116 THE SAILING-ORDERS. [1862. Some sentences from the sailing-orders addressed to him by the Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, are significant and suggestive. "As you have expressed yourself perfectly satisfied with the force given to you, and as many more powerful vessels will be added before you can commence operations, the Department and the country require of you success. . . . There are other operations of minor importance which will commend themselves to your judgment and skill, but which must not be allowed to interfere with the great object in view, the certain capture of the city of New Orleans. Destroy the armed barriers which these deluded people have raised up against the power of the United States Government, and shoot down those who war against the Union; but cultivate with cordiality the first returning reason which is sure to follow your success. In a single respect Farragut was not satisfied with his fleet. He had no faith in the mortars, and would rather have gone without them; but they had been ordered before he was consulted, and were under the command of his personal friend Porter. Perhaps his distrust of them arose from his knowledge that in 1815 a British fleet had unavailingly thrown a thousand shells into a fort at this very turn of the river where he was now to make the attack. The mortar schooners were to rendezvous first at Key West, and sail then for Ship Island, off Lake Borgne, where the transports were to take the troops and the war-vessels were to meet as soon as possible. 1862.] THE BOMBARDMENT. 117 A considerable portion of March was gone before enough of the fleet had reached the rendezvous to begin operations. The first difficulty was to get into the river. The Eads jetties did not then exist, and the shifting mud-banks made constant soundings necessary for large vessels. The mortar schooners went in by Pass à l'Outre without difficulty; but to get the Brooklyn," Mississippi," and "Pensacola" over the bar at Southwest Pass required immense labor and occupied two or three weeks. The "Mississippi" was dragged over with her keel ploughing a furrow a foot deep in the river bottom, and the "Colorado" could not be taken over at all. 66 The The masts of the mortar schooners were dressed off with bushes, to render them indistinguishable from the trees on shore near the forts. schooners were then towed up to a point within range, and moored where the woods hid them, so that they could not be seen from the forts. Lieutenant F. H. Gerdes, of the Coast Survey, had made a careful map of that part of the river and its banks, and elaborate calculations by which the mortars were to be fired with a computed aim, none of the gunners being able to see what they fired at. They opened fire on April 18th, and kept up the bombardment steadily for six days and nights. Six thousand enormous shells-eight hundred tons of iron-were thrown high into the air, and fell in and around the forts. For nearly a week the garrison saw one of Porter's aerolites dropping upon them every minute and a half. 118 FARRAGUT'S ORDERS. [1862. They demolished buildings, they tore up the ground, they cut the levee and let in water, and they killed and mangled men; but they did not render the forts untenable nor silence their guns. The return fire sank one of the mortar boats and disabled a steamer. Within the forts about fifty men were killed or wounded- one for every sixteen tons of iron thrown. While the fleet was awaiting the progress of this bombardment, a new danger appeared. The Confederates had prepared several flat-boats loaded with dry wood smeared with tar and turpentine; and they now set fire to them one after another, and let them float down the stream. But Farragut sent out boats' crews to meet them, who grappled them with hooks and either towed them ashore or conducted them past the fleet and let them float down through the passes and out to sea. In his General Orders Farragut gave so many minute directions that it would seem as if he must have anticipated every possible contingency. Thus: "Trim your vessel a few inches by the head [that is, place the contents so that she will sink a little deeper at the bow than at the stern], so that if she touches the bottom she will not swing head down the river." "Have light Jacob-ladders made, to throw over the side for the use of the carpenters in stopping shot-holes, who are to be supplied with pieces of inch-board lined with felt, and ordinary nails." "Have a kedge in the mizzen chains on the quarter, with a hawser bent and leading through in the stern chock, ready for any emergency; also 1862.] BREAKING THE CHAIN. 119 grapnels in boats, ready to tow off fire-ships." Have many tubs of water about the decks, both for extinguishing fire and for drinking." will have a spare hawser ready, and when ordered to take in tow your next astern do so, keeping the hawser slack so long as the ship can maintain her own position, having a care not to foul the propeller." It was this minute knowledge and forethought, quite as much as his courage and determination, that insured his success. In addition to his own suggestions he called upon his men to exercise their wits for the occasion, and the crews originated many wise precautions. As the attack was to be in the night, they painted the decks white to enable them to find things. They got out all the spare chains, and hung them up and down the sides of the vessels at the places where they would protect the machinery from the enemy's shot. Farragut's plan was to run by the forts, damaging them as much as possible by a rapid fire as he passed, then destroy or capture the Confederate fleet, and proceed up the river and lay the city under his guns. The time fixed upon for starting was just before moonrise (3:30 o'clock) in the morning of April 24th. On the night of the 20th two gunboats went up the river, and a boat's crew from one of them, under Lieutenant Charles H. B. Caldwell, boarded one of the hulks and cut the chain, under a heavy fire, making an opening sufficient for the fleet to pass through. Near midnight of the 23d the Lieutenant went up again in a gunboat, to 120 THE BATTLE WITH THE FORTS. [1862. make sure that the passage was still open; and this time the enemy not only fired on him but sent down blazing rafts and lighted enormous piles of wood that they had prepared near the ends of the chain. The question of moonrise was no longer of the slightest importance, since it was as light as day for miles around. Two red lanterns displayed at the peak of the flag-ship at two o'clock gave the signal for action, and at half-past three the whole fleet was in motion. The sloop "Portsmouth" and Porter's gunboats moved up to a point where they could engage the water-battery of Fort Jackson while the fleet was going by. The first division of eight vessels, commanded by Captain Theodorus Bailey, who was almost as old and as salt as Farragut, passed through the opening in deliberate fashion, unmindful of a fire from Fort Jackson, ran over to the east bank and poured grape and canister into Fort St. Philip as they sailed by, and ten minutes afterward found themselves engaged at close quarters with eleven Confederate vessels. Bailey's flagship, the "Cayuga," was attacked by three at once, all trying to board her. He sent an eleveninch shot through one of them, and she ran aground and burst into a blaze. With the swivel gun on his forecastle he drove off the second; and he was preparing to board the third when the "Oneida" and "Varuna" came to his assistance. The "Oneida" ran at full speed into one Confederate vessel, cutting it nearly in two and in an instant making it a shapeless wreck. She fired into |