Battle of Mobile Bay
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The Battle of Mobile Bay , painting by Louis Prang
| date | August 5. bis 23. August 1864 |
|---|---|
| place | Mobile Bay , off the coast of Alabama |
| output | USA victory |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
| Troop strength | |
| 14 wooden ships 4 monitors 2 gunboats |
1 Ironclad 3 gunboats |
| losses | |
|
145 dead |
12 dead |
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The Battle of Mobile Bay was a naval battle during the American Civil War in which the Union captured an important Confederate supply base during the Atlanta Campaign . The naval battle itself took place on August 5, 1864, the remainder of the time up to August 23 included the siege of the Confederate forts Fort Gaines and Fort Morgan .
initial situation
Mobile Bay with the city of Mobile , Alabama was one of the last two ports of the Confederation after New Orleans , Louisiana and Galveston , Texas had previously fallen into the hands of the Union. It was one of the main points of contact for blockade breakers and the Gulf of Mexico was protected on two offshore islands with the opposing forts Gaines and Morgan. Troops could more easily be shipped over the Alabama to Selma , Alabama, and from there by march or rail to Atlanta , Georgia, which was besieged in 1864 during the Atlanta campaign. The capture of the port of Mobile Bay would mean cutting off that Confederation supply line. In addition, the Commander-in-Chief of the West Gulf Blockade Fleet Rear Admiral David Glasgow Farragut wanted to forestall the construction of further armored ships in Mobile Bay. The plan was to take the port and two forts nearby.
When inspecting the site in January 1864, Farragut realized that in addition to the sailing ships patrolling the port and maintaining the blockade, reinforcement by landing troops and especially by armored ships was required. At this point in time, the Confederates had hardly any naval forces at their disposal. Farragut saw the opportunity and requested reinforcement from landing forces. To his disappointment, he fell on deaf ears in Washington (instead high hopes were placed in the Red River campaign) and had to sit by and watch as the southern states continued laying mines, equipping their own Ironclad, the CSS Tennessee , and three wooden gunboats ( Gaines , Selma , Morgan ) stationed in Mobile Bay. The establishment of combat readiness was also delayed among the Confederates due to problems with the equipment and the composition of the crew, which Admiral Franklin Buchanan had to recruit from the troops of General Dabney Maury stationed in Mobile .
Farragut himself only received his first ironclad in June / July and also the landing troops necessary for the siege, which General Edward Canby only promised him in mid-June. The attack from the sea was originally supposed to start on August 3rd, but since the Union ironclads were not complete until two days later, the attack was postponed to these two days.
For defense, the southern states had mined Mobile Bay with numerous torpedoes , which were also effective against ironclads. However, these were not torpedoes in the current sense, but sea mines . These mines were placed in the middle between the two islands, so that enemy ships were forced to pass near the forts.
Naval battle
Farragut commanded 14 wooden sailing ships, including the corvette USS Hartford as the flagship , and the four monitors (ironclad ships) USS Tecumseh , USS Manhattan , USS Winnebago and USS Chickasaw . The Brooklyn led the fleet because they also had a device to protect against mines and so "blasted the way free".
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The attack from the sea began at 5:30 a.m. As expected, the Confederation forts opened fire on the 14 sailing ships. It was planned that the Association of Sailors and the Ironclads should only meet shortly before the port entrance, but the USS Tecumseh , leading the Ironclads, was too early at the meeting point and could not join the association protected by the Brooklyn vanguard . A torpedo tore open the Tecumseh . The iron ship sank in just 25 seconds, with only 21 of the 114 crew members surviving. The sinking of the Tecumseh made up the majority of the 140 men lost by the Union in this naval battle, in which the southern states officially lost only 10 men in total.
At the same time, the convoy of sailors found that the minefield was narrower than expected, whereupon the Brooklyn initially stopped. However, Farragut on the USS Hartford realized that the formation had to keep moving in order not to be exposed to the fortress artillery and issued the following slogan, which is still famous in the USA today: “ Damn the torpedos! Full speed ahead! ”(In German:“ Forget the torpedoes! Full speed ahead! ”). Farragut climbed the mainmast to keep track of the gunpowder smoke and let his flagship take the lead. In fact, with luck, all ships managed to pass the entrance with relatively little damage.
In the bay, an attack by the three Confederate gunboats Selma , Gaines and Morgan was repulsed by the Union fleet without major problems. The Morgan managed to escape, the Gaines ran aground on a sandbank and was destroyed by its own crew. The Selma capitulated after the captain was badly wounded. The last line of defense was the CSS Tennessee , the flagship of Admiral Franklin Buchanan. She tried unsuccessfully to ram the USS Hartford . The much lighter sailor could avoid her without any problems. In the ensuing battle, the Union ships tried to ram the Ironclad, but had little success. In the long run, the heavy bombardment of the encircled Tennessee , most recently by the Chickasaw and Manhattan at close range, had an effect. A bullet finally penetrated the armor and destroyed the rudder. Admiral Buchanan was seriously injured. His first officer Johnston, who had taken command, had to fly the white flag shortly afterwards. The sea battle was over. The Tennessee was quickly repaired and shortly afterwards used as the USS Tennessee by the Union in the siege of Fort Morgan.
Battles on land
Siege of Fort Gaines
The land battle had already begun on August 3rd with the bombardment of Fort Gaines , west of the entrance to Mobile Bay . Troops under General Gordon Granger had landed on Dauphin Island and began to lock down and siege Fort Gaines . 818 infantry men were trapped in the fort and their commander, Charles D. Anderson , had been instructed to hold out at all costs. Circled on all sides after the naval battle, however, Anderson preferred to surrender on August 8th.
Siege of Fort Morgan
After the surrender of the first fortress, the Union troops immediately moved on to Fort Morgan to force the second fort to surrender . The 618 men in the fort faced 5,500 Union soldiers. The besieging troops under Major General Gordon Granger began heavy artillery fire on August 9th, which the besieged had little to counter. When supplies were running low and the mortar bombardment intensified from less than 500 m after two external batteries were lost on August 16, the Confederates capitulated in the fort on August 23. The commander, General Richard L. Page , a cousin of Robert E. Lee , who preferred to break his sword rather than hand it over at the surrender, was arrested after the end of the fighting because he allegedly still had equipment and ammunition, contrary to the surrender conditions let destroy. A court martial in New Orleans acquitted him in July 1865.
Consequences of the battle
Mobile Bay was the last port of the Confederation east of Texas in the Gulf of Mexico; What remained were the ports of Wilmington and the heavily blocked Charleston on the Atlantic and Galveston in Texas. The city of Mobile itself remained in Confederate hands until the Battle of Fort Blakely in April 1865, but was cut off. The success was initially not really recognized by the north, and it was only later that the victory was described as the first of two fatal blows against the Confederation - the other was the capture of Atlanta in early September 1864.
literature
- David Stephen Heidler, Jeanne T. Heidler: Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History (WW Norton & Co Ltd), ISBN 0-393-04758-X .
- William C. Davis The American Civil War - Soldiers, Generals, Battles , Bechtermünz 2000.
Web links
- Full description of the battle
- CSS Tennessee in the Battle of Mobile Bay
- Fort Morgan and Mobile Bay from the National Park Service
- John Coddington Kinney: Farragut at Mobile Bay , in Buel, Johnson (ed) Battles and Leaders Vol. 4
Remarks
- ↑ In May 1864 the Commander-in-Chief of the Gulf Army , General Nathaniel P. Banks , tried to capture Mobile from land. The campaign failed across the board.
- ↑ "DAMN THE TORPEDOES!" "Full speed ahead!" , National Park Service , US Department of the Interior , Vicksburg National Military Park (pdf)
- ↑ In addition, he was better informed about the minefields than his commanders and was thus able to better assess the risk. William Davis The American Civil War , Bechtermünz
- ↑ James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 775