At 6:22 the Tecumseh, which had arrived
at 2 AM, leading the monitor line, opened
the battle, firing a ranging shot from each
of her monster 15-inch guns. Farragut sig-
naled for closer order, each pair of vessels
a few yards apart, echeloned a bit to star-
board and, helped by the flood tide, swept
majestically onward. At 7:06, range half a
mile, Fort Morgan opened fire, immedi-
ately answered by the leading Brooklyn
with her forward Parrot rifles. “It is a curi-
ous sight to catch a single shot from so
heavy a piece of ordnance,” observed a sur-
geon on the USS Lackawanna, recalling the
impression left from the view of the first
shell from Fort Morgan. “First you see a
puff of white smoke upon the distant ram-
parts, and then you see the shot coming,
looking exactly as if some gigantic hand
had thrown in play a ball toward you. By
the time it is half way, you get the boom of
the report, and then the howl of the missile,
which apparently grows so rapidly in size
that every green hand on board who can
see it is certain that it will hit him between
the eyes. Then, as it goes past with a shrieklike a thousand devils, the inclination to do
reverence is so strong that it is impossible
to resist it.”
“Soon after this,” Farragut wrote, “the
action became lively.”
As the monitor division approached Fort
Morgan, the Tennesseeand the gunboats
Selma, Gaines, and Morgansteamed from
under the shelter side of Mobile Point and
took position across the main channel, but
behind the minefield. Buchanan had exe-
cuted the classic naval maneuver of cross-
ing Farragut’s “T.” In minutes, a galling
and murderous raking fire was loosed
down the long axis of the Federal line.
Meanwhile, the column of wooden ships
was coming up on the port quarter of the
monitor division, sailing into positions
where they belched a stunning barrage
upon Fort Morgan—Confederate fire
slackened appreciably. Farragut, in order
to discern the course of the battle in the
resulting pall of smoke, climbed high into
the main rigging, and as the smoke grew
heavier ascended rung by rung to just
under the main top. Captain Drayton,who remembered that the admiral suffered
mildly from vertigo, and fearing that he
might have a bad fall if wounded, sent a
quartermaster aloft to pass a line around
him and secure him to the rigging.
Thus originated the story that Farragut
went into the battle “lashed to the mast.”
This much publicized incident was merely a
safety precaution while the admiral was in
an exposed position to get a better view of
what was going on. The pilot was also in
the main rigging for the same reason, and he
had a voice tube to the captain on deck. Far-
ragut had hardly gained this position when
he saw the impetuous Tecumsehamong the
line of buoys that marked the minefield.
Captain Tunis Craven of the Tecumseh
looked through the heavy grilled port of
his tiny smoke-filled conning tower, and is
alleged to have decided that there was not
room for him to pass to the right, or east-
ward, of the designated buoy. He clanged
four bells to the engine room and tried to
pass the rows at full speed. It seems that,
confident of the vessel’s invulnerability and
the destructive power of her enormous 15-
inch Dahlgrens, he was intent on being the
first to get at the Tennessee. It is definitely
known that after he fired the one round
from each of his guns at the pestiferous
Fort Morgan, he immediately reloaded
them with the maximum possible charges
of powder, holding them for the Tennessee.
As Catesby ap R Jones had recom-
mended, artillerists at Fort Morgan fired
calmly, accurately, and below the water-
line at the Union ironclads. He had been a
lieutenant on board the CSS Virginiaand
had commanded the ram after Buchanan
fell. Now as head of the Selma Cannon
Foundry, he had supplied the fort with a
few of the revolutionary Brooke rifles, and
had written to General Page with his well-
considered views.
At 7:30 the Tecumseh, abreast of the fort,
was hit by at least two steel-cored armor-
piercing projectiles. It veered off course,
steaming farther into the torpedo field.
Suddenly there was a fearful explosion and
instantly a towering geyser of water shot
from the bow. Her hull smashed, the iron-
clad lurched and heeled to port, “as fromFort Morgan took a great deal of punishment during the morning of Farragut’s invasion of the bay and in
the subsequent weeks under siege by the Union Army.National ArchivesCWQ-EW16 Mobile Bay_Layout 1 10/22/15 1:09 PM Page 63