Was Admiral David Glasgow Farragut’s resoundingly brash and now legendary order prelude to the expert execution of a flawless plan of battle, culminating in a stunning victory for Union arms exactly 130 years ago in the Civil War? From the mystique and the tradition surviving for posterity, one would conclude so. It is history, right?
Right. But historians from Herodotus on have suffered the need to preserve only the essential. Which is to say recording history requires the suppression—or at least the omission—of a wealth of fascinating detail.
Anyone who has tasted combat has found grim irony, even humor, in some aspects of armed conflict. Most frequently it is more clearly visible in retrospect, especially when contemplated by a participant. Military theorist Karl von Clausewitz’s “fog of war” contains a high percentage of gun smoke, which the black powder serving Civil War ordnance produced in great quantities, and never more so than in the August 1864 Battle of Mobile Bay. But when Farragut climbed the shrouds of his flagship, the Hartford, over the gun smoke, what did he see?
Ken Burns’s magnificent PBS television series, “The Civil War,” made effective use of still photographs from the era, but neither that production nor Francis T. Miller’s exhaustive ten-volume Photographic History of the Civil War, published in 1911 by The Review of Reviews, had a single photo with even a glimpse of Mobile Bay. Both devoted space to Farragut’s earlier victory in the Hartford on the Mississippi River at New Orleans, and to that ship in several stages of her long service life. But for Mobile Bay we must rely on the printed historical page: prose, paintings, and the pen-and-ink sketch.
While this and previous articles derived information about the battle from several published books, records, and periodicals, the piece de resistance here was a single sheet of dictation from the memory of a wounded survivor of the great battle, never heretofore in print but guaranteed genuine by his living descendants who have kept it with reverence through the years.
Edmund Horace Stevens, a slight but sturdy New England lad, was judged too young to fight when South Carolina’s Fort Sumter fell to the Confederates in 1861. But when his brother went to war with their Army surgeon father, the underage youngster, five feet, four inches tall, ran away from his home in Skowhegan, Maine, to fib and stretch his way into the Union Navy. At Mobile Bay he was a below-decks medical corpsman. After the war, he graduated from Harvard Medical School, and by the time he dictated his memoir in 1939, he was a venerable Boston surgeon, still practicing at age 93.
Invalided out of the Navy by his wounds after the Battle of Mobile Bay (and probably for fraudulent enlistment) he recovered and left home again. Knowing the Navy would not welcome him back, he contrived to join the Army, where he served unscathed through every major land battle from that time until the surrender of General Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox, Virginia, in April 1865.
Stevens’s Navy adventure began when Farragut’s 18-ship flotilla formed up off Mobile on a hot, sultry day in early August 1864- All the ships depended heavily on the marginally seaworthy craft in which the young doctor was embarked.
On the night of 4 August 1864 we came up from Pensacola on the USS Philippi with 300 tons of ammunition which we discharged on board various ships prepared for battle which started in by daylight 5 August 1864- We discharged ammunition all night without a wink of sleep. After witnessing Farragut pass the fort with his fleet we went below for breakfast.
Here is a classic example of history of the essential, with omission of detail. Farragut’s fleet did not find passing Fort Morgan all that simple. While the Philippi lay off the channel entrance with her weary crew at breakfast, all hell was breaking loose in the channel itself.
To force the passage, Farragut’s plan included lashing his ships together in pairs, the smaller to port. Situating the larger with Fort Morgan’s artillery to starboard allowed the lesser ones to drag away the larger exposed vessels if they incurred serious damage. Where they would have been dragged is unclear, for the channel was narrow and the current swift. More bad news was that Confederate Admiral Franklin Buchanan’s warships—including his flagship, the ironclad Tennessee—lay in waiting behind a field of underwater-moored explosive devices then called torpedoes, a name later reserved only for self-propelled submerged weapons; stationary or floating nautical booby traps in later wars would be called mines. But Farragut was not concerned with lexicography; he had come to fight a battle.
Either from reconnaissance or espionage, Farragut had been apprised that a buoy marked the eastern edge of the torpedo field, and before the firing began he could see his formidable opposition afloat to the west. Even farther west sat Fort Gaines, totally out of range of the Union flotilla’s northerly track. In Farragut’s mandatory course he saw no way to avoid steaming through the accurate short-range fire of Fort Morgan’s heavy guns. A better aspect for the ships of the North—another historical detail never stressed—was that although Farragut’s single-file line of battle did indeed expose the starboard side of all ships to the fort, each vessel’s broadside fire could concentrate on Fort Morgan, as in the maneuver of “crossing the T” that Japanese Admiral Togo used 40 years later against the Russian Fleet at the Battle of Tsushima.
Fort Morgan was, in effect, in the spot that the lead ship would have occupied in a line of battle advancing at a right angle to Admiral Farragut’s column. One disadvantage for the Union ships was the inferior caliber and range of most (but not all) of the shipboard guns, an additional reason for the decision to place the small ships with the larger ones shielding them to starboard. One dividend accrued from this unavoidable course and disposition was the elimination of any threat from far-off Fort Gaines. It was Fort Morgan’s hellfire that opened the action.
Monitors led the Union flotilla as though on parade into the line of fire. The monitor presented a bizarre silhouette with almost no freeboard and one or two cylindrical revolving turrets—pejoratively nicknamed “a cheesebox on a raft”—that appeared from a distance to be almost submerged. Next in line came the wooden ships. The frigate Brooklyn preceded Farragut’s flagship, the Hartford, the “screw sloop” in which he had prevailed on the Mississippi. The rest of his fighting ships took even interval astern. Sleepily breakfasting below in the Philippi outside the harbor, Stevens and the rest of the sore-muscled crew of the ship that had brought up Farragut’s ammunition were mercifully unaware of what was about to happen. The situation began to deteriorate for the Union ships.
As Farragut began to pass the fort, ferocious fire from the fort’s guns commenced as well. At the same time, Admiral Buchanan in the Tennessee must have been surprised when the lead monitor, though apparently not hit, veered suddenly to port into the field of deadly underwater explosives protecting the Confederate flagship.
Whatever the unknown mindset of her captain, the Tecumseh struck a torpedo, capsized, and sank quickly. Of 21 survivors, ten were rescued by a boat rowed by six volunteer seamen led by Acting Ensign Henry Nields, a teenager no older than Stevens. Nields saved them all from annihilation by hoisting his boat’s flag amidst friendly fire from gunners unable to tell friend from foe. However primitive his identification system, he demonstrated clearly that juveniles in Civil War service had no time for delinquency.
As Nields and his rowers were pulling drenched and scared sailors out of the shrapnel-spattered water, the scrambled situation initiated by their sunken monitor continued to develop and expand. The Brooklyn, having stopped engines astern of the stricken Tecumseh, began being swept by the current into the area of explosive peril. Backing down to clear, she encumbered the Hartford. The flagship was suffering heavy damage and a high number of casualties from the intensely concentrated enemy fire. Pushing the Hartford past the Brooklyn, Farragut heard her skipper, Captain James Alden, yell over the din of battle: “heavy line of torpedoes across the channel!”
Did the Admiral interpret “across” to mean “on the other side of?” He knew the location of the buoy marking the field’s edge, which was well to his port side, so perhaps the way ahead lay open. Probably he also knew the sudden fate of the Tecumseh, but had he clearly seen her veer out of the channel? The smoke of battle was, by this time, blinding.
Several paintings of the action depict Farragut standing fearlessly in the shrouds, the better to conn his ship through the smoke. Whether he had weighed the odds against a Tecumseh-like experience and found them in his favor because of the buoy, or whether he really did not give a damn about the torpedoes, we can rely only on the historical tradition of his most notable quote, condemning those lethal engines of war and calling for more steam. No matter what gave rise to his words, his actions richly merit his permanent reputation as an uncommonly valorous war fighter. And no matter what he had in mind to look for, what he saw from the shrouds was the Tennessee plowing all ahead full to ram him.
Ramming was a favored tactic in the era of the ironclad, wooden hulls having been vulnerable below the waterline. Though touted by pilot-house tacticians, the iron ram was not popular with gun crews. Buchanan, possibly confused by the same smoke that limited his adversary’s view, swung the Tennessee away from the Hartford toward the Brooklyn, but missed her, as well as his next ramming target, the Lackawanna. The Tennessee exchanged thunderous but relatively ineffective broadsides with all those she subsequently tried and failed to ram. The Southern situation seemed as fouled up as the Northern. Lumbering down the Union line, Buchanan vigorously engaged each ship in turn, but retired to the protection of Fort Morgan when Union monitors augmented the cannonade against him. It is conceivable, then, that war’s smoky fog flustered Fort Morgan’s cannoneers as much as it did those in the ships, and that not all the hits causing Buchanan’s withdrawal should be credited to Farragut’s force.
The closer the Tennessee came to the fort, the less likely she would have been targeted as a foe. Her prudent disengagement precipitated a second Farragut legend—that the Union commander withdrew for breakfast. He did proceed four miles up the bay to anchor and had all hands piped to morning meal. Having achieved his objective of passing the fort, his intent was surely to assess damage and to decide what to do next. The decision was not delayed long, because Buchanan, extremely unhappy with the outcome of the first phase of the battle, came to his own conclusion first and acted on it.
The end of this phase of the battle apparently misled the Philippi’s commanding officer completely. His ship was too far removed from the fight to permit visual signalling, even if the air had been clear. When the sounds of firing ceased and the smoke began to dissipate, he must have been convinced that his valiant Admiral and the brave flotilla had carried the day and it behooved him, as skipper of an important though inactive vessel of the train, to hasten to the scene of the triumph and offer appropriate congratulations. Stevens recalls what followed breakfast:
Soon after, we heard the beat ‘to quarters.’ Upon reaching the deck we found the ship dressed with all its hunting and headed straight for Fort Morgan. As soon as we were in range of the Fort they opened fire. The Captain at once realized his mistake and in attempting to turn round struck the side of the channel and we were hard aground. Being in easy range of the Fort every shot struck our boat.
Other shots were being fired from Fort Morgan at this time. Buchanan, frustrated and angry, powered the Tennessee up the bay toward the Hartford; Phase II had begun. The Union ships made haste to weigh anchor. The Monongahela and the Lackawanna struggled to move between the Tennessee and the Hartford to shield their flagship, and succeeded to a degree, but in the melee did more damage to their relatively frail wooden hulls than to the enemy. The reason for the gunners’ distaste for ramming is obvious. Besides serving their heavy-caliber pieces, they were also required to snipe at one another through the gunports. Distasteful duty or not, the tough and loyal bluejackets did it. Not content with the effects of musketry, or perhaps out of powder and minie balls, the crew of the Lackawanna hurled at sailors in the Tennessee such fearsome missiles as the “holystones” used by kneeling seamen to sand wooden decks, and a utensil normally employed to minimize the need for sanding: a brass spitoon.
Farragut, boldly up in the shrouds again, tried to turn the tables on Buchanan by pointing the Hartford toward the Tennessee. At this moment, the Lackawanna’s captain committed an unpardonable sin. Striving himself to ram the Tennessee, he rammed his own Admiral’s flagship instead. Historically, this gaffe was not without value, for it evoked Farragut’s second most famous quote; one not as heroically inspiring as the first. He called down from his risky perch to ask his signalman if there were such a signal as, “For God’s sake.” Told that there was (or could be— signalmen are loath to nay say admirals) he sent a message to the Lackawanna: “For God’s sake, get out of the way and anchor!” The gunnery sailors, if not already wounded by small arms fire, must have had their morale injured grievously by this implication that their brave ship was in some way incompetent.
The action of the Lackawanna thereafter is one more omitted detail, but Farragut rallied his other ships, including the ironclad Manhattan, to overwhelm the Tennessee with their heavier armament. The Manhattan’s cannon balls weighed 440 pounds each, and the monitor Chickasaw mounted two 11-inch gun in the forward of her two turrets. Obviously, the Tennessee and Buchanan were the prize targets, and the strategy finally worked for Farragut. A round from the Manhattan broke Buchanan’s leg, leaving Commander J. D. Johnston in command. Exposed rudder chains, the Tennessee’s fatal design fault, were shot away. Johnston chose the responsible alternative of honorable surrender.
What Farragut and Buchanan thought about the bloody engagement they both survived is no doubt recorded elsewhere. It was a Union naval victory, but incomplete. The city of Mobile would not fall to the Northern armies until the following April. As for the nautical principals of the fight, Farragut, uninjured in spite of his voluntary exposure to enemy fire, finished in far better shape than the broken-legged Buchanan; but the young medical attendant in the Philippi came off even worse than the Confederate commander.
The boats were lowered and officers and crew left the ship taking with them the wounded and those severely scalded by the steam. The Fort continued to fire at us after we took to the open boats. We were saved by the rapid outgoing tide and the thick smoke from the battle still going on inside the bay, which obscured us from view.
The hospital ship Tennessee [The Union hospital ship, not Buchanan’s flagship of the same name] and several other small boats were lying outside and our boats were picked up by them. Our boat, the Philippi, was a captured blockade runner which had been converted into a gun boat. Being a very fast boat she was used by Farragut as an inside picket boat at night. During the fire many shot and shell went through the boat which was a side wheeler steamer. One man’s leg was shot off and while attempting to control the hemorrhage a heavy timber struck my leg fracturing the fibula. Having on only a flannel shirt my back was filled with large and small splinters about as thick as they could be put in. Upon reaching the hospital ship Surgeon Atkins found great difficulty in removing my shirt as it was pinned to my back by the splinters. My back was terribly cut and blood was flowing freely from the punctures made by the splinters. The surgeon bathed my back thoroughly with alcohol. These wounds were many weeks in healing and caused more suffering than the fractured leg.”
Dr. Edmund Horace Stevens
Born Jan. 2, 1846
Died March 14, 1939
Whether or not the Philippi’s morning breakfast break was at the same time as Farragut’s is not known. Familiarity with Navy routine would suggest the probability. In any case, a well-fed but sleepless ship’s company felt sure enough of a win by their side to dress ship with flags and banners and steam toward the harbor mouth. All hands, especially the captain, had to have been aghast to find Fort Morgan’s guns firing not in salute, but in anger, and at them and their ship. They would have been equally chagrined had they known that the Philippi’s movements had just added to the chain of events that had devoured the Tecmuseh and would bring down their Admiral’s wrath on the head of another well-intentioned but hapless skipper, Captain G. B. Marchand of the unlucky Lackawanna. Even worse than the Lackawanna’s ramming the flagship was the Philippi’s Captain, Acting Master James T. Seaver, having gone aground, which happened when she turned 180 degrees trying to escape shelling from Fort Morgan. Loss of a ship to enemy fire was pardonable; grounding a ship was a career-ending catastrophe. The state of mind of the unhappy officer, like that of the lost Captain of the Tecumseh, Commander Craven, is unimaginable.
As for Edmund Horace Stevens, the juvenile corpsman in the Philippi, the war went on. He was a brave lad, proved in battle and worthy of the “Red Badge of Courage” pinned to his back by those painful but honorable splinters.