Union Fleet Runs Past the Forts

After passing the last battery, and thinking we were clear, I looked back for some of our vessels, and my heart jumped up into my mouth when I found I could not see a single one.”

Continuing Farragut Captures New Orleans,
our selection from Admiral Farragut by Alfred Thayer Mahan published in 1892. The selection is presented in thirteen easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in Farragut Captures New Orleans.

Time: April 25 to May 1, 1862
Place: Mouth of the Mississippi River

Except for the annoyance of the bombs, the gunners of the forts had it much their own way until the broadsides of the Pensacola, which showed eleven heavy guns on either side, drew up abreast of them. “The Cayuga received the first fire,” writes Perkins, “and the air was filled with shells and explosives which almost blinded me as I stood on the forecastle trying to see my way, for I had never been up the river before. I soon saw that the guns of the forts were all aimed for midstream, so I steered close under the walls of Fort St. Philip; and although our masts and rigging got badly shot through our hull was but little damaged.” Small as she was –- five hundred tons — and with the scanty top hamper of a schooner, the Cayuga was struck forty-two times, below and aloft.

“After passing the last battery,” continues Perkins, “and thinking we were clear, I looked back for some of our vessels, and my heart jumped up into my mouth when I found I could not see a single one. I thought they all must have been sunk by the forts.” This seeming desertion was due to the fact that the heavy ships–the Pensacola, Mississippi, and Oneida–had been detained by the resolute manner in which the first stopped to engage Fort St. Philip. Stopping to fire, then moving slowly, then stopping again, the reiterated broadsides of this big ship, delivered at such close range that the combatants on either side exchanged oaths and jeers of defiance, beat down the fire of the exposed barbette batteries, and gave an admirable opportunity for slipping by to the light vessels, which brought up the rear of the column and were wholly unfit to contend with the forts. The Mississippi and Oneida keeping close behind the Pensacola and refusing to pass her, the Cayuga was thus separated from all her followers.

The isolation of the Cayuga was therefore caused by her anomalous position at the head of the column, a post proper only to a heavy ship. It was impossible for her petty battery of two guns to pause before the numerous pieces of the enemy; it was equally impossible for the powerful vessels following her to hasten on, leaving to the mercy of the Confederates the gunboats of the same type that succeeded them in the order. That the Cayuga was thus exposed arose from the amiable desire of the admiral to gratify Bailey’s laudable wish to share in the battle, without compelling an officer of the same grade, and junior only in number, to accept a superior on his own quarter-deck in the day of battle, when the harvest of distinction is expected to repay the patient sowing of preparation. The commander of the Cayuga, who was only a lieutenant, had reconciled these conflicting claims by volunteering to carry Bailey’s divisional flag. As there is no reason to suppose that Farragut deliberately intended to offer the gunboat up as a forlorn hope by drawing the first fire of the enemy, always the most deadly, and thus saving the more important vessels, the disposition of her constitutes the only serious fault in his tactical arrangements on this occasion — a fault attributable not to his judgment, but to one of those concessions to human feelings which circumstances at times extort from all men. His first intention, an advance in two columns, the heavy ships leading and closely engaging the forts with grape and canister, while the two-gun vessels slipped through between the columns, met the tactical demands of the proposed operation. The decision to abandon this order in favor of one long, thin line, because of the narrowness of the opening, can not be challenged. This formation was distinctly weaker and more liable to straggling, but nothing could be so bad as backing, collision, or stoppage at the obstructions. In such an attack, however, as in all of Farragut’s battles, it seems eminently fitting that the commander of the column should lead. The occasion is one for pilotage and example; and inasmuch as the divisional commander can not control, except by example, any ship besides the one on board which he himself is, that ship should be the most powerful in his command. These conclusions may hereafter be modified by conditions of submarine warfare, though even under them it seems likely that in forcing passage into a harbor the van ship should carry the flag of the officer commanding the leading division; but under the circumstances of Farragut’s day they may be accepted as representing his own convictions, first formed by the careful deliberation of a man with a genius for war, and afterward continually confirmed by his ever-ripening experience.

Left thus unsupported by the logical results of her false position, the Cayuga found herself exposed to an even greater danger than she had already run from the guns of the stationary works. “Looking ahead,” says Perkins’s letter, already quoted, “I saw eleven of the enemy’s gunboats coming down upon us, and it seemed as if we were ‘gone’ sure.” The vessels thus dimly seen in the darkness of the night were a heterogeneous, disorganized body, concerning which, however, very imperfect and very exaggerated particulars had reached the United States fleet. They were freely spoken of as ironclad gunboats and ironclad rams, and the Confederates had done all in their power to increase the moral effect which was attendant upon these names, then new to maritime warfare. None of them had been built with any view to war. Three only were sea-going, with the light scantling appropriate to their calling as vessels for freight and passenger traffic. Another had been a large twin-screw tugboat that began her career in Boston, and thence, shortly before the war, had been sent to the Mississippi. After the outbreak of hostilities she had been covered with an arched roof and three-quarter-inch iron; a nine-inch gun, capable only of firing directly ahead, had been mounted in her bows, and, thus equipped, she passed into notoriety as the ram Manassas. With the miserable speed of six knots, to which, however, the current of the river gave a very important addition, and with a protection scarcely stronger than the buckram armor of the stage, the Manassas, by her uncanny appearance and by the persistent trumpeting of the enemy, had obtained a very formidable reputation with the United States officers, who could get no reliable information about her.

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