New Orleans was vital to control of the Mississippi River, and Union Flag Officer David Glasgow Farragut was determined to capture it. But the approaches to the city were guarded by a Confederate flotilla and by a pair of formidable forts mounting 100 guns. Farragut's attacking force consisted of 21 schooners that had been converted into mortar boats, a squadron of warships and gunboats led by Farragut himself in the steam sloop Hartford, and a fleet of transports carrying 13,000 soldiers.
On 18 April 1862, with treetops tied to their mastheads as camouflage, the mortar boats were towed into position behind a screen of trees just below the Confederate forts where they commenced a barrage of 13-inch shells on the rebel strongholds. But the forts held out, and after five days Farragut decided to wait no longer. With anchor chains hung over the sides of his ships as a form of makeshift armor, and sacks filled with sand, coal, and ashes packed around their vulnerable machinery, Farragut's 17 ships got under way at 0200 on 24 April and headed up river. As the mortar boats kept a steady stream of shells pouring into the forts, the first of Farragut's ships-the gunboat Cayuga-ran past the Rebel batteries. Although hit 42 times, her crew had lain flat on the deck, and only six men were slightly wounded.
Meanwhile, the Hartford was less fortunate. She grounded on a shoal under the guns of one of the forts, and a fire raft set her port side ablaze. Bartholomew Diggins, a Hartford Sailor, painted a vivid picture of the scene on the flagship:
Misfortunes seemed to crowd the old ship and it looked that only a miracle could save her. We were hard aground, the engines backing with all their power, and could not relieve her, in flames from water to masthead from the fire raft, the cabin ablaze from an exploded shell, and the ship the center of a terrible storm of shot and shell, the crew in a death struggle with the flames, heat and smoke, the latter at times so thick that we were compelled to grope our way while connecting the hose.
Firing broadsides all the while, the Hartford's crew eventually subdued the flames and finally freed the ship from the mud. A lesser man might have seen this as a reprieve and abandoned the hazardous mission, but Farragut pressed on. "The passing of the forts . . . was one of the most awful sights and events I ever saw or expect to experience," he later reported. "The smoke was so dense that it was only now and then you could see anything but the flash of the cannon and the fireships."
Despite the heavy fire from the forts and numerous attacks by Confederate ships, the Union force successfully passed the forts and continued upriver to New Orleans, where Farragut dropped anchor on the morning of 25 April 1862 and demanded the surrender of the city. Even though the Federal troops had not yet arrived, the high tide caused the powerful Union naval force to look down on the city, and the civil authorities were sufficiently intimidated to surrender. The North was jubilant at the capture of the busiest port in the South, and three months later, when Congress established the grade of rear admiral, David Farragut was the first to be promoted to the new rank.