gots to play down there.”
That was the question. How much time? If they never found more wagons for hauling iron from Jackson, the ironclad
So many variables. Absolutely no way to know how long it would take to do anything. He did not know what move of the Yankees he needed to be ready to counter.
“Six weeks. We must be underway in six weeks,” Bowater said decisively. They needed a goal, a definite date, even if it was only one that he made up, right off the top of his head.
The word echoed around David Glasgow Farragut’s mind.
He was not sure to what specifically he might apply the word-there were so many things.
Incredible how swiftly a man’s fortunes could change.
Number 38 on the captains’ list of the United States Navy after fifty years’ service. A Tennessee man who had never blinked in his support of the Union, but who, he assumed, was still considered questionable thanks to his place of birth. Just two and a half months before, he had been festering away on the Navy Retirement Board, dying an interminable death. His nation was consumed by war-the one thing for which he had trained his entire life, boy to man-and he was behind a desk, shuffling papers.
But no more. He looked around the day cabin on his flagship, the USS
Incredible.
Farragut was sixty years old, his square jaw clean-shaven. The sun that came in through the aft windows glinted off the bands of gold braid that circled his cuffs, winked off the double row of buttons down the front of his dark blue frock coat. His lean, hard body was perfectly complemented by the frock coat. He had been wearing navy blue for forty years. It seemed very odd to him when, on one of those few occasions, he found himself in civilian clothing of a different color.
He read over the report, one of an endless stream of reports he was writing.
USS
Ship Island, March 5, 1862
DEAR SIR: The
He set the report aside. His eyes, which were not terribly strong, were starting to hurt. Reports, orders, requisitions, dispatches, he was sick of it all. He had come to fight the enemy and all he did was sit at his desk. For now.
He looked down at the sundry papers spread over the desk in front of him-newspapers, reports, personal correspondence. Stolen material, all. He felt a flush of guilt. Absurd. This was war.
Warm, briny air wafted through the open window, rustled the paper. A month before he had been in New York City, where bitter, numbing wind funneled in through the Narrows and made the waterfront a frigid misery. His hands, he recalled, had been so numb he was hardly able to hold a pen. But now he was riding at anchor at Ship Island, off the coast of Mississippi, lovely, semitropical, water the color of turquoise. He enjoyed the sun and the warm air. He enjoyed looking out over the ships under his command.
The warm air carried on it the smell of coal smoke. USS
They would be fighting a river war with a blue-water navy, making ships do something they were never intended to do. Foote’s fleet, the “Pook Turtles,” they were made for this kind of fighting, perfect for the Western River Theater. But not the
The marine at the cabin door announced Henry H. Bell, captain of the fleet, responding to the summons Farragut had issued moments before. Farragut called, “Come!” and Bell stepped sharply across the cabin’s deck, stopped at the desk, saluted, crisp and businesslike.
“Captain,” Farragut said, returning the salute. He spread his hands, indicating the papers on the desk. “Here is the booty from our raid on the Biloxi post office.”
“You should have had them take gold, sir. Laurens de Graffe or Jean Laffite could have made their fortunes with such a raiding party.”
Farragut smiled. “There’s gold enough here for me. You should see what is in these papers.” He picked one up, held up the headline.
“Nashville, sir?” Bell looked taken aback, and then he smiled.
“The Rebels suffered a defeat at Donaldsonville as well. Grant and Foote are sweeping south along the Mississippi. New Orleans is in a panic. The papers speak volumes of discontent. It’s all collapsing around them, Henry. When we take New Orleans, I do believe the Southern morale and their will to fight will just melt away.”
“Wonderful, sir.”
For just over twenty days now, Farragut had been admiral in charge of the Western Gulf Blockading Squadron, chosen by Welles and Lincoln not just because they trusted him to blockade but because they trusted him to fight.
The rumble of an anchor chain, and Farragut and Bell looked out the starboard windows to see
“Captain Alden should have news of Porter, sir,” Bell said.
“Yes, he should. I hope it is good.” Farragut was already sending ships up the Mississippi, up to the Head of the Passes, up as far as the forts, probing the Rebels, feeling them out. But the first real attack would be David Dixon Porter’s. Porter had with him a convoy of old schooners and scows, each mounting a squat thirteen-inch mortar, able to lob heavy exploding shells over the walls of the Confederate fortifications. This mortar fleet would soften Forts Jackson and St. Philip up some before Farragut’s big ships blasted their way past.
“If I may, sir…” Bell was hedging, wanted to ask a question he was not certain would be well received.
“Yes?”
“If I may, when do you think we will make the push to New Orleans?” As it happened, Farragut had been thinking along those very lines, and so was well prepared to answer that question. He had been calculating when Porter would arrive, how long it might take to get the big ships over the bar, how much pounding the forts would need.
He planned to head up to the forts himself in a few days in one of the smaller ships, take a firsthand look at what they would be facing.
“Six weeks,” Farragut said decisively. “I do believe we will be ready to take New Orleans in six weeks’ time.”
40
– Lieutenant George Gift, CSS
