But by the summer of 1864 Southerners
found nothing humorous about the block-
ade—almost 500 warships patrolled the
coastline and rivers. Eluding capture was
not an easy task for runners; the odds of
capture—1 in 10 in 1861—-were now 1
in 3. Yet, Mobile was even more difficult
to blockade than the Carolina ports. The
distance from Pensacola to the Rio Grande
is about 600 miles, not counting the Mis-
sissippi River delta. Behind this coast is an
intricate network of inland waterways in
which shallow-draft craft could move
safely to find an exit or inlet not covered
by blockaders.
The Federal warships patrolling outside
Mobile Bay were part of Farragut’s West
Gulf Blockading Squadron, and duty was
routinely mundane and monotonous,
punctuated by moments of high drama.
Aboard each ship, a deck officer posted
aloft in the boson chair scanned the dark
horizon, moonless nights being favored by
blockade-runners, straining to spot the sil-
houette of a runner or a distant plume of
smoke. If a runner was sighted, a signal
rocket would streak through the night,
sending seamen to their
battle stations, and with
steam up, the chase was
on. Firing rocket after
rocket to mark the runner’s
path, the blockaders would
pursue their quarry. Hur-
riedly shoveling pitch pine
and rosin chunks into the
ship’s furnace, the ship’s
firemen stoked a hotter fire
to build speed. Aboard the
harried blockade-runner,
firemen would fuel the
ship’s furnace with sides of
bacon or turpentine-
soaked cotton to gain
enough speed to outdis-
tance the enemy. Narrow
escapes were common, but
when capture seemed
imminent, a captain would
heave to and surrender.
More often, he would turn
toward shore and try tobeach his vessel in the breakers, hoping his
cargo could be salvaged later.
Now and again a lighter moment high-
lighted the chase. In October 1862, the
Carolinewas captured after a six-hour
chase off Mobile. When brought aboard
the Hartford, her captain protested vehe-
mently to Farragut that he was not headed
for Mobile but for Matamoros, Mexico,
as his clearance papers revealed. To this
fantastic claim the old admiral replied, “I
do not take you for running the blockade,
but for your damn poor navigation. Any
man bound for Matamoros from Havana
and coming within 12 miles of Mobile
Point has no business to have a steamer.”
When Farragut was ordered to capture
New Orleans in January 1862, the order
from Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles
specifically mentioned the capture of
Mobile as a follow-up measure. Accord-
ingly, the Union occupation of the Cres-
cent City was barely days old when Far-
ragut began planning his operation at
Mobile Bay. But President Lincoln and
Welles postponed this event until the open-
ing of the Mississippi had been completed,
and sent Farragut upriver
to cooperate with Flag
Officer Charles H. Davis.
Farragut hated the river—
it was no place for his
sloops of war—but there
he stayed until Port Hud-
son and Vicksburg surren-
dered in July 1863. All but
broken in health from the
arduous service in the
malaria-ridden lower Mis-
sissippi, he took a leave of
absence.
By the summer of 1864,
Northerners and Southern-
ers alike believed that
action was long overdue at
Mobile. As David Dixon
Porter, a Union naval offi-
cer, once put it, “Mobile is
so ripe now, that it would
fall to us like a mellow
pear.” If Rear Adm. Far-
ragut had had his way, itwould have been closed off from the sea in- Writing in 1887, an officer who
served on board Farragut’s flagship said,
“It is easy to see now the wisdom of his
plan. Had the operation against Mobile
been undertaken promptly, as he desired,
the entrance into the bay would have been
effected with much less cost of men and
materials, Mobile would have been cap-
tured a year earlier than it was, and the
Union cause would have been spared the
disaster of the Red River campaign of - At this late date it is but justice to
admit the truth.”
In addition, shortly after his capture of
Vicksburg, Ulysses S. Grant proposed that
he attack Mobile with the help of the
Navy. He thought it would be an ideal
base for operating in the deep South. The
request was refused, not once but three
times. After his successful operations at
Chattanooga, he renewed his proposal and
once again it was denied. General
Nathaniel Banks at New Orleans also pro-
posed that he attack Mobile, but he was
ordered into Texas on what would turn
out to be the ill-fated Red River operation.
Then in January 1864, a recuperated
and rejuvenated Farragut resumed com-
mand, and his first act was to make a per-
sonal reconnaissance of Mobile. Taking
charge of a gunboat in his fleet, he ordered
the vessel in close, “where I could count
the guns and the men who stood by them.”
Unlike New Orleans, Mobile had pre-
pared well for the onslaughts of the Union
fleet. This, however, was due less to Rebel
tenacity than to the Union’s attention to
other objectives. Indeed, viewed from afar,
a heavy mist of ripeness hovers over the
opening days of summer 1864.
Yet, during the long months that the
Confederates had been left in compara-
tively peaceful possession of Mobile, an
elaborate system of fortifications had
been created for guarding the entrances
to the broad but shallow sandy shoals of
the bay. The city itself was at the head of
Mobile Bay, about 20 miles from the
ocean. On the tip of Mobile Point was
erected the pentagonal Fort Morgan, gar-
risoned by 700 men and 79 guns, which
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