Battle of Mobile Bay

August 5, 1864 · Western Theater

Phases

1. 16 AM — Running the FortsAugust 5, 1864 — 6:00 to 7:45 AM
2. 27 AM — “Damn the Torpedoes!”August 5, 1864 — 7:45 to 8:30 AM
3. 310 AM — The Tennessee Strikes Her ColorsAugust 5–23, 1864

August 5, 1864 — 6:00 to 7:45 AM

Farragut’s column — four monitors inshore, fourteen wooden ships lashed in pairs — stands into the channel under Fort Morgan’s guns at first light. The monitor Tecumseh, racing the ram Tennessee, cuts across the marked torpedo field and strikes a mine: she rolls over and sinks in twenty-five seconds, taking 93 men. The column bunches, dead in the water under the fort’s guns, on the edge of catastrophe.

• ➤Farragut’s column — Fourteen ships lashed in pairs run the gauntlet
• ●Fort Morgan
• ●Fort Gaines
• ●The torpedo line — moored mines across the channel
• ●USS Tecumseh strikes a torpedo — sinks in 25 seconds