The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 3: Red River to Appomattox (99 page)

Buchanan had succeeded in his design to cross the Union T; with
the result that when Farragut ended his sprint across the mine field he found the
Tennessee
and the three rebel gunboats drawn up to receive him in line ahead, presenting their broadsides to the approaching column, whose return fire was limited to the vessels in the lead, and even these could bring only their bow guns into play.
Hartford’s
was promptly knocked out by a shot from
Selma
, smallest of the three, and this was followed by another that passed through the chain armor on the flagship’s starboard bow, killing ten men, wounding five, and hurling bodies, or parts of bodies, aft and onto the decks of the
Metacomet
, lashed alongside. Farragut kept coming, with
Brooklyn
and
Richmond
close astern, and managed to avoid an attempt by Buchanan to ram and sink him, meantime bringing his big Dahlgrens to bear on the gunboats, one of which then retired lamely toward Fort Morgan, taking water through a hole punched in her hull. This was the
Gaines;
she was out of the fight, and presently so were the others,
Morgan
and
Selma;
for
Hartford
and
Richmond
cast off their consorts to engage them and they fled.
Metacomet
led the chase, yawing twice to fire her bow gun, but then stopped firing to concentrate on speed. While
Morgan
made it to safety under the lee of Mobile Point,
Selma
kept running eastward across the shallows beyond the channel, still pursued despite the
Metacomet’s
deeper draft. Out on the bow of the northern vessel, a leadsman was already calling one foot less than the ship drew, but her captain, feeling the soft ooze of the bottom under her keel, refused to abandon the chase. “Call the man in,” he told his exec. “He is only intimidating me with his soundings.”

Persistence paid. Overtaken,
Selma
lost eight killed and seven wounded before she hauled down her flag. Westward, the
Gaines
burned briskly, set afire by her crew, who escaped in boats as she sank in shallow water. Only
Morgan
survived, anchored under the frown of the fort’s guns to wait for nightfall, when she would steal around the margin of the bay to gain the greater safety of Mobile, inside Dog River Bar.

Left to fight alone, Buchanan steamed after the
Hartford
for a time, still hoping to ram and sink her, despite the agility she had shown in avoiding his first attempt, but soon perceived that her speed made the chase a waste of effort; whereupon he turned back and made for the other half-dozen sloops, advancing in closer order.
Tennessee
passed down the line of high-walled wooden men-of-war, mauling and being mauled. Two shots went through and through the
Brooklyn
, increasing her toll of killed and wounded to 54, but another pair flew high to miss the
Richmond
. Both ships delivered point-blank broadsides that had no effect whatever on the armored vessel as she bore down on
Lackawanna
, next in line, and
Monongahela
, which she struck a glancing blow, then swung round to send two shells crashing into the
Ossipee
. That left
Oneida
, whose bad luck now turned good, at least for the moment.
Aboard the ram, defective primers spared the crippled ship a pounding; then one gun fired a delayed shot that cost the northern skipper an arm and the use of his 11-inch after pivot, which was raked.
Tennessee
turned hard aport in time to meet the three surviving monitors, just arriving, and exchanged volleys in passing that did no harm on either side. Then she proceeded to Fort Morgan and pulled up, out of range on the far side of the channel.

Farragut dropped anchor four miles inside the bay, and the rest of the blue flotilla, wood and iron, steamed up to join him, their crews already at work clearing away debris and swabbing the blood from decks, while belowdecks surgeons continued to ply their scalpels and cooks got busy in the galleys. It was 8.35; he was only a bit over half an hour behind schedule on last night’s promise to “pipe all hands to breakfast in Mobile Bay” by 8 o’clock. All the same, despite the general elation at having completed another spectacular run past formidable works, rivaling those below New Orleans and at Vicksburg and Port Hudson, there was also a tempering sorrow over the loss of the
Tecumseh
and considerable apprehension, as well, from the fact that the murderous rebel iron ram was still afloat across the way.

Drayton promptly expressed this reservation to the admiral, who by now had come down from the flagship’s rigging and stood on the poop. “What we have done has been well done, sir,” he told him. “But it all counts for nothing so long as the
Tennessee
is there under the guns of Morgan.” Farragut nodded. “I know it,” he said, “and as soon as the people have had their breakfasts I am going for her.”

As it turned out, there was no need for that, and no time for breakfast. At 8.50, fifteen minutes after
Hartford
anchored, there was a startled cry from aloft. “The ram is coming!” So she was, and presently those on deck saw her steaming directly for the fleet, apparently too impatient to wait for a fight in which she would have the help of the guns ashore. Farragut prepared for battle, remarking as he did so: “I did not think Old Buck was such a fool.”

Fool or not, throughout the pause Buchanan had been unwilling to admit the fight was over, whatever the odds and no matter how far he had to go from Fort Morgan to renew it. Instrumental in the founding of the academy at Annapolis, he had served as its first superintendent and thought too highly of naval tradition to accept even tacit defeat while his ship remained in any condition to engage the enemy. “If he won’t visit me, I will have to visit him,” his adversary had remarked three weeks ago, and Buchanan felt much the same about the matter now as he gazed across three miles of water at the Yankee warships riding at anchor in the bay —
his
bay — quite as if there was no longer any question of their right to be there. Gazing, he drew the corners of his mouth down in a frown of disapproval, then turned to the
Tennessee’s
captain. “Follow them up, Johnston. We can’t let them off that
way.” With that, the ram started forward: one six-gun vessel against a total of seventeen, three of them wearing armor heavier than her own, mounting 157 guns, practically all of them larger than any weapon in her casemate. That Buchanan was in no mood for advice was demonstrated, however, when one of his officers tried to call his attention to the odds. “Now I am in the humor, I will have it out,” he said, and that was that. The ram continued on her way.

The monitors having proved unwieldy, Farragut’s main reliance was on his wooden sloops, particularly the
Monongahela
and the
Lackawanna
, which were equipped with iron prows for ramming. Their orders were to run the ram down, while the others pitched in to do her whatever damage they could manage with their guns. Accordingly, when the
Tennessee
came within range about 9.20, making hard for the flagship,
Monongahela
moved ahead at full speed and struck her amidships, a heavy blow that had no effect at all on the rebel vessel but cost the sloop her iron beak, torn off along with her cutwater.
Lackawanna
rammed in turn, with the result that an eight-foot section of her stem was crushed above and below the waterline.
Tennessee
lurched but held her course, and the two flagships collided nearly head on. “The port bow of the
Hartford
met the port bow of the ram,” an officer aboard the Federal vessel later wrote, “and the ships grated against each other as they passed. The
Hartford
poured her whole port broadside against the ram, but the solid shot merely dented the side and bounded into the air. The ram tried to return the salute, but owing to defective primers only one gun was discharged. This sent a shell through the berth-deck, killing five men and wounding eight. The muzzle of the gun was so close to the
Hartford
that the powder blackened her side.”

When the two ships parted Farragut jumped to the port quarter rail and held to the mizzen rigging while he leaned out to assess the damage, which was by no means as great as he had feared. Finding the perch to his liking he remained there, lashed to the rigging by friendly hands for the second time that day, and called for Drayton to give the
Tennessee
another thump as soon as possible. As the
Hartford
came about, however, she was struck on the starboard flank by the
Lackawanna
, which was also trying to get in position, crushing her planking on that side and upsetting one of the Dahlgrens. “Save the admiral! Save the admiral!” the cry went up, for it was thought at first that the flagship was sinking, so great was the confusion on her decks. Farragut untied himself, leaped down, and crossed to the starboard mizzen rigging, where he again leaned out to inspect the damage, which though severe did not extend to within two feet of the water. Again he ordered full speed ahead, only to find the
Lakawanna
once more looming on his starboard quarter. At this, one witness later said, “the admiral became a trifle excited.” Forgetting that he had given the offending ship instructions
to lead the ram attack, he turned to the communications officer on the bridge.

“Can you say ‘For God’s sake’ by signal?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then say to the
Lackawanna, ‘F
or God’s sake, get out of our way and anchor.’ ”

By now the ironclad had become the target for every ship that could get in position to give her a shot or a shove, including the double-turreted
Chickasaw
, which “hung close under our stern,” the
Tennessee’s
pilot afterwards declared, “firing the two 11-inch guns in her forward turret like pocket pistols.” Such punishment began to tell. Her flagstaff went and then her stack, giving the ram what one attacker called “a particularly shorn, stubby look” and greatly reducing the draft to her fires. Her steam went down, and then, as a sort of climax to her disablement, the monitor hard astern succeeded in cutting her rudder chain, exposed on the afterdeck, so that she would no longer mind her helm. Still she kept up the fight, exploiting her one advantage, which was that she could fire in any direction, surrounded as she was, without fear of hitting a friend or missing a foe. Presently, though, this too was reduced by shots that jammed half of her gunport shutters against the shield, thereby removing them from use. When this happened to the stern port, Buchanan sent for a machinist to unjam it, and while the man was at work on the cramped bolt, an 11-inch shell from the
Chickasaw
exploded against the edge of the cover just above him. “His remains had to be taken up with a shovel, placed in a bucket, and thrown overboard,” a shipmate would recall. One of the steel splinters that flew inside the casemate struck Buchanan, breaking his left leg below the knee. “Well, Johnston,” he said to the
Tennessee’s
captain as he was taken up to be carried down to the berth deck, “they’ve got me. You’ll have to look out for her now. This is your fight, you know.”

Johnston did what he could to sustain the contest with the rudderless, nearly steamless vessel, blind in most of her ports and taking heavy-caliber punches from two big sloops on each quarter and the monitor astern. Finally he went below and reported the situation to Buchanan. “Do the best you can, sir,” the admiral told him, teeth gritted against the pain from the compound fracture of his leg, “and when all is done, surrender.” Returning topside, the Alabamian found the battle going even worse. Unable to maneuver, the ram could not bring a single gun to bear on her tormentors; moreover, Johnston afterwards reported, “Shots were fairly raining upon the after end of the shield, which was now so thoroughly shattered that in a few moments it would have fallen and exposed the gun deck to a raking fire of shell and grape.” He lowered the
Tennessee’s
ensign, in token of her capitulation, and when this did not slacken the encircling fire — it had been shot down
before, then raised again on the handle of a rammer staff poked through the overhead grille of the smoky casemate — “I then decided, although with an almost bursting heart, to hoist the white flag.”

At 10 o’clock the firing stopped, and presently Farragut sent an officer to demand the wounded admiral’s sword, which then was handed over.
Tennessee’s
loss of two men killed and nine wounded brought the Confederate total for all four ships to 12 killed and 20 wounded. Union losses were 172 killed, more than half in the
Tecumseh
, and 170 wounded. Their respective totals, 32 and 342, were thus about in ratio of the strength of the two fleets, though in addition 243 rebel sailors were captured aboard
Selma
and the ironclad.

“The Almighty has smiled upon me once more. I am in Mobile Bay,” Farragut wrote his wife that night, adding: “It was a hard fight, but Buck met his fate manfully. After we passed the forts, he came up in the ram to attack me. I made at him and ran him down, making all the others do the same. We butted and shot at him until he surrendered.”

Westward across the bay, as he wrote, there was a burst of flame and a loud explosion off Cedar Point. The garrison of Fort Powell, taken under bombardment from the rear that afternoon by one of the big-gunned monitors at a range of 400 yards, had evacuated the place under cover of darkness and set a slow match to the magazine. Next morning the fleet dropped down and began shelling the eastern end of Dauphin Island, where Fort Gaines was under pressure from the landward side by Granger and his soldiers. This continued past nightfall, and the fort’s commander asked for terms the following day, August 7. Told they were unconditional, he accepted and promptly surrendered his 818 men, together with all guns and stores. That left Fort Morgan; a much tougher proposition, as it turned out.

While the troops were being taken aboard transports for the shift to Mobile Point and a similar rear approach to the fortifications there, Farragut submitted under a flag of truce a note signed by himself and Granger, demanding the unconditional surrender of Fort Morgan “to prevent the unnecessary sacrifice of human life which must follow the opening of our batteries.” The reply was brief and negative. “Sirs: I am prepared to sacrifice life, and will only surrender when I have no means of defense.… Respectfully, etc. R. L.
Page
, Brigadier General.”