Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

While the affair of the Metacomet and wooden gunboats was taking place the Confederate flag-ship Tennessee was three or four miles distant, slowly following up the rear of the enemy's column of ships, which, being of too great draught, were confined to a “pocket” of deep water of about five or six miles length and running in about a north-northwest direction. It was only the enemy's gunboats, being of light draught, that could go beyond these limits and pursue ours.

As the enemy's fleet, having passed the forts and dispersed the gunboats, was proceeding to cast anchor, the Tennessee at last gave sign of battle and made directly for the Hartford. It was a desperate enterprise, for although the vessel was protected by five and six inches of iron-plating, she was about to engage in a conflict in which she would be beset by a whole fleet. Farragut's orders to the Monitors were to attack the Tennessee, not only with their guns, but bows on at full speed. The doomed vessel was soon surrounded. The Monongahela, the Lackawanna and the Hartford, each struck her in turn; and the latter in rasping along her side poured a whole port broadside of nine-inch solid shot within ten feet of her casemate. The vessel still floated, but was unmanageable, as her steering chains were gone. A second and more terrible onset was prepared; the three vessels already mentioned again bore down upon her; a fourth, the Ossipee, was approaching her at full speed; and the Chickasaw was pounding away at her stern. As she was about being struck by the vessels converging upon her, a white flag was hoisted, and Admiral Buchanan surrendered his vessel only after she had been disabled, himself wounded, and his crew almost in a smothering condition. He might have anticipated the result of the unequal contest, and have declined it with honour.

The Federal success, however, was yet incomplete, as the forts still held out, although with little prospect of resisting a bombardment from the shore batteries of the enemy, and the Monitors and ships inside the Bay. On the 8th August Fort Gaines surrendered to the combined naval and land forces. Fort Powell was blown up and abandoned.

On the 9th Fort Morgan was invested, and after a severe bombardment surrendered on the 23d. The total captures amounted to 1,464 prisoners, and 104 pieces of artillery.

The enemy was thus in possession of Mobile Bay, and enabled to close the port to all ingress or egress of blockade runners. But this was the limit of his success; the city was still held by the Confederates, and months were to elapse before the enemy was to make any new demonstration upon it. The capture of the forts did not give the city of Mobile to the enemy, or even give him a practicable water basis for operations against it.

Yet Farragut's victory, so easily achieved and so little fruitful, was exclaimed over the North as one of the greatest naval achievements of the