The Battle of Mobile Bay was fought on 5 August 1864.3 Rear Admiral David Farragut led a Union fleet of wooden warships and ironclad monitors into the bay past the guns of Fort Morgan. When the monitor USS Tecumseh struck a mine and sank within minutes, the line faltered, but Farragut pressed on through the minefield, with words traditionally given as "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!" Inside the bay his ships overwhelmed the Confederate squadron, and the ironclad CSS Tennessee surrendered after a long fight. The forts fell over the following weeks, closing Mobile to blockade runners.
On a summer morning in 1864 a line of Union warships steamed toward the narrow entrance of Mobile Bay. Ahead lay the guns of Fort Morgan, a field of hidden mines and a powerful Confederate ironclad. At the head of the fleet, lashed into the rigging of his flagship, stood Rear Admiral David Farragut.
Part of The greatest battles of the Civil War · Before: The Siege of Petersburg · Next: Sherman's March to the Sea
The last Gulf port
By 1864 Mobile, Alabama, was the last important Confederate port on the Gulf of Mexico east of the Mississippi, a haven for blockade runners. Its bay was guarded by Forts Morgan, Gaines and Powell, by lines of mines, then called torpedoes, and by a small squadron under Admiral Franklin Buchanan built around the ironclad CSS Tennessee.
Into the channel
On the morning of 5 August Farragut sent his fleet in, four ironclad monitors leading and his wooden ships lashed together in pairs, his flagship USS Hartford among them. To see over the smoke he climbed into the rigging, and a sailor tied him there so that he would not fall4 if wounded.
Damn the torpedoes
As the fleet passed Fort Morgan, the monitor USS Tecumseh struck a mine and sank within minutes, taking more than ninety of her crew with her2. The leading wooden ship, USS Brooklyn, stopped and began to back4, throwing the line into confusion under the fort's guns. Farragut ordered the Hartford forward, through the minefield. His words are traditionally given as "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!", although accounts of what he actually said vary4. The fleet followed, and it is said that the crews heard mines scrape against the hulls without exploding.
The Tennessee alone
Inside the bay the Union ships captured or drove off the Confederate gunboats. Then the Tennessee came out alone to fight the whole fleet. Rammed repeatedly and battered by heavy guns, her steering chains shot away and Buchanan wounded2, she surrendered after more than an hour. Fort Powell was abandoned that night, Fort Gaines surrendered on 8 August1, and Fort Morgan, after a siege by army troops under Gordon Granger, on 23 August.
Why Mobile Bay mattered
The city of Mobile itself held out until 1865, but its bay was closed to blockade runners. Coming shortly before the fall of Atlanta, the victory lifted Northern morale and helped Abraham Lincoln win re-election that November. Farragut, already the navy's first rear admiral, was made its first vice admiral at the end of 18645, and his order became one of the most quoted lines in American history.