THE BATTLE OF MOBILE BAY.
Leaving New Orleans for Mobile at half-past four o’clock, by the usual
route, I reached Lake Ponchartrain by railroad in time to take the
steamer and be off at sunset.
The lake, with its low, dark-wooded shores, and its placid, glassy
waters, unruffled by a breeze, outspread under the evening sky, was a
scene of solitary and tranquil beauty. Here its breast was burnished
with the splendors of a reflected cloud, which faded, leaving upon the
darkening rim of the lake the most delicate belts of green, and blue,
and violet, until these faded in their turn, and the gloomy surface
appeared sprinkled all over with molten stars. Strange constellations
rose in the Southern hemisphere; while others about the opposite pole,
which never set in the latitude of the Northern States, were below the
horizon. The “Dipper” was dipped in the lake. I had never seen the North
Star so low before.
I walked the deck with the mate, who had been a good Rebel, and was
concerned in the capture of the United States steamer “Water Witch.”
“I had command of one of the boats,” said he. “There was a consultation
of officers, and it was proposed to make the attack that night at eleven
o’clock; we would have the tide with us then. ‘For that very reason,’ I
said, ‘I would postpone it until two. Then we shall have the tide
against us. It will be harder pulling down to her, but we can board
better, and if we miss grappling the first time we shan’t drift by and
get fired upon; and if we fail, we can come back on the tide.’”
The steamer was surprised, and the boarding was a success. “The officer
in command of our party was killed, and the command devolved upon me. I
got three wounds, one through this arm, one across my stomach, and one
through the fleshy part of my thigh. But I laid out a man for each
wound. I got to the cabin, and had my sword at the captain’s throat, and
would have run him through, if he hadn’t been mighty glib in his speech:
‘I surrender! I surrender!’ He didn’t stammer a bit! ‘Do you surrender
your command?’ ‘Yes, yes! I do!’ And in a minute I stopped the
fighting.”
This is the style of story one hears travelling anywhere in the South.
Lying in my berth in the cabin, I was kept awake half the night by Rebel
soldiers relating similar adventures.
[Illustration]
The next morning we were in the Gulf of Mexico. We had entered by the
South Pass, the tide being unfavorable for an inside passage between the
islands and the coast. It was a summer-like, beautiful day. Gulls and
pelicans were sailing around and over the steamer and sporting on the
waves. On the south was the open Gulf; on our left, a series of low,
barren, sandy islands,—Ship Island among them, reminding one of Butler’s
Expedition.
All the morning we sailed the lustrous, silken waters of the Gulf;
approaching in the afternoon the entrance to Mobile Bay. Porpoises were
tumbling, and pelicans diving, all around us. Flocks of gulls followed,
picking up the fragments of our dinner thrown overboard by the cook.
Sometimes a hundred would be fighting in the air for a morsel one of
them had picked up,—chasing the bird that bore it, snatching it,
dropping it, and darting to catch it as it fell,—until left far behind,
and almost lost to sight on the horizon; then they would come up again,
flapping low along our white wake, until another fragment attracted and
detained them.
We passed the curious, well-defined line, where the yellowish
river-water from the Bay and the pure liquid crystal of the Gulf met and
mingled. On our left, the long, smooth swells burst into white breakers
on the shoals below Pelican Island. On the point of Dauphin Island
beyond was Fort Gaines, while close upon our right, as we passed up, was
Fort Morgan, on a point of the main land,—its brick walls built upon a
sheet of sand white as snow.
Having kept the outside passage, instead of the usual route of the New
Orleans steamers, our course lay between these forts, up the main
ship-channel, past the scene of Farragut’s famous fight. I thought of
Brownell’s ringing lyric of that day:—
“Gaines growled low on our left,
Morgan roared on our right:
Before us, gloomy and fell,
With breath like the fume of hell,
Lay the Dragon of iron shell,
Driven at last to the fight!
* * * * *
“Every ship was drest
In her bravest and her best,
As if for a July day;
Sixty flags and three,
As we floated up the Bay;
Every peak and mast-head flew
The brave Red, White, and Blue:
We were eighteen ships that day.
* * * * *
“On in the whirling shade
Of the cannon’s sulphury breath,
We drew to the Line of Death
That our devilish Foe had laid;
Meshed in a horrible net,
And baited villanous well,
Right in our path were set
Three hundred traps of hell!”
These were the torpedoes, one of which destroyed the iron clad
“Tecumseh,” Commander T. A. M. Craven.
“A moment we saw her turret,
A little heel she gave,
And a thin white spray went o’er her,
Like the crest of a breaking wave;
In that great iron coffin,
The Channel for their grave,
The Fort their monument,
(Seen afar in the offing,)
Ten fathom deep lie Craven,
And the bravest of our brave.”
We passed very near to the spot where that “great iron coffin” still
lies at the bottom of the stream.
But the ships went in undismayed.
“Right abreast of the Fort,
In an awful shroud they lay,
Broadsides thundering away,
And lightnings in every port,—
Scene of glory and dread!
A storm-cloud all aglow
With flashes of fiery red,
The thunder raging below,
And the forest of flags overhead!
* * * * *
“Fear? a forgotten form!
Death? a dream of the eyes!
We were atoms in God’s great storm
That roared through the angry skies.”
The combat with the Rebel ram “Tennessee,” the “Dragon of iron shell,”
commanded by Admiral Buchanan, (the same who commanded the “Merrimac” in
her brief but brilliant career in Hampton Roads,) was as fierce as any
of the old sea-fights, but wholly unique and modern.
“Half the fleet, in an angry ring,
Closed round the hideous Thing,
Hammering with solid shot,
And bearing down, bow on bow:
He has but a minute to choose;
Life or Renown?—which now
Will the Rebel Admiral lose?
“Cruel, haughty, and cold,
He was ever strong and bold:
Shall he shrink from a wooden stem?
He will think of that brave band
He sank in the ‘Cumberland,’—
Ay, he will sink like them!
“Nothing left but to fight
Boldly his last sea-fight!
Can he strike? By Heaven, ’t is true!
Down comes the traitor Blue,
And up goes the captive White!
“Up went the White! Ah, then,
The hurrahs that once and again
Rang from three thousand men
All flushed and savage with fight!
Our dead lay cold and stark,
But our dying, down in the dark,
Answered as best they might,—
Lifting their poor lost arms,
And cheering for God and Right!”