Lincoln's Admiral

by James P. Duffy

  Farragut launched his attack against Fort Powell in Grant’s Pass on February 16. He had intended to begin three days earlier, but a severe drop in temperature, along with heavy winds, had delayed the action. Six mortar boats were towed within range of the fort and opened a steady bombardment. They were protected against possible enemy attack by four gunboats that all but sealed the entrance to the pass. The bombardment did little real damage to the fort. The officers’ quarters were hit several times and destroyed, but little else suffered. In the words of Farragut’s newly appointed fleet captain, Percival Drayton, “We are hammering away at the fort here, which minds us about as much as if we did not fire.”

  Prior to the start of the bombardment, Farragut allowed word that he was planning a major assault on Mobile to reach Major General Dabney H. Maury, the Confederate commander of the District of the Gulf, which included Mobile Bay. Three days before the mortars began firing, Maury requested an additional 6,000 men to bolster the 10,000 defending Mobile. Maury was convinced that Farragut intended to enter the lower bay and lay siege to Mobile. The ploy had worked. In a report to Confederate Secretary of War James Seddon, Maury gave a pessimistic appraisal of the defenses of Mobile Bay. He told Seddon that both Grant’s Pass and the main ship channel between Forts Gaines and Morgan could probably be forced by a strong and resolute fleet.

  Help did arrive in the form of army engineers who strengthened the walls of the main channel forts to protect their masonry from the more accurate and destructive shelling of rifled guns. Maury did not receive the additional troops he requested; however, the forces under his command around Mobile remained in place and were not used against Sherman. Although he eventually realized the attack on Fort Powell was a feint, Maury continued to believe that Farragut intended to send shallow-draft boats through Grant’s Pass in an effort to occupy the southern section of the bay. So convinced was he of this that he gathered together a large group of sharpshooters from among his forces and organized them into a single unit with the purpose of firing into any boats attempting to gain entry to the bay.

  On February 22, Farragut and Captain Drayton scrutinized the bombardment of Fort Powell from the deck of the side-wheel gunboat Calhoun. They found the water so shallow that the mortar boats could get no closer to Fort Powell than 4,000 yards. Even at that range, several of the boats were over a foot deep into the mud. At one point, Farragut’s own gunboat became stuck and had to be pulled free by two of the gunboats guarding the mortar vessels. The admiral knew the attack would never accomplish anything in terms of reducing the fort, but he hoped again that it would distract local Confederate authorities from the coming campaign against Atlanta, which it did. He decided to keep up the attack until intelligence reports indicated the enemy was no longer deceived.

  Following another visit to Grant’s Pass, Farragut reported that the fort had periodically returned fire with its half-dozen rifled guns. One of the mortar boats, the John Griffiths, was hit four times in succession by 100-pound shells, but all failed to explode. Damage aboard the schooner was limited to the wounding of one sailor.

  Meanwhile, 150 miles up the Alabama River, the ironclad ram Tennessee was finally commissioned on February 16. She left the makeshift navy yard at Selma, Alabama, and began her journey downriver to Mobile Bay and into history. Throughout the war, the Confederacy had a perpetual shortage of naval machinery. This was nowhere more apparent than in the large ironclad ram on which a disproportionate portion of the defense of Mobile Bay rested. Her power plant and much of her related machinery had been recovered from a river steamer that the war had left stranded in the Yazoo River. It was only by a contrived arrangement of gears and chains that this equipment was adapted for use in the ram. The river steamer’s engine was a poor substitute for one that might have been designed for the warship herself.

  The Tennessee was launched prior to the completion of her construction. Like more than a dozen other ironclads being built in the mostly shallow and muddy waters of the lower Confederacy, she had to be launched when the river was high enough to float her. Her construction would be completed once she reached Mobile Bay. The ram was 209 feet long, with an unusually wide beam of forty-eight feet, and drew fourteen feet of water. She had been framed with thirteen-inch-square yellow pine timbers, covered first with five-inch-thick pine planks laid horizontally, then four inches of oak laid vertically on top of that. Her stern and sides were shielded by four-inch-thick boilerplate, and her forward with six inches of plate. All the plate was fastened to the wood with one-and-one-half-inch bolts. Tiller chains enabling the river steamer’s power plant to be used were placed in open channels at her stern, exposing them to enemy fire. The most serious defect in this mighty ship was her power plant. Built to power a wooden riverboat, it strained under the weight of the big ram, managing to drive her at a speed of no more than six miles per hour when the Tennessee was fully loaded.

  The ram’s armament consisted of six Brooke rifles. Two had seven-inch bores, and four had 6.4-inch bores. They were powerful and accurate weapons, but of little use until the vessel could be brought into the lower portion of the bay. As protection against enemy rams, the Tennessee’s armor plating was extended into the water for eight feet, at the same downward angle as her casement.

  To get to her destination, the Tennessee had to pass over the Dog River Bar. Even at high tide there was only nine feet of water at the bar, much less than required by the ram’s fourteen-foot draft. Special devices, called “camels” or “caissons,” had to be built to lift the vessel high enough to pass over the bar. These wooden caissons were fitted around the base of the ram to form a temporary undercarriage. Once secured in place, the water in them was pumped out, and they rose higher in the water, raising the ram at the same time. Finally, on May 18, after several failed attempts, the ram was raised as high as possible, then pulled across the bar by a steamer. The Tennessee at long last was in the lower and navigable portion of Mobile Bay.

  Four days later, after the caissons had been removed, and the coal and provisions had been loaded, Admiral Franklin Buchanan raised his flag on the Tennessee. Buchanan, and the ram’s captain, James D. Johnston, had worked hard to get the vessel completed before Farragut launched his expected attack. Buchanan had threatened reluctant workers and slow contractors, conscripted striking laborers and placed them in the charge of naval officers, hounded Richmond for experienced sailors and officers, and been personally responsible for the ram’s completion. Now he would take her to war.

  Born in 1800, Franklin Buchanan had become a midshipman in the United States Navy when he was fifteen years old. A ship’s captain in the Perry expedition to Japan, he had been appointed the first Superintendent of the United States Naval Academy. As secessionist fever swept the South, Captain Buchanan, expecting his home state of Maryland to follow her Southern neighbors, resigned from the navy. When it became apparent that despite widespread sympathy for secession, Maryland would not leave the Union, he attempted to have his resignation withdrawn. Navy Secretary Welles, a man who had little patience for those he considered traitors, refused to allow the resignation to be withdrawn, and made matters worse for Buchanan by having him officially dismissed from the service.

  At first Buchanan tried to remain neutral but found this position impossible. With few options open to him, he enlisted in the Confederate Navy as a captain. Already widely respected as a fighting officer, Buchanan enhanced his reputation when he commanded the rebel ironclad Virginia, formerly the Merrimack, in her first battle against blockading Federal ships at Hampton Roads on March 2, 1862. Seriously wounded in that battle, he was compelled to relinquish command prior to the ironclad’s world-famous battle against the Union ironclad Monitor the following day.

  Known to his former friends throughout the Union navy, including Rear Admiral David Farragut, as “Old Buck,” Buchanan was prepared to defend Mobile against the increasingly powerful enemy fleet standing offshore.

  While Buchanan was preparing the Tenne
ssee to defend Mobile Bay, Farragut spent his time engaged in the monotonous work of blockade duty, with occasional visits to Pensacola and New Orleans. A great amount of his time was devoted to official and unofficial correspondence. His failing eyesight often forced him to rely on another officer to read the letters aloud. Farragut’s physical inactivity took its toll on his body. During this sedentary time, his weight increased to 150 pounds, twenty pounds over his normal weight. In April, he inspected the ships along the Texas coast and found them, like most of his fleet, in need of repairs. With few replacements and such a long coast to guard, few ships could be sent in for repairs at any given time. The condition of many of his ships made him thankful that blockade duty on the Texas coast was less important now that the Mississippi River was in Federal hands.

  When he learned that Buchanan had gotten the Tennessee across the Dog River Bar, Farragut rushed back to his fleet. He expected “Old Buck” to attack the blockaders almost immediately. Buchanan, however, had no intention of rushing out of the bay until he had given his new vessel some trial runs. He was complaining that “Everybody has taken it into their heads that one ship can whip a dozen and if the trial is not made, we who are in her are damned for life, consequently the trial must be made. So goes the world.”

  The Tennessee’s first real test came on May 22, when she prepared to put out to sea. Rough weather grounded her before she even left the bay. In the process of grounding, she took in so much water that her boilers were extinguished. After inspecting his flagship, Buchanan realized that the ram would never survive the rough seas of the Gulf, much less a pounding by enemy ships on the open seas. This most aggressive senior officer of the Confederate Navy resigned himself to fighting a defensive action against Farragut’s fleet when the latter decided it was time to attack. His little squadron took up position just inside the bay, near Fort Morgan. In addition to the hulking ram, Buchanan had three wooden gunboats, the Gaines, the Morgan, and the Selma. A fourth vessel, the Baltic, was an old, worm-eaten steamer with a thin covering of iron plate. The hope of Confederate officials in Richmond, to build a fleet of powerful ironclads that would break the Mobile blockade and recover New Orleans from enemy occupation, had floundered and died on the rivers of the South. More than sixteen ironclads were in various stages of construction, but owing to a multitude of problems, including a shortage of iron plate, and Sherman’s destruction of the railroads, only one ever saw duty, and that one was incapable of leaving the protective waters of Mobile Bay. She would now serve as a ram and a slow-moving floating battery to attack enemy ships as they entered the bay.

  The dreariness of blockade duty dragged on for Farragut. At one point he wrote, “I am tired of watching Buchanan and Page, and wish from the bottom of my heart that Buck would come out and try his hand upon us.” The Page he refers to was Brigadier General Richard L. Page, commanding officer of the outer defenses of Mobile Bay, with headquarters at Fort Morgan.

  Farragut kept up a constant barrage of requests for ironclads and troops. His plan was as simple as the one he had successfully used in the lower Mississippi. He would force his way past the forts guarding the main channel, and use the ironclads against the rebel fleet inside the bay, which he expected to contain several ironclad rams similar to Tennessee. The troops would attack the forts from the rear, effectively cutting them off from supplies and reinforcements. Once totally isolated, they would have to surrender eventually, just as had Forts St. Philip and Jackson on the Mississippi River. But the requests for more ironclads remained unfulfilled.

  Early in the evening of May 24, 1864, Farragut and Drayton took the gunboat Metacomet in close to Fort Morgan, to get a better look at the Confederate fleet. In addition to the ram and her consorts, they watched a group of small boats busily laying torpedoes in the main channel. Two types of torpedoes, which today would be called mines, were then in use by the Confederates at Mobile Bay. The more popular of the two was the Fretwell-Singer. Invented by two Texans, Dr. J. R. Fretwell, and gunsmith E. C. Singer, a cousin of the sewing machine manufacturer, this deadly “infernal machine” was a floating tin cone that was two-thirds full of powder. Its firing mechanism was a spring-loaded iron plunger that, when released through contact with a ship’s hull, smashed a percussion cap, setting off the explosion. Such torpedoes were usually anchored or tied just below the surface of the water to make them as invisible as possible. The second type, the Rains Keg, was a wooden beer keg with conelike tin ends that was also set off by contact with a ship.

  Closer inspection of the obstructions the rebel forces had installed in the gap between Fort Morgan and Fort Gaines revealed how dangerous attempting to enter the bay would be for the Federal fleet. A long finger of sand reached out from Dauphin Island, on which Fort Gaines stood, toward the fort at Mobile Point. Where this sand diminished to a level that might permit a ship to pass, a series of pilings had been installed, which acted as an additional block to passage. From the far edge of the pilings to the start of the shipping channel, three lines of torpedoes were anchored. Each line was staggered behind the one in front of it, in order to prevent a boat of any size from squeezing through. Left open was the narrow channel, through which pilots would carefully bring in blockade runners. The entire channel was covered by the guns of Fort Morgan.

  When word reached Washington that Buchanan had finally gotten his large ram into the Bay and might attack the blockade fleet at any time, Welles suddenly found the ironclads that Farragut had been requesting. The monitor Manhattan was instructed to leave New York and proceed “with all possible dispatch” to Mobile Bay. Rear Admiral Porter was instructed to send two of his new ironclads to the Gulf to join Farragut. Porter was reluctant to do so, possibly because he had suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the rebels during the Red River campaign, and did not want his adopted brother to continue to outshine him. Once again, he had gotten his boats stuck up a river and had to be rescued by army engineers. Ignoring Porter’s claims that the two vessels he wanted sent to Farragut could not survive in the waters of the Gulf, Welles ordered Porter in no uncertain terms to send the Chickasaw and the Winnebago to Mobile immediately. They left Mound City, Illinois, on June 30.

  Then, in March, President Lincoln took a step that drastically improved Farragut’s ability to carry out his plan for Mobile Bay: He promoted Army General-in-Chief Henry W. Halleck to the newly created post of army chief of staff, replacing the brilliant but overly cautious Halleck with one of his most successful field commanders, Ulysses S. Grant. As supreme army commander, Grant could now approve a plan that would permit army troops to support Farragut’s fleet against Mobile Bay, something he had wanted to do even before Vicksburg fell to him. Grant’s attempts to win Washington’s support for a campaign against Mobile had repeatedly failed, as he later documented in his memoirs.

  In early June, General Sherman asked Major General Edward R. S. Canby, who had replaced General Banks as district commander, to prepare an attack against Mobile in coordination with the naval forces there. Suddenly, things were looking up for Farragut. The ironclads and the army troops he had requested were on their way.

  On June 17, Canby visited the Hartford off Mobile Bay. The general and the admiral laid plans for a combined army-navy attack on the bay forts. On July 5, Farragut celebrated his sixty-third birthday. The weariness of waiting for something to happen must have made him begin to feel his age, for the following day he wrote his wife, “Would to God this war was over that I could but spend in peace with you all the few remaining years of my life… .”

  Two days later, the ironclad Manhattan arrived at Pensacola. In need of repairs, she had been towed south by a steamer. No matter what her condition, Farragut was glad of her arrival and anxious to get her off Mobile along with his other ships. The same day, July 8, Major General Canby returned. This time, he was accompanied by Major General Gordon Granger, who was to command the troops Canby was sending to aid Farragut. Canby also brought news that two monitors had arrived at New
Orleans from Porter’s squadron and would shortly join the fleet. Soon after, Farragut learned that a fourth monitor, Tecumseh, was heading south along the Atlantic coast, destined for Mobile Bay.

  As things began to warm up, Farragut regained the energy the long wait had sapped from him. On July 12, he issued his General Order No. 10. The admiral’s own excitement about the coming battle is evident in the tone of this order. “Strip your vessels for the conflict. Send down all your superfluous spars and rigging. Trice up or remove the whiskers. Put up the splinter nets on the starboard side, and barricade the wheel and steersmen with sails and hammocks. Lay chains or sandbags on the deck over the machinery, to resist plunging fire. Hang the sheet chains over the side, or make other arrangements for security (from ramming and shelling) that your ingenuity may suggest.”

  In typical Farragut fashion, leaving nothing to chance, the order detailed how the forts would be run. The ships would pass beneath the guns of Fort Morgan in pairs. The Hartford, with the gunboat Metacomet lashed to her port side, would lead the way. The ships were to maintain a distance between themselves close enough to form a tight line, but far enough to allow the stem guns of the forward ship and the bow chase guns of the next ship to fire without danger of hitting each other. The four monitors were to form a second line, in single file, and run past the fort on the starboard side of the fleet between the large ships and the fort itself. The lead monitor would be the large Tecumseh, armed with two fifteen-inch guns in her single revolving turret.