Farragut felt sure of his fleet. He had four splendid new men-of-war that formed a homogeneous squadron, four other sizable warships, and nine new gunboats. All spars and rigging that could be dispensed with were taken down; all hulls camouflaged with Mississippi mud; and all decks whitened for handiness at night. Aweak point, however, was the presence of mortar-boats that would have been better out of the way altogether. These boats had been sent to bombard the forts,which, according to the plan preferred by the Government, were to be taken before New Orleans was attacked. In other words, the Government wished to cut off the branches first; while Farragut wished to cut down the tree itself, knowing the branches must fall with the trunk.
On the eighteenth of April the mortar-boats began heaving shells at the forts. But, after six days of bombardment, the forts were nowhere near the point of surrendering, and the supply of shells had begun to run low.
Meanwhile the squadron had been busy preparing for the great ordeal. The first task was to break the boom across the river.
This boom was placed so as to hold the ships under the fire of the forts; and the four-knot spring current was so strong that the eight-knot ships could not make way enough against it to cut clear through with certainty. Moreover, the middle of the boom was filled in by eight big schooners, chained together, with their masts and rigging dragging astern so as to form a most awkward entanglement. Farragut's fleet captain, Henry H. Bell, taking two gunboats, Itasca and Pinola, under Lieutenants Caldwell and Crosby, slipped the chains of one schooner;whereupon this schooner and the Itasca swung back and grounded under fire of the forts. The Pinola gallantly stood by, helping Itasca clear. Then Caldwell, with splendid audacity and skill, steamed up through the narrow gap, turned round, put on the Itasca's utmost speed, and, with the current in his favor, charged full tilt against the chains that still held fast. For one breathless moment the little Itasca seemed lost. Her bows rose clear out, as, quivering from stem to stern, she was suddenly brought up short from top speed to nothing. But, in another fateful minute, with a rending crash, the two nearest schooners gave way and swept back like a gate, while the Itasca herself shot clear and came down in triumph to the fleet.
The passage was made on the twenty-fourth, in line-ahead (that is, one after another) because Farragut found the opening narrower than he thought it should be for two columns abreast, at night, under fire, and against the spring current. Owing to the configuration of the channel the starboard column had to weigh first, which gave the lead to the 500-ton gunboat Cayuga. This was the one weak point, because the leading vessel, drawing most fire, should have been the strongest. The fault was Farragut's;for his heart got the better of his head when it came to placing Captain Theodorus Bailey, his dauntless second-in-command, on board a vessel fit to lead the starboard column. He could not bear to obscure any captain's chances of distinction by putting another captain over him. So Bailey was sent to the best vessel commanded by a lieutenant.
The Cayuga's navigating officer, finding that the guns of the forts were all trained on midstream, edged in towards Fort St.
Philip. His masts were shot to pieces, but his hull drew clear without great damage. "Then," he says, "I looked back for some of our vessels; and my heart jumped up into my mouth when I found Icould not see a single one. I thought they must all have been sunk by the forts." But not a ship had gone down. The three big ones of the starboard column--Pensacola, Mississippi, and Oneida--closed with the fort (so that the gunners on both sides exchanged jeers of defiance) and kept up a furious fire till the lighter craft astern slipped past safely and joined the Cayuga above.
Meanwhile the Cayuga had been attacked by a mob of Mississippi steamers, six of which belonged to the original fourteen blessed with their precious independence by Secretary Benjamin, "backed by the whole Missouri Delegation." So when the rest of the Federal light craft came up, "all sorts of things happened" in a general free fight. There was no lack of Confederate courage; but an utter absence of concerted action and of the simplest kind of naval skill, except on the part of the two vessels commanded by ex-officers of the United States Navy. The Federal light craft cut their way through their unorganized opponents as easily as a battalion of regulars could cut through a mob throwing stones.
But the only two Confederate naval officers got clear of the scrimmage and did all that skill could do with their makeshift little craft against the Federal fleet. Kennon singled out the Varuna (the only one of Farragut's vessels that was not a real man-of-war), raked her stern with the two guns of his own much inferior vessel, the Governor Moore, and rammed her into a sinking condition. Warley flew at bigger game with his little ram, the Manassas, trying three of the large men-of-war, one after another, as they came upstream. The Pensacola eluded him by a knowing turn of her helm that roused his warmest admiration.
The Mississippi caught the blow glancingly on her quarter and got off with little damage. The Brooklyn was taken fair and square amidships; but, though her planking was crushed in, she sprang no serious leak and went on with the fight. The wretched little Confederate engines had not been able to drive the ram home.
