David Farragut

The Union Navy captures New Orleans in April 1862.

U.S. Naval forces under David Farragut run past Confederate defenses south of New Orleans.

Confederate forces abandon the city, giving the Union a critical anchor in the deep South, which allows Union forces to begin moving up the Mississippi.

Memphis falls to Union forces on June 6, 1862, and becomes a key base for further advances south along the Mississippi River.

Only the fortress city of Vicksburg, Mississippi, prevents Union control of the entire river.

A Union force of seventeen ships and fifteen thousand troops under Flag Officer David G. Farragut and General Benjamin F. Butler bombards New Orleans, the South's most significant seaport, from April 24-25.

The city is taken on May 18, securing access to the Mississippi River.

Butler occupies the city with a strong military government that will cause considerable resentment among the civilian population.

Congress honors David G. Farragut by creating the rank of rear admiral on July 16, 1862, a rank never before used in the U.S. Navy.

Before this time, the American Navy had resisted the rank of admiral, preferring the term "flag officer", to distinguish the rank from the traditions of the European navies.

Lincoln believes that the river fortress city of Vicksburg, Mississippi, is a key to winning the war.

Vicksburg and Port Hudson are the last remaining strongholds that prevent full Union control of the Mississippi River.

Situated on high bluffs overlooking a sharp bend in the river and called the "Gibraltar of the Mississippi", Vicksburg is nearly invulnerable to naval assault.

Admiral David Farragut had found this directly in his failed operations of May 1862.

The overall plan to capture Vicksburg is for Ulysses S. Grant to move south from Memphis and Major General Nathaniel P. Banks to move north from Baton Rouge.

Banks's advance is slow to develop and bogs down at Port Hudson, offering little assistance to Grant.

Several forts, the largest of which is Fort Morgan, defend Alabama’s Mobile Bay.

A line of mines ("torpedos”) on one side of the bay's channel obliges any attacking ships to pass close to Fort Morgan on the other side of the channel, and the Confederate ironclad Tennessee is also stationed in the bay.

On August 5, 1864, Rear Admiral David Farragut's force enters the bay in two columns, with armored monitors leading and a fleet of wooden frigates following.

When the lead monitor, Tecumseh, is demolished by a mine, the leading wooden ship, Brooklyn, halts in alarm, and the entire line of ships drifts in confusion under the very guns of Fort Morgan.

As disaster looms, Farragut shouts his famous words, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” to the hesitating Brooklyn.

Swinging his own ship, the Hartford, clear, he heads across the mines, which fail to explode.

The rest of the fleet follows and anchors above the forts.

Then, the Tennessee emerges from the shelter of the fort and, after a hard fight during which it is repeatedly rammed, surrenders.

The forts, now isolated, surrender one by one, with Fort Morgan the last to do so.