Aug 5 1864 Battle of Mobile Bay

[J. Dillon]

Union Admiral David Farragut leads his flotilla through the Confederate defenses at Mobile, Alabama, to seal one of the last major Southern ports. The fall of Mobile Bay was a huge blow to the Confederacy, and the victory was the first in a series of successes that secured the reelection of Abraham Lincoln in 1864.
Mobile became the major Confederate port on the Gulf of Mexico after the fall of New Orleans, Louisiana, in April 1862. With blockade runners carrying critical supplies from Havana, Cuba, into Mobile, Union General Ulysses S. Grant made the capture of the port a top priority after assuming command of all Federal forces in early 1864.
Opposing Farragut's force of 17 warships was a Rebel squadron of only four ships; but it included the C.S.S. Tennessee, said to be the most powerful ironclad afloat. Farragut also had to contend with two powerful Confederate batteries inside of Forts Morgan and Gaines. On the morning of August 5, Farragut's force steamed into the mouth of Mobile Bay in two columns led by four ironclads and met a devastating fire that immediately sank one of Farragut's iron-hulled single-turret monitors, the U.S.S. Tecumseh. The rest of the fleet fell into confusion but Farragut rallied them with the words, "Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead!" Although the authenticity of the quote is questionable, it nevertheless became one of the most famous in history.
The Yankee fleet quickly knocked out the smaller Confederate ships, but the Tennessee fought a valiant battle against overwhelming odds before it sustained heavy damage and surrendered. The Union laid siege to Forts Morgan and Gaines, and both were captured within two weeks. Confederate forces remained in control of the city of Mobile, but the port was no longer available to blockade runners.
The Battle of Mobile Bay lifted the morale of the North. With Grant stalled at Petersburg, Virginia, and General William T. Sherman unable to capture Atlanta, the capture of the bay became the first in a series of Union victories that stretched to the fall election.

[Gerarddm]

As the admiral says at the end of The Bridges at Toko-Ri, where do we get such men?

[paladin]

Damned Yankee Carpetbaggers.

[J. Dillon]

"

As the admiral says at the end of The Bridges at Toko-Ri, where do we get such men? "

Somewhere in that movie the USS Oriskany CV 34, conducted a ship maneuver where some ( piston aircraft)aircraft were spotted on the fwd. and aft of the flight deck facing in opposite directions. They rev ed up and helped the ship execute a tight turn in congested waters.

While aboard my ship the USS Coral Sea CV 43,executed the same technique in the sea of Marmara Istanbul Turkey, starting from an anchored position. The current is quite strong and this maneuver was the only way to get the ship safely underway.

I remember the ships engines shaking up the fan tail as two sets of ships screws on either side were going in opposite directions.

JD

[bamamick]

As I recall, Admiral Farragut was a southerner.

Mobile was bypassed as a target by the Federals for a long time because of the incredible earthworks surrounding the city, sort of what Petersburg had around it, except perhaps on a larger scale. The funny thing was the south only had enough troops to man something like one guy for every hundred feet of trench, so it probably would have been a lot easier fight than what the north had in mind. Braxton Bragg and a guy named Dabney Maury were responsible for creating these defenses, which probably saved the city itself from being taken by force during the war.

The defenses across the mouth of the bay were pilings driven into the mud with booms across them (hey, sort of like we've got right now to keep the oil out), and then two masonry forts on either point straddling the channel (Forts Morgan and Gaines). There was another fort in the middle of the Mississippi Sound at Grant's Pass, but I can't recall it's name. The masonry forts were built after the War of 1812 as coastal defenses against ships firing solid shot. When the north landed soldiers on the west end of Dauphin Island and marched them inward, the commander at Fort Gaines (with a small garrison and all it's big guns facing outwards to sea) surrendered immediately.

The guy in charge at Fort Morgan refused to surrender and endured a battering for several days that completely reduced the fort to dust and rubble. Incredible, absolutely. He was then able to embark his command in boats from Navy Point (on the bay side), even in the face of Union cavalry from Fort Pickens, and escape to Spanish Fort.

The guy in command in the battery at Grant's Pass was from Massachusetts, a merchant who had married a girl from Alabama and stayed in the south. By all reports he fought admirably until the Union forced the mouth of the bay by capturing the ridiculous Tennessee (it was said that it took the width of the bay to turn her, and if there was any current at all you pretty much couldn't do it) and running off the Confederate gunboats. Once that happened, the poor guy (his name was Thomas) had no choice but to spike his guns, blow up his munitions and march his command, intact, back to Mobile to report.

Both Thomas and the guy at Fort Gaines were arrested and faced courts-martial. The commander at Fort Gaines was broken. Thomas was acquitted and eventually rose to command the 21st Alabama with the rank of Lt. Colonel at the end of the war.

For a long time after the Battle of Mobile Bay the Union was content to hold the mouth of the bay and not move towards Mobile, simply because it would cost so many lives to take the city, and isolated as it was, it wasn't really worth it. Eventually, in early April of 1865, they moved north and fought for and took Spanish Fort and then Blakely, finally finishing off the remnants of the defenders in Citronelle some time after General Lee had surrendered at Appomatox Courthouse. The city of Mobile was surrendered without a fight, and the few soldiers who were left and able escaped west to hook up with General Kirby Smith's command.

One final note on Mobile and the Civil War, a Union ammunition dump at a place called Magazine Point, the location of a couple of huge paper mills today, caught fire and blew up shortly after the end of the war, doing more damage to the city than was ever done during the war. iirc it was never discovered what caused the explosion.

The two masonry forts at the mouth of Mobile Bay were both rebuilt after the war for the coastal defense system. Around the time of the Spanish American war Fort Morgan was beefed up considerably, and that fort was manned by the military, I believe, into the Second World War. Both forts are museums now and have some really cool photographs and artifacts on display.

My grandfather on my mother's side was born inside of Fort Morgan during a hurricane.

Mickey Lake