James Barnes, author of David G. Farragut, Naval Actions of 1812, Yank ee Ships and Yankee Sailors, Commodore Bainbridge , The Blockaders, and other naval and historical works, The Photographic History of The Civil War: in ten volumes, Thousands of Scenes Photographed 1861-65, with Text by many Special Authorities, Volume 6: The Navy.
Francis Trevelyan Miller, Ed.

[250] waived his rank and was assisting the Confederate commander in keeping the troops in hand. Owing to the strong construction of the interior of the fort, and its division by the heavy traverses, the Federals were compelled to take the traverses one at a time, driving the Confederates from gun-chamber to gun-chamber. The final stand was made by part of the , garrison at Battery Buchanan, near the end of the point. But this was also taken. None of the guns of the main Fort was spiked, the men fighting the serviceable ones until the last extremity, but those of Battery Buchanan were spiked by the few occupants, who had left the work before the surrender of Fort Fisher, taking with them all the boats that might have served for the escape of a large part of the remaining garrison. Shortly after ten o'clock in the evening of January 15, 1865, resistance ceased in Fort Fisher, and the place was surrendered.

The defenses of the city of Mobile had been pronounced by General Joseph E. Johnston the strongest in the Confederacy. To guard the city itself there were three heavy lines, the outer consisting of fifteen redoubts, the inner of sixteen enclosed forts, and the middle one of nineteen bastioned forts and eight redoubts. The harbor forts were designed to sustain attacks on both the land and water fronts. On the eastern side lay Fort Morgan, at Mobile Point, and on the western side Fort Gaines, on Dauphine Island; while Fort Powell guarded the bay entrance of Grant Pass, that admitted small boats north of Dauphine Island. Just below the city were ten batteries, placed to command the channel. Torpedoes and rows of piles blocked the channels, with here and there an opening through which a vessel might crawl.

Fort Morgan and Fort Gaines had been United States fortifications, but were taken by the Confederates at the beginning of the war. Morgan had sixty guns, with a water battery in front, and Gaines was armed with thirty guns. Besides these land defenses, the Confederates had the ram Tennessee, probably the most powerful vessel ever constructed for their