List here
Today in 1997, the United States Ship Constitution officially set sail for the first time in 116 years. She remains today the world’s oldest commissioned warship afloat, having been in service for almost 214 years as of this recording. Planned and built as one of six ships meant to serve as the core of a new navy, her travels, travails and near-abandonment have become an indelible part of the history of the nation she was commissioned to defend.
Officially, the United States Navy was born on October 13th, 1775 when three armed schooners were placed under the authority of the Continental Congress with the mission of intercepting any British supply ships in the waters off Massachusetts. However, the American naval effort during the Revolution was made mostly by the separate colonies’ own naval forces and by private individuals. The colonial fleet eventually grew, but during the course of the war lost 24 ships; when the war officially ended in 1783, there was only one warship left to follow Congress’ orders. While the men and officers of the Navy did not lack for bravery or skill, they lacked resources, especially when compared to the British Royal Navy, which was and would continue to be for more than a century the greatest naval force the world had6+ ever known. It was the French Navy that did the real heavy lifting for the American cause during the War for Independence.
After the war, Congress and the President began look to the interior of the North American continent and away from the sea. Navies are expensive and the young United States could not afford a fleet that had to be manned and ready to fight wars at sea. The last Continental Navy ship was sold in 1783, which left the defense of the American coastline to the Revenue Cutter Service, the forerunner of today’s Coast Guard. Opponents of a permanent navy believed that a large fleet would become a standing invitation to foreign entanglements, something the early Presidents were loathe to contemplate.
Other powers, however, used the new nation's lack of naval strength as an open door to take advantage of Americans who sailed the open seas. During the 1790s, US merchant ships were harassed by France and Britain. Both nations considered the open seaways as theirs to control and since there was nothing the United States could do, her civilian sailors paid the price.
The most notorious group which preyed on American merchantmen were the pirates from the Barbary Coast, an area that today is the coastal areas of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. Many European nations, including Britian and France, paid a yearly tribute, basically protection money, to the Dey of Algiers, the leader of the most active group of corsairs. The United States began paying the tribute as well, but that did not stop the capture of eleven American ships during the first few years of the 1790's. It was with this in mind that Congress passed what came to be known as the Naval Act of 1794, which provided for the construction of six ships, four carrying 44 guns and two carrying 36 guns apiece. They were to be considered heavy frigates, powerful enough to take on any ship in their class yet fast enough to avoid the first-rate ships of the line, some of which carried more than 100 guns.
Thus was the USS Constitution born. A peace accord was signed with Algiers in March, 1796, which caused construction of the ships to come to a halt per the wording of the Naval Act. After some goading by President Washington, Congress agreed to fund the completion of the three ships closest to completion. Those three ships became the USS United States, USS Constellation and the USS Constitution. The other three were completed a few years later. After some problems encountered during her initial launching ceremony, Constitution slid into Boston Harbor on October 21, 1797.
Constitution's launching and fitting out coincided with the beginning of what became to be known as the Quasi-War with France, a conflict which occurred almost entirely at sea. But that's for part two.
Donate/Purchase DVDs
Transcript Archive
About Me
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Monday, July 11, 2011
Skylab Falls, July 11, 1979
Listen here
Today in 1979, Skylab fell back to Earth after six years in orbit. This space station was the first attempt by the United States to put a long-term platform in space for the purpose of scientific experimentation. It remains the only space station that was completely of American design and construction.
The idea for a US space station dates back to the 1950’s, when the concept of using the discarded upper stage of a large rocket was first put on paper. This idea was far-reaching, so much so that it was not pursued for another decade. In the meantime, the US Air Force made plans to build a smaller station, essentially a manned spy satellite, called the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, or MLO. It would carry two men and several powerful telescopes. When plans for the MLO became known to NASA administrators, the program was immediately seen as a threat to their funding. And so it came to be that, while racing to put a man on the moon before the Soviets, the minds at NASA also began drawing up ideas for a space station.
At first, NASA wanted a station large enough to hold a crew of 24. A design of this magnitude would require orbital construction and an entirely new generation of reusable supply vehicles to transport the tons of food, water and other supplies needed to keep two dozen astronauts alive and productive for months at a time. But with the likelihood of budget cuts looming on the horizon, plans for the giant station were put on hold in lieu of a smaller, more affordable orbital lab. As time went by, however, the giant station and her new resupply craft did not die; eventually, the space station design became Space Station Freedom, a 1980’s proposal that was eventually scaled down to become the International Space Station. The resupply vessel became the Space Shuttle.
By the mid-1960’s, the design had been more or less finalized. The station would be made from one stage of a Saturn rocket, the S-IVB stage. Originally, the stage would actually be filled with hydrogen fuel since the only available lifting rocket, the Saturn 1B, needed to use that stage’s thrust to achieve orbit. Once in a safe orbit, the stage’s fuel tank would be vented to space and everything would be moved in. This planned changed when NASA canceled Apollo missions 18 through 20, freeing up large Saturn V rockets that could achieve Earth orbit without the thrust developed by the S-IVB stage. Thus, the space station could be assembled on the ground and launched into space as a complete package.
Skylab included the Apollo Telescope Mount, the EREP (or Earth Resources Experiment Package), the Multiple Docking Adapter (with two docking ports), the airlock (with EVA hatches for spacewalks), and the Orbital Workshop in the main body of the station, which housed much of the supporting systems. Power came from a solar array as well as fuel cells in the docked Apollo Command Service Module. The rear of the station included a large waste tank, tanks for maneuvering jets, and a heat radiator.
Skylab, as the space station was dubbed, was launched on May 14, 1973. While everything about the launch was within specifications, the station was discovered to be seriously damaged during its trip to Earth orbit. One of the station’s main solar panels had broken off completely and the other one was pinned to the side of the station by the remains of the micrometeoroid shield, another victim of the launch. The first crew to visit the station on May 25, 1973 stayed for 28 days and spent a great portion of that time doing repair work. The second crew came aboard on July 28 of the same year and stayed for 59 days. The final crew arrived on November 16, 1973 and lived aboard Skylab for 84 days. Each crew of Skylab broke the previous record for the most time spent in space by human beings.
During their time aboard Skylab, the crews performed solar experiments that led to the discovery of the Sun’s coronal holes. They also did experiments that led to a greater understanding of the human body’s ability to adapt to low-gravity environments. The astronauts had little free time, but they had been provided with a dart board, playing cards, books, and tape players for their non-working hours. However, looking out the station's window that provided a view of the Earth became the most popular activity for all the crews.
After the third crew left, Skylab was placed in an orbit that was expected to deteriorate in 8 years. The Space Shuttle was supposed to lift the station to a higher orbit in 1979, but the first Shuttle mission did not fly until 1981. An unmanned mission was planned, but funding was denied. Even if Skylab had been saved, it would probably have never been used again. The launch damage was worse than what could be fixed by the first crew and any future crews would have had to replace many critical systems before the station could be used long-term. The decision was taken to let Skylab fall.
The station met the thick part of Earth’s atmosphere on July 11, 1979. Debris fell over a wide area of the Indian Ocean and Western Australia. No one was injured by falling parts, but the Shire of Esperance in Australia fined the United States $400 for littering, a debt which remained unpaid until April, 2009, when American radio show host Scott Barley raised money from the listeners to his morning show and paid the fine on behalf of NASA. As of this writing, Barley has yet to be compensated by the space agency.
A second Skylab had been built as a backup at the same time as the one that flew, but it was never used. It is now on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.
Today in 1979, Skylab fell back to Earth after six years in orbit. This space station was the first attempt by the United States to put a long-term platform in space for the purpose of scientific experimentation. It remains the only space station that was completely of American design and construction.
The idea for a US space station dates back to the 1950’s, when the concept of using the discarded upper stage of a large rocket was first put on paper. This idea was far-reaching, so much so that it was not pursued for another decade. In the meantime, the US Air Force made plans to build a smaller station, essentially a manned spy satellite, called the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, or MLO. It would carry two men and several powerful telescopes. When plans for the MLO became known to NASA administrators, the program was immediately seen as a threat to their funding. And so it came to be that, while racing to put a man on the moon before the Soviets, the minds at NASA also began drawing up ideas for a space station.
At first, NASA wanted a station large enough to hold a crew of 24. A design of this magnitude would require orbital construction and an entirely new generation of reusable supply vehicles to transport the tons of food, water and other supplies needed to keep two dozen astronauts alive and productive for months at a time. But with the likelihood of budget cuts looming on the horizon, plans for the giant station were put on hold in lieu of a smaller, more affordable orbital lab. As time went by, however, the giant station and her new resupply craft did not die; eventually, the space station design became Space Station Freedom, a 1980’s proposal that was eventually scaled down to become the International Space Station. The resupply vessel became the Space Shuttle.
By the mid-1960’s, the design had been more or less finalized. The station would be made from one stage of a Saturn rocket, the S-IVB stage. Originally, the stage would actually be filled with hydrogen fuel since the only available lifting rocket, the Saturn 1B, needed to use that stage’s thrust to achieve orbit. Once in a safe orbit, the stage’s fuel tank would be vented to space and everything would be moved in. This planned changed when NASA canceled Apollo missions 18 through 20, freeing up large Saturn V rockets that could achieve Earth orbit without the thrust developed by the S-IVB stage. Thus, the space station could be assembled on the ground and launched into space as a complete package.
Skylab included the Apollo Telescope Mount, the EREP (or Earth Resources Experiment Package), the Multiple Docking Adapter (with two docking ports), the airlock (with EVA hatches for spacewalks), and the Orbital Workshop in the main body of the station, which housed much of the supporting systems. Power came from a solar array as well as fuel cells in the docked Apollo Command Service Module. The rear of the station included a large waste tank, tanks for maneuvering jets, and a heat radiator.
Skylab, as the space station was dubbed, was launched on May 14, 1973. While everything about the launch was within specifications, the station was discovered to be seriously damaged during its trip to Earth orbit. One of the station’s main solar panels had broken off completely and the other one was pinned to the side of the station by the remains of the micrometeoroid shield, another victim of the launch. The first crew to visit the station on May 25, 1973 stayed for 28 days and spent a great portion of that time doing repair work. The second crew came aboard on July 28 of the same year and stayed for 59 days. The final crew arrived on November 16, 1973 and lived aboard Skylab for 84 days. Each crew of Skylab broke the previous record for the most time spent in space by human beings.
During their time aboard Skylab, the crews performed solar experiments that led to the discovery of the Sun’s coronal holes. They also did experiments that led to a greater understanding of the human body’s ability to adapt to low-gravity environments. The astronauts had little free time, but they had been provided with a dart board, playing cards, books, and tape players for their non-working hours. However, looking out the station's window that provided a view of the Earth became the most popular activity for all the crews.
After the third crew left, Skylab was placed in an orbit that was expected to deteriorate in 8 years. The Space Shuttle was supposed to lift the station to a higher orbit in 1979, but the first Shuttle mission did not fly until 1981. An unmanned mission was planned, but funding was denied. Even if Skylab had been saved, it would probably have never been used again. The launch damage was worse than what could be fixed by the first crew and any future crews would have had to replace many critical systems before the station could be used long-term. The decision was taken to let Skylab fall.
The station met the thick part of Earth’s atmosphere on July 11, 1979. Debris fell over a wide area of the Indian Ocean and Western Australia. No one was injured by falling parts, but the Shire of Esperance in Australia fined the United States $400 for littering, a debt which remained unpaid until April, 2009, when American radio show host Scott Barley raised money from the listeners to his morning show and paid the fine on behalf of NASA. As of this writing, Barley has yet to be compensated by the space agency.
A second Skylab had been built as a backup at the same time as the one that flew, but it was never used. It is now on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.
Wednesday, July 06, 2011
David Farragut Born, July 5, 1801
Listen here
Today in 1801, David Glasgow Farragut was born at Lowe's Ferry, Tennessee, a settlement on the Tennessee River not far from the city of Knoxville. A family tragedy would ultimately propel the young man into a career at sea, a life of service which culminated in his becoming the first rear admiral, vice admiral, and admiral in the United States Navy. He is most remembered today for one phrase he uttered in the heat of battle, a phrase that spoke to the man's courage and fortitude under the most dire of circumstances.
The child who would become Admiral Farragut was given the first name James upon his birth. When his mother died in 1808, James' father arranged for him to be adopted by David Porter, a naval officer with two sons who would both become admirals during the Civil War along with their adoptive brother, who took the first name David in 1812 to honor the man who agreed to raise him as his own. It almost seemed inevitable that David Farragut would serve his nation at sea.
Through David Porter's influence, Farragut was commissioned a midshipman in the United States Navy in 1810; he was nine years old. It was not unusual for boys of his age to go to sea on warships, and Farragut had the good fortune to serve aboard the USS Essex, a frigate commanded by his adoptive father, now a captain. There was no naval academy for American naval officers at that time, so young men and boys slated for leadership positions learned their trade on the job. It was a tough school, even under the best of circumstances.
Midshipman Farragut was 11 when the War of 1812 began. By the time of his twelfth birthday, he had held the position of prize master, the temporary captain of a captured ship. In March, 1814, however, he and the crew of the Essex saw the tables turned when they were captured by the British outside Valparaiso Bay, Chile. Farragut was wounded during the engagement, not for the last time during his career.
Promotions were unbelievably slow in the post-war navy and Farragut was not promoted to lieutenant until 1822. Senior officers, some of them so elderly they could no longer go to sea, were kept on the active duty list while younger officers were marooned in lower ranks. As a result of this practice, Farragut was not promoted to commander until 1844 and did not achieve the rank of captain until 1855. By this time, he was 54 years old and had been in the service for 45 years.
Despite the slow pace of promotion, those years were well-spent by Farragut, and his professional experience during that time was extensive and varied. In the early 1820's he helped hunt pirates in the West Indies. During the Mexican-American war, he commanded the sloop Saratoga. But probably his most important contribution to the navy during the years between the War of 1812 and the Civil War was his role as the founding commander of the Mare Island Naval Yard at Vallejo, California. Mare Island served for years as the only facility on the west coast of the United States that was capable of overhauling a warship.
Farragut married for the first time in the mid-1820's to Susan Marchant. She suffered years of bad health and ultimately died in December, 1840. The future admiral married Virginia Loyall in 1843; this marriage produced one child, a son named Loyall Farragut, in 1844.
When southern states began to secede from the Union in late 1860, Captain Farragut found himself stationed in Norfolk, Virginia. Although both he and his wife were born in states that would eventually try to secede, Farragut made it clear that he regarded secession as treason and those who aided the movement as traitors. Nonetheless, the navy was initially reluctant to give Farragut a sea-going command once the Civil War began in April, 1861. Assigned to the Naval Retirement Board, it looked as if the 60-year old captain would spend the war behind a desk.
But it was not to be. For the second time in his career, Farragut was helped along by the intervention of his adopted family. His brother David Porter was able to offer him a special assignment, an opportunity to command a squadron. While Farragut was eager for a more active role, he was afraid his assignment would be to retake the naval facilities at Norfolk, Virginia, a town where he had forged many personal relationships in the years preceding the war. But the mission targeted a much more important city: New Orleans. Farragut was to be the man who wrested the south's most important port from Confederate control. His command was the West Gulf Blockading Squadron, and his flagship was the USS Hartford.
Early in the war, Union leaders decided that in addition to using the army to defeat the Confederate Army in the field, the Union Navy would be used to keep foreign goods from entering southern ports. The blockade was called the Anaconda Plan. In addition to active interdiction of ships, the plan called for the seizure of port facilities and sea defense forts from Virginia to the mouth of the Mississippi and up that river all the way to St. Louis, Missouri. New Orleans was the western anchor of the operation and controlling it was crucial to Union success on the Mississippi River.
Beginning on April 18th, 1862, Farragut's squadron bombarded Forts Jackson and St. Philip, two forts downriver from New Orleans. By April 24th he had thirteen ships past the forts and on April 29th Farragut and 250 Marines removed the Louisiana state flag from city hall and raised the Stars and Stripes. Major General Benjamin Butler and his Union force occupied the city on May 1st.
The United States Congress honored Farragut (and eight other senior captains) by creating the rank of rear admiral and promoting them to the position. Before then, there had been no admirals in the United States Navy. When squadrons of ships were sent on a specific mission, the senior captain was referred to as commodore or more generically as a flag officer. This was in sharp relief to European navies, most of whom were heavy with admirals. But the Civil War showed how necessary a clearly-defined chain of command was if the Union Navy were to expand quickly and remain an effective fighting force while doing so.
Rear Admiral Farragut followed up his success at New Orleans by sailing up the Mississippi with a flotilla of 38 ships in an attempt to subdue the artillery batteries at Vicksburg, Mississippi. Some of his ships were able to run past the batteries, but it was a symbolic gesture more than anything else. The guns defending the city and a Confederate ironclad (an iron-plated warship, new to the world at the time of the Civil War) forced Farragut to withdraw his forces back down the river in July, 1862.
The naval bombardment at Port Hudson in March, 1863 also proved unsuccessful. In an attack uncoordinated with Union General Nathaniel Banks' Army of the Gulf, Farragut's force of seven warships was badly damaged after dueling with heavy Confederate artillery ashore. When the smoke cleared, only Farragut's flagship, USS Hartford, and USS Albatross, were able to pass upstream and begin blockading the mouth of the Red River. What the admiral pictured was a pounding from the Mississippi River that would result in the rebels abandoning Port Hudson. What occurred was an initial Union defeat resulting in the port being taken under siege until July 9, 1863. While the Confederate force was eventually badly beaten, it only surrendered after news arrived that Union forces were in control of the fortifications at Vicksburg, Mississippi. It was a painful lesson for both the Union Army and Navy, as the campaign had the highest casualty rate of the war.
By the summer of 1864, the Confederacy had one major port left on the Gulf of Mexico: Mobile, Alabama. The rebels knew this and Mobile Bay was heavily mined except for an unmarked channel used by blockade runners. In the mid-1800's, tethered naval mines were called torpedoes; the self-propelled devices fired by submarines and surface ships today did not yet exist. In his typical aggressive fashion, Farragut ordered his fleet of 18 ships (including four monitors, low-slung ironclad vessels named after the first ship of this type, the USS Monitor) into the lower bay. The wooden-hulled ships were lashed together in pairs and placed to the port side of the monitors. In that formation, they proceeded up the right side of the channel, almost directly under the guns of Fort Morgan. It was hoped the monitors would be able to absorb most of the shots from the fort while protecting the older wooden warships. When the Confederate ships inside the bay appeared, the combined firepower of the entire force would be unleashed on them.
Events proceeded more or less as planned until one of the monitors, the USS Tecumseh, strayed too far towards the center of the channel, struck a torpedo, and sank. The two columns of ships began to slow, now unsure if the assumption about Confederate torpedo placement was correct. Admiral Farragut, who had lashed himself to the rigging of his flagship, yelled at the bridge crew of the USS Brooklyn through his megaphone: “What's the trouble?”. “Torpedoes!” was the response to which an angry Farragut replied, “Damn the torpedoes! Four bells. Captain Drayton, go ahead! Jouett, full speed!”
While Farragut's order may seem reckless, the admiral believed that many of the torpedoes in Mobile Bay had been in service for years and were no longer capable of doing damage to an enemy ship due to saltwater corrosion. While we will never know if this calculation was correct, most of Farragut's fleet arrived in the lower part of the bay with little or no damage. The three forts guarding the bay were subdued and the only Confederate ironclad in the area was the ram Tennessee, whose captain tried to engage the entire Union fleet at one time. After a merciless pounding from the surviving Union monitors, the ship was surrendered.
In December, 1864, history was once again made when the rank of vice admiral was created and awarded to David Farragut by President Abraham Lincoln. He was the only officer in the navy to be placed at this rank, making him the highest ranking man in a naval uniform when the Civil War ended in April, 1865. In July, 1866, Congress created the rank of admiral and Farragut was appointed to that rank by President Andrew Johnson. The same bill cleared the way for David Dixon Porter, Farragut's adoptive brother, to be promoted to vice admiral. For the next four years, the brothers remained the two highest ranking officers in the post-Civil War navy.
Admiral Farragut's last active command was as the admiral in charge of the European Squadron, a position he held from 1867 to 1868. He retired that year but was placed on active duty for life, an honor granted to only six other naval officers in the country's history as of 2011.
David Farragut, the man who spent seven decades in the service of his nation, died in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, of a heart attack on August 14, 1870. He was 69 years old. After his death, David Porter was promoted to admiral in his brother's place. After Porter and Vice Admiral Stephen Rowan died, no naval officer held the rank of admiral or vice admiral again until 1915, when Congress authorized one position of each rank for each of the navy's fleets.
Today in 1801, David Glasgow Farragut was born at Lowe's Ferry, Tennessee, a settlement on the Tennessee River not far from the city of Knoxville. A family tragedy would ultimately propel the young man into a career at sea, a life of service which culminated in his becoming the first rear admiral, vice admiral, and admiral in the United States Navy. He is most remembered today for one phrase he uttered in the heat of battle, a phrase that spoke to the man's courage and fortitude under the most dire of circumstances.
The child who would become Admiral Farragut was given the first name James upon his birth. When his mother died in 1808, James' father arranged for him to be adopted by David Porter, a naval officer with two sons who would both become admirals during the Civil War along with their adoptive brother, who took the first name David in 1812 to honor the man who agreed to raise him as his own. It almost seemed inevitable that David Farragut would serve his nation at sea.
Through David Porter's influence, Farragut was commissioned a midshipman in the United States Navy in 1810; he was nine years old. It was not unusual for boys of his age to go to sea on warships, and Farragut had the good fortune to serve aboard the USS Essex, a frigate commanded by his adoptive father, now a captain. There was no naval academy for American naval officers at that time, so young men and boys slated for leadership positions learned their trade on the job. It was a tough school, even under the best of circumstances.
Midshipman Farragut was 11 when the War of 1812 began. By the time of his twelfth birthday, he had held the position of prize master, the temporary captain of a captured ship. In March, 1814, however, he and the crew of the Essex saw the tables turned when they were captured by the British outside Valparaiso Bay, Chile. Farragut was wounded during the engagement, not for the last time during his career.
Promotions were unbelievably slow in the post-war navy and Farragut was not promoted to lieutenant until 1822. Senior officers, some of them so elderly they could no longer go to sea, were kept on the active duty list while younger officers were marooned in lower ranks. As a result of this practice, Farragut was not promoted to commander until 1844 and did not achieve the rank of captain until 1855. By this time, he was 54 years old and had been in the service for 45 years.
Despite the slow pace of promotion, those years were well-spent by Farragut, and his professional experience during that time was extensive and varied. In the early 1820's he helped hunt pirates in the West Indies. During the Mexican-American war, he commanded the sloop Saratoga. But probably his most important contribution to the navy during the years between the War of 1812 and the Civil War was his role as the founding commander of the Mare Island Naval Yard at Vallejo, California. Mare Island served for years as the only facility on the west coast of the United States that was capable of overhauling a warship.
Farragut married for the first time in the mid-1820's to Susan Marchant. She suffered years of bad health and ultimately died in December, 1840. The future admiral married Virginia Loyall in 1843; this marriage produced one child, a son named Loyall Farragut, in 1844.
When southern states began to secede from the Union in late 1860, Captain Farragut found himself stationed in Norfolk, Virginia. Although both he and his wife were born in states that would eventually try to secede, Farragut made it clear that he regarded secession as treason and those who aided the movement as traitors. Nonetheless, the navy was initially reluctant to give Farragut a sea-going command once the Civil War began in April, 1861. Assigned to the Naval Retirement Board, it looked as if the 60-year old captain would spend the war behind a desk.
But it was not to be. For the second time in his career, Farragut was helped along by the intervention of his adopted family. His brother David Porter was able to offer him a special assignment, an opportunity to command a squadron. While Farragut was eager for a more active role, he was afraid his assignment would be to retake the naval facilities at Norfolk, Virginia, a town where he had forged many personal relationships in the years preceding the war. But the mission targeted a much more important city: New Orleans. Farragut was to be the man who wrested the south's most important port from Confederate control. His command was the West Gulf Blockading Squadron, and his flagship was the USS Hartford.
Early in the war, Union leaders decided that in addition to using the army to defeat the Confederate Army in the field, the Union Navy would be used to keep foreign goods from entering southern ports. The blockade was called the Anaconda Plan. In addition to active interdiction of ships, the plan called for the seizure of port facilities and sea defense forts from Virginia to the mouth of the Mississippi and up that river all the way to St. Louis, Missouri. New Orleans was the western anchor of the operation and controlling it was crucial to Union success on the Mississippi River.
Beginning on April 18th, 1862, Farragut's squadron bombarded Forts Jackson and St. Philip, two forts downriver from New Orleans. By April 24th he had thirteen ships past the forts and on April 29th Farragut and 250 Marines removed the Louisiana state flag from city hall and raised the Stars and Stripes. Major General Benjamin Butler and his Union force occupied the city on May 1st.
The United States Congress honored Farragut (and eight other senior captains) by creating the rank of rear admiral and promoting them to the position. Before then, there had been no admirals in the United States Navy. When squadrons of ships were sent on a specific mission, the senior captain was referred to as commodore or more generically as a flag officer. This was in sharp relief to European navies, most of whom were heavy with admirals. But the Civil War showed how necessary a clearly-defined chain of command was if the Union Navy were to expand quickly and remain an effective fighting force while doing so.
Rear Admiral Farragut followed up his success at New Orleans by sailing up the Mississippi with a flotilla of 38 ships in an attempt to subdue the artillery batteries at Vicksburg, Mississippi. Some of his ships were able to run past the batteries, but it was a symbolic gesture more than anything else. The guns defending the city and a Confederate ironclad (an iron-plated warship, new to the world at the time of the Civil War) forced Farragut to withdraw his forces back down the river in July, 1862.
The naval bombardment at Port Hudson in March, 1863 also proved unsuccessful. In an attack uncoordinated with Union General Nathaniel Banks' Army of the Gulf, Farragut's force of seven warships was badly damaged after dueling with heavy Confederate artillery ashore. When the smoke cleared, only Farragut's flagship, USS Hartford, and USS Albatross, were able to pass upstream and begin blockading the mouth of the Red River. What the admiral pictured was a pounding from the Mississippi River that would result in the rebels abandoning Port Hudson. What occurred was an initial Union defeat resulting in the port being taken under siege until July 9, 1863. While the Confederate force was eventually badly beaten, it only surrendered after news arrived that Union forces were in control of the fortifications at Vicksburg, Mississippi. It was a painful lesson for both the Union Army and Navy, as the campaign had the highest casualty rate of the war.
By the summer of 1864, the Confederacy had one major port left on the Gulf of Mexico: Mobile, Alabama. The rebels knew this and Mobile Bay was heavily mined except for an unmarked channel used by blockade runners. In the mid-1800's, tethered naval mines were called torpedoes; the self-propelled devices fired by submarines and surface ships today did not yet exist. In his typical aggressive fashion, Farragut ordered his fleet of 18 ships (including four monitors, low-slung ironclad vessels named after the first ship of this type, the USS Monitor) into the lower bay. The wooden-hulled ships were lashed together in pairs and placed to the port side of the monitors. In that formation, they proceeded up the right side of the channel, almost directly under the guns of Fort Morgan. It was hoped the monitors would be able to absorb most of the shots from the fort while protecting the older wooden warships. When the Confederate ships inside the bay appeared, the combined firepower of the entire force would be unleashed on them.
Events proceeded more or less as planned until one of the monitors, the USS Tecumseh, strayed too far towards the center of the channel, struck a torpedo, and sank. The two columns of ships began to slow, now unsure if the assumption about Confederate torpedo placement was correct. Admiral Farragut, who had lashed himself to the rigging of his flagship, yelled at the bridge crew of the USS Brooklyn through his megaphone: “What's the trouble?”. “Torpedoes!” was the response to which an angry Farragut replied, “Damn the torpedoes! Four bells. Captain Drayton, go ahead! Jouett, full speed!”
While Farragut's order may seem reckless, the admiral believed that many of the torpedoes in Mobile Bay had been in service for years and were no longer capable of doing damage to an enemy ship due to saltwater corrosion. While we will never know if this calculation was correct, most of Farragut's fleet arrived in the lower part of the bay with little or no damage. The three forts guarding the bay were subdued and the only Confederate ironclad in the area was the ram Tennessee, whose captain tried to engage the entire Union fleet at one time. After a merciless pounding from the surviving Union monitors, the ship was surrendered.
In December, 1864, history was once again made when the rank of vice admiral was created and awarded to David Farragut by President Abraham Lincoln. He was the only officer in the navy to be placed at this rank, making him the highest ranking man in a naval uniform when the Civil War ended in April, 1865. In July, 1866, Congress created the rank of admiral and Farragut was appointed to that rank by President Andrew Johnson. The same bill cleared the way for David Dixon Porter, Farragut's adoptive brother, to be promoted to vice admiral. For the next four years, the brothers remained the two highest ranking officers in the post-Civil War navy.
Admiral Farragut's last active command was as the admiral in charge of the European Squadron, a position he held from 1867 to 1868. He retired that year but was placed on active duty for life, an honor granted to only six other naval officers in the country's history as of 2011.
David Farragut, the man who spent seven decades in the service of his nation, died in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, of a heart attack on August 14, 1870. He was 69 years old. After his death, David Porter was promoted to admiral in his brother's place. After Porter and Vice Admiral Stephen Rowan died, no naval officer held the rank of admiral or vice admiral again until 1915, when Congress authorized one position of each rank for each of the navy's fleets.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)