On this day in 1864,

Union Admiral Farragut Captures the Confederate Port of Mobile

On this day in 1864, Union Admiral David Farragut and his flotilla sailed through floating mines (then called “torpedoes”), and past Confederate batteries hidden inside Fort Morgan and Fort Gaines on the southern end of the bay, to seal off the last major Southern port. The fall of Mobile was a huge blow to the Confederacy, and the victory was the first in a series of Yankee successes that helped secure the re-election of Abraham Lincoln later that year against the Democrats, who wanted to end the Civil War and let the South maintain slavery.

After Farragut’s takeover of the port of New Orleans in 1862, Mobile became the major Confederate port on the Gulf of Mexico, with blockade runners carrying critical supplies from Havana.  Ulysses S. Grant made the capture of the Port of Mobile a top priority after assuming command of all Federal forces in early 1864.

One of Farragut’s first ships through the Bay channel was immediately sunk by a torpedo, throwing the rest of the Union fleet into a panic.  Farragut, who suffered from vertigo, strapped himself to a mast and rallied the Union forces by yelling, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” Miraculously, Farragut’s ship and those that followed made it past all the torpedoes without losing another vessel.  Once past the torpedoes and forts, the Union fleet quickly demolished the Confederate fleet.  Fort Gaines fell a couple days later and Fort Morgan surrendered a couple weeks later.

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