attached the powerful Genesee, Commander W. H. Macomb; and to the Monongahela was affixed the Kineo, Lieutenant Commander John Watters. Only the Mississippi remained alone. Her configuration, with large paddle wheels on either side, prevented a gunboat from joining her. The order of battle was Hartford, Richmond, Monongahela, and Mississippi. Each ship was to remain slightly starboard of the one ahead, allowing free use of bow guns. Five mortar boats were tied up along the eastern bank about a half-mile below the first batteries, and shielded from the sighting of rebel gunners by the thick woods that ran to the edge of the river. Protecting the mortar boats from attack were the gunboats Essex and Sachem, with orders to remain below the batteries. Farragut had instructed the mortar boat skippers to hold their fire until firing was commenced by either the ships or the batteries. Although he was aware that Confederate lookouts had been watching their progress, he wanted to keep the moment of movement of the fleet as secret as possible. Early attack on the batteries by the mortars would only serve to give the enemy advance warning that the ships would soon be under way.

  When the officers left the Hartford to return to their own vessels, each must have recalled the admiral’s admonition, “I think the best protection against the enemy’s fire is a well-directed fire from our own guns, shell and shrapnel at a distance, and grape when within four hundred or five hundred yards.”

  As the day migrated toward its end, the crews of the Union ships and boats made every possible preparation for the coming battle. Decks were whitewashed so that obstacles could more easily be seen in the dark, and shot was made ready for quick loading. On board the Hartford, Fleet Surgeon J. M. Foltz asked Farragut to assign Loyall to work with him belowdecks. Foltz said that since the Admiral’s son was not in the service, “and had nothing to gain, but everything to lose, by exposure on the quarter deck,” he should be in a more protected part of the ship. Farragut responded that such a suggestion would not do. Although Loyall was not in the service, and was aboard the flagship only as a visitor, he would remain on deck, acting “as one of my aids, to assist in conveying my orders during the battle.” Farragut and his only child would “trust in Providence and la fortune de la guerre.”

  When the sun disappeared and the night grew darker, a deathly silence fell over the river. In the afternoon, a message had arrived from General Banks that his troops would be ready to attack Port Hudson from the rear. Farragut sent word back that he hoped to be north of the batteries before midnight. If the army was to be of any assistance, it would have to launch its diversionary attack before then. The obviously slow pace of Banks’s force must have caused Farragut to wonder if the diversion would actually take place.

  A few minutes before nine o’clock, following a light supper, Farragut stood on the quarterdeck listening to the silence. There was no breeze, and the air was heavy with moisture. He turned to Loyall and quietly told him to go below and inform Captains Palmer and Jenkins that he was ready to get under way. The signal, two red lanterns hung at the stern, was given, and crewmen set about preparing the ship to move as quietly as they could. The admiral and the two captains watched astern as the Monongahela and the Mississippi were evidently experiencing difficulty in weighing anchor.

  Suddenly a screeching whistle from downriver broke the silence, and flares waved wildly in the darkness. Greatly annoyed by the attention it had brought to his ship, Farragut watched as the army tug Reliance, its high-pressure engines puffing loudly, approached the Hartford. It brought word that General Banks would be at the crossroads east of Port Hudson at midnight, at which time he would begin his diversionary attack. Banks had halted his army five miles from Port Hudson and would ultimately serve no useful purpose in diverting the attention of Confederate commanders from the Union ships. Farragut read the message and handed it to Captain Jenkins with the remark, “He had as well be in New Orleans or Baton Rouge for all the good he is doing us.”

  Some dispute arose afterward concerning the timetable for passing the batteries. Banks claimed that Farragut had originally planned to make his run in the predawn hours of the following day. Based on this, Banks said he had not been in position to launch his diversionary attack when Farragut started upriver. Although the admiral did not enter the fray over this, his supporters insisted that Farragut had informed Banks of the change early in the day, when the general’s messenger had informed Farragut that the army was in place. They accused Banks of being reluctant to attack the fortifications from the rear because he believed a Confederate disinformation campaign that the rebel garrison now numbered between 20,000 and 30,000 men. The Confederate force was actually about equal in size to that Banks had brought. In any event, the massed Federal troops played no role in the operation, but instead remained, as one army officer said, “little more than spectators and auditors of the battle between the ships and the forts.”

  By ten o’clock, each ship was in line and under a head of steam. Quietly they slid upstream, the sloops’ screws beating like hearts in a distant body. The whooshing of the two great paddle wheels of the Mississippi sounded like surf crashing on a beach.

  High on the bluffs, the Confederate gunners were ready. The pounding of the steam engines in the river below had alerted them to coming action. The arrival of the noisy little army tug had also told them on board which vessel the fleet’s commanding officer was located. The rebel soldiers waited in silence as they watched the darkness that consumed the river below, looking for a sign of the enemy ships. On the river, the air was still, with no breeze at all, hanging heavy with a humid mist. The ships moved so slowly against the current that their forward motion produced very little air movement that might help relieve those on the decks.

  Shortly before 11:20 p.m., the Hartford was opposite the most southerly of the batteries when a Confederate lookout on the west bank of the river fired a signal rocket that soared into the black sky over the ships and burst into a star-like light before falling into the river. It was quickly followed by another. Even before the flares extinguished themselves in the water, the enemy’s southernmost batteries, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Paul F. de Gournay, opened fire. The first shot was fired by Battery 9, its eight-inch shell exploding in the air above the Hartford and the Albatross. The first shells fired by the batteries were the signal for the mortar boats to begin their deadly work of driving the rebel gunners from their weapons and reducing the enemy’s ability to fire down into the ships. The Essex and the Sachem, guarding the mortar boats from possible infantry attack, also began shelling the batteries, although their guns did not h
ave the height range of the mortars. On board the Hartford, the only gun that could be brought to bear on the bluffs above was the Sawyer on the forecastle. She quickly began firing at the muzzle flashes of the enemy guns. The Union gunners were virtually blind to the enemy positions in the dark.

  Suddenly the river around the flagship lit up in a kind of false dawn. On the west bank, a group of Confederate soldiers had put the torch to several huge piles of pitch pine that had been prepared for this purpose. As the fires roared to life, large reflectors mounted behind them threw their light onto the flagship, making it a clear target for the gunners high on the east bank. The Hartford fired a few broadsides into the fires that scattered the wood and returned the river to darkness.

  Farragut had prepared his gun crews for fighting in the dark with instructions to hold their fire until they saw the flash of an enemy gun, then use that as their target. Both sides were working in near blindness, with the black of the night broken only by the explosions of shells. Compounding this disability was the amount of smoke created by the firing. This was a minimal hindrance to the Hartford’s gunners, but became progressively worse for each of the following ships, as the smoke from the Hartford’s guns blew back into the faces of the Richmond’s gunners, then combined with the Richmond’s gunsmoke to make the situation even worse for the men aboard the Monongahela. Suffering worst from the thick smoke that lay on the river from the firing of ships’ guns was the last in line, the Mississippi.

  As shells burst around the Hartford and her gunboat consort, the Union sailors returned fire so rapidly that gunnery captains repeatedly had to order them to slow down before the heat damaged their own guns. The Confederate gunners, eighty feet above the river, were unable to depress their guns sufficiently to direct their fire at the flagship with great accuracy. Most of the shells burst either above or far to the port side of the ship. Only a few actually found their target. In the midst of the battle, as his ship virtually crawled through this gauntlet of explosions, Farragut stepped back for a better look and accidentally stepped onto a tarpaulin covering a gangway. Only the quick reaction of Loyall and a nearby sailor saved him from a dangerous fall.

  Farragut had prepared for the buildup of blinding smoke that lay on the top of the water. His pilot, Thomas R. Carrell, was stationed in the mizzentop, where Farragut had ordered a speaking trumpet tied. From this vantage point, Carrell could be expected to see over the smoke. The trumpet and its long tube allowed him to shout instructions to the wheelhouse with some hope of being heard over the noise of the battle.

  Except for brief moments of light from the explosions, no one on either side could see much of anything. The deafening blasts of the naval guns and enemy cannons filled the night air close around the ships, and the deep, hollow roar of the mortars thumped in what sounded like the distance. Bursts of light dotted the darkness in a grand pyrotechnic display that was as deadly as it was awe-inspiring. Loyall wrote later that the “magnificent” display was a sight “not often witnessed in a life-time.” From the relative safety of a trench behind the bluffs, a Confederate soldier from Tennessee described the scene as “full of the screaming, exploding heavy bombs. The man who would say he could look with complacency and ease on such a scene has no regard for the truth. It was terrific.”

  The roar of the mortar guns and the spectacle of their flashing projectiles climbing high into the air, slowly arcing as their speed slowed to a stop, then quickly picking up velocity as they plummeted to earth, mesmerized more than one witness. At a plantation four miles away, several women stood at a second-floor window, listening and watching. One equated the scene to the bombardment of Baton Rouge, claiming the latter was “child’s play compared to this.” She said the house shook with every explosion of a mortar shell. For miles around, people reported shattered windows and fallen objects as the earth itself trembled from the pounding of the mighty guns.

  But to all this beauty was added death. Shells did hit the ship, and their blasts injured and killed men. Watching all this, the admiral remained unruffled as he quietly walked around the quarterdeck, issuing orders to his young aides in a calm voice and sending them off to deliver his instructions around the ship.

  Above the smoke, the pilot, who was used to steering river craft through these waters under peaceful conditions, must have been terrified by the death and destruction he witnessed, and the explosions that rocked the mast that was his perch.

  Through all the noise and chaos, the Hartford and the Albatross moved ahead at a pace so slow it belied the power of their engines. From his roost above the ship, Carrell called down to Farragut that the layer of smoke had risen so high he could no longer see anything. Farragut immediately ordered the ship’s guns to cease firing. It was not a moment too soon, for the Hartford had been gently swung around by the current and was heading toward the shore below the bluffs. Suddenly the sound of the ship’s hull scraping the bottom told all aboard that she was in danger of grounding.

  For a brief few moments, it appeared the flagship would fall victim to the river, but Farragut’s quick response helped save the day.

  Through his hailing trumpet, he shouted at the Albatross, “Back, back!” Instantly the screw driving the gunboat stopped and began spinning in reverse. Her engine-room crew poured liquid combustibles into her fires to increase steam pressure quickly for additional power. It worked, and not a moment too soon. Confederate infantry officers thought the ship had touched the shore on purpose and was preparing to land marines. In response, they sent a company of sharpshooters to the scene. The rebel riflemen arrived just as the two ships began to back away, but were able to fire several volleys at the figures visible on the decks. The ships, lashed together, rocked for a moment as the larger was already partially grounded. Then the smaller, with great effort, backed them both off. The Hartford and her partner slowly turned north and in a few minutes were beyond the range of the enemy’s guns.

  Next in line was the Richmond. She struggled not only with the night, as the flagship did, but had the added burden of the smoke generated by the guns and engines of the Hartford and the Albatross to abet her blindness. As she approached safety at the northern end of the line of batteries, her pilot prepared to make the turn he was still unable to see in the dark and thick smoke. Enraged by the successful run of the Hartford and the Albatross, a Confederate gun crew rolled their weapon out to the very edge of the northernmost bluff. Using ropes to secure it, they tipped the gun over the edge so it faced almost directly down into the river. Suddenly, from high above them, a shot plunged down through the Richmond’s decks and destroyed her steam safety valves. Escaping steam scalded engine-room crewmen and filled the lower decks of the ship. Vapor extinguished the port fire. The sloop quickly lost pressure and slowed almost to a halt. Four seamen entered the steam-filled engine room at great personal risk in an attempt to restart the port furnace by carrying fire to it from the starboard furnace. Their daring efforts earned all four, First Class Firemen Matthew McClelland, Joseph E. Vantine, and John Rush, and Second Class Fireman John Hickman, the Congressional Medal of Honor.

  Crippled and unable to move under her own power in spite of the courageous efforts of her crew, the Richmond’s guns blazed away at the unseen enemy while rebel canister and grape tore through her. As the gunboat Genesee, lashed to her side, tried desperately to drive herself and the larger ship to safety upriver, the Richmond remained for several minutes a stationary target for the Confederate gunners and sharpshooters. According to the ship’s journal, “We were, for a few minutes, at the rebels’ mercy; their shell were causing great havoc on our decks; the groans of the wounded and the shrieks of the dying were awful.”

  Among the wounded was the executive officer, Lieutenant Commander A. Boyd Cummings, who lost a leg to a rebel round shot. As sailors and officers ran to his aid, Cummings cried out, “Quick, boys, pick me up, put a tourniquet on my leg, send my letters to my wife, tell them I fell in doing my duty.” Taken below where doctors were treatin
g the wounded, Cummings ordered that men more seriously hurt than he be attended to first.

  Confederate shells, canister, and grape riddled the Richmond as she stood virtually still in the rain of death and destruction. A shell entered the forward starboard gun port and exploded beneath the gun. The exploding metal and wood ripped one arm and both legs from the body of the boatswain’s mate. He died within minutes, but not before exhorting his shipmates not to give up the ship. More shells smashed through the numbers 8, 11, and 12 gun ports, killing or wounding over a dozen sailors and marines. The Richmond’s gunners were almost helpless in their ability to fire back, since most of her guns could not be raised high enough to return effective fire. Many of their shells drove harmlessly into the mud below the crest of the bluffs.

  Meanwhile, the Genesee, the most powerful of the gunboats attempting to run the Port Hudson batteries, finally pulled the larger ship free. She struggled to make progress against the current and join the Hartford beyond the river bend. Despite her best efforts, however, the ships lost ground, and when the current caught the Richmond’s bow just right, both vessels began to swing around in the river. Giving up the effort, the gunboat’s captain, Commander W. H. Macomb, continued turning both ships around, and headed back downriver.

  On deck, the gunners, who were still blinded by the night and the ever-thickening smoke, were unaware of the change in direction. When they saw what appeared to be flashes from enemy guns, they fired several shots before they were stopped. Unfortunately, the flashes they saw were from the guns of the Mississippi. The two ships passed each other in the middle of the river, with neither knowing the other was so close.