and Farragut saw action at the age of 11. In 1813, he
was given command of a British prize and ordered to sail
her to Valparaiso. The British captain refused to accept
orders from a 12-year-old midshipman and went below
for his pistols. Farragut promptly took command, saw
his orders obeyed, and took the boat into Valparaiso. On
28 March 1814, he took part in the bloody encounter at
Valparaiso between the Essex and the Cherub and Phoebe,
and when the wounded were taken back to the United
States, he worked ceaselessly as assistant to the surgeon
on the long journey home. He then served in the naval
force sent to reinforce the American ships fighting the
pirates in the Mediterranean, but hostilities had ceased
before they got there.
Farragut then pursued the normal career of a naval
officer. He served on many ships, helped to put down
piracy in the West Indies, was promoted to lieutenant in
1825, built docks for naval vessels, and spent many long
months cruising the Gulf of Mexico, an experience that
was to prove useful for the two battles that were to make
his name in the Civil War (1861–65).
The blockade of the Confederacy proposed by the
aged commander in chief General Winfield scott at
the start of the conflict had not attracted much public
attention. It was seen as a minor issue compared to the
battles on land, but President Lincoln had seen the need
for a blockade and realized that command of the sea
and the taking and neutralization of Confederate ports
was an important factor in winning the war. Early in
1862, it was decided to capture one of the South’s major
ports—New Orleans. The city was an important center,
the largest and wealthiest city in the Confederacy, but
it lay more than 100 miles from the sea. The difficulty
in blockading New Orleans was caused by the Missis-
sippi delta, which meant that Confederate ships had
four different channels by which they could reach the
open sea, and blockading each channel with Union war-
ships would need an entire fleet. Twenty miles upstream
from the junction of the four channels, known as Head
of Passes, two strong forts dominated the river, soundly
built and with heavy guns that could destroy any ship
passing between them. Above that, it was known the
Confederates were building ironclad rams and fireships
that could easily destroy the ocean-going Union ships
unable to maneuver in the narrow river channel. To add
to the difficulty, the river changed course so rapidly that
what was a clear channel for ocean-going ships one week
would be a treacherous sandbar the next.
Farragut, now a captain, had played little part in
the conflict so far, but he was chosen for the task because
of his reputation as a superb ship handler and for the
meticulous preparations he made for any operation he
undertook. Although now over 60 years old, he willingly
accepted the task and arrived with his force off the Mis-
sissippi delta on 22 February 1862. His first obstacle was
the shallowness of the channel, which meant reducing
the draught of his ships by offloading as many stores as
possible from his larger vessels. Even then, it took until 7
April to haul the Pensacola and Mississippi over the sand
banks into the main river channel. Farragut then sent a
survey party up the river; they discovered the Confeder-
ates had built a boom of logs and chains across it under
the guns of two forts dominating the river. On the night
of 20 April, a daring raid by two of his gunboats broke
the boom, and on the 24th, Farragut took his fleet up-
river. Though the two forts’ guns inflicted severe dam-
age, Farragut’s force got through and promptly found
itself facing the fireships and Confederate ram ships that
had come downstream to meet them. Farragut’s insis-
tence on the intensive training of his crews now earned
its reward when his own ship, the Hartford, still under
the guns of the fort, was set ablaze by a fireship. His
men rallied to his commands, put out the fires, and ma-
neuvered their ship out of the shallow waters while still
returning enemy fire.
On 25 April, Farragut’s fleet steamed into New Or-
leans and anchored with their great guns dominating the
city. (It remained in Union hands till the end of the war.)
His success in taking New Orleans was acknowledged by
his promotion to the new rank of rear admiral on 16 July- Then, under orders from Washington, and much
against his will, Farragut sailed upstream in an attempt
to take Vicksburg, the Confederate stronghold. This
was unsuccessful, although Farragut sailed his squadron
there again the following year to assist General Ulysses
grant in his attempts to take it. The narrow confines
of the river and encounters with Confederate rams built
for use on the Mississippi meant that Farragut’s ocean-
going wooden ships were of little use inland, and at last
he was allowed to sail back downriver to the open sea to
resume the blockade.
By 1864, the Union blockade had proved so effec-
tive that the Confederacy had only three ports open to
ships of deep draught: Mobile, Charleston and Wilming-
ton. Farragut, still commanding the Gulf squadron, de-
termined that Mobile should be neutralized, especially as
FARRAgut, DAviD glASgow