Mobile Bay

Lester Moore

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Sep 24, 2021
I have found very little written on the "first" battle of Mobile Bay, February 1864. It involved Ft. Gaines and Ft. Powell. Any suggested reading anyone know of.
 
I found this on the internet...interesting. The first battle of Mobile Bay was called Battle of Fort Powell...February of 1864.
Apparently, the main battle of Mobile Bay, May 1864, Admiral Farragut denied saying, "D... the torpedoes...full speed ahead!" That phrase was embellished by a New York Times journalist. He actually said, "D...! torpedoes...full speed ahead." a little different meaning. This forum will not allow the actual word "Dam."

Farragut Loses at Fort Powell
 
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I have found very little written on the "first" battle of Mobile Bay, February 1864. It involved Ft. Gaines and Ft. Powell. Any suggested reading anyone know of.
I was working on a thread on Ft Powell but have been tied up with family issues. I recently acquired 3 CS artillery rds fired from Ft Powell and recovered back in the 70's from the sand bars in front of the fort. Below is some of my research and the shells. More will be in the thread.


When the Civil War began in April 1861, the Confederacy first attempted to fortify the pass with a battery of three 32-pounder cannon on Grant's Island. Parapets, or walls, of oyster shell and sand shielded the battery, which was later supplemented by an 8-inch Columbiad cannon.

Col. William Llewellyn Powell was in overall command of the lower bay defenses but fell ill and subsequently died on September 25, 1863. In October, Fort Grant was officially re-named Fort Powell in his honor.

Fort Powell was a sand fortification constructed by the Confederacy to guard the entrance into Mobile Bay from the Mississippi Sound. Located at Grant's Pass slightly northwest of Fort Morgan and north of Fort Gaines, the fort was constructed on a half-acre artificial island of oyster shells and sand.

The most significant engagement Fort Powell took part in was the Battle of Mobile Bay. Around 7:50 a.m. on August 5, 1864, Farragut and his fleet got past Fort Morgan and engaged the Confederate fleet. The naval battle between U.S. Navy and Confederate ships was finished by 10:30 a.m. At this point, federal forces focused on attacking and capturing Forts Powell, Gaines, and Morgan.

Fort Powell received several hits from federal artillery on August 5, but none of the men inside were harmed. One shell demonstrated the fort's vulnerability by entering one of the sally ports and passing through a bombproof shelter before burying itself in the opposite wall. Meanwhile, shells hitting the face of the fort drastically shifted the sand so quickly that Col. Williams feared he could not hold out long. Williams telegraphed Col. Charles D. Anderson at Fort Gaines that Fort Powell should be evacuated, or else he would be forced to surrender within two days at the most. Anderson advised Williams to save his men when the fort was no longer defensible. Believing that time was at hand, William waited until low tide and marched his approximately 140-man garrison to Cedar Point. The retreating Confederates blew up the fort at 10:30 p.m. on August 5. U.S. military reports show some ammunition and several guns were intact among the rubble, despite the Confederate effort to destroy the fort.

Fort Powell was the only fortification in Mobile Bay constructed by Confederate forces, as well as the only fortification in the lower bay defenses built using sand with wooden reinforcements instead of brick. The cypress plank that this pen is made from was recovered from the fort site in 1980 after a hurricane uncovered the island. Today there are no remains of the island showing.

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Sir - this might be of interest to you...

Louisiana State University
LSU Digital Commons
LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses
Graduate School
1980

The Confederate Defense of Mobile, 1861-1865. (Volumes I-Ii).
Arthur William Bergeron Jr

Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected].

ABSTRACT
The people of Mobile, Alabama, supported the secession of their state from the Union in January 1861, and thousands of her able-bodied men served in the Confederate army from 1861 to 1865. Recognizing the city's strategic importance as a port and major railroad center connecting the eastern and western sections of the new nation, the Confederate government moved quickly to provide adequate defenses for Mobile. Confederate soldiers occupied and began to strengthen Fort Morgan and Fort Gaines, which guarded the main channels leading into Mobile Bay. The Confederate Navy Department converted several steamers into gunboats and began construction of four ironclads, all designed to support the land defenses of Mobile.

As the war progressed, Union land and naval forces moved into the Gulf of Mexico, and the Confederate authorities realized that Mobile required more defensive works than the two forts at the mouth of the bay. Engineers, using slave labor, designed and constructed earthen forts along the bay shore near the city and on various islands at the mouths of the rivers which emptied into the bay. They intended all of these batteries to protect the water approaches to Mobile in the event of an enemy naval force running past Fort Morgan and Fort Gaines. To protect the city from a land attack, the engineers erected a series of earthen redoubts connected by infantry entrenchments around Mobile. By war's end, three separate lines of forts and trenches surrounded the city. Mobile undoubtedly possessed fortifications as extensive and strong as almost any city in the Confederacy.

Confederate President Jefferson Davis personally chose for assignment as commanding general at Mobile men whom he knew had the qualifications needed to push the construction of all of these defensive works and whom he could rely on to conduct a successful defense against an enemy attack. Confederate brigades, regiments, and artillery batteries moved in and out of the city throughout the war. Although the garrison at times shrank in size to levels which alarmed its commanders, the Confederate military authorities in Richmond made a commitment to see that enough men manned the fortifications to put up a stiff resistance to an actual enemy attack. The War Department also always made sure that the territorial command to which Mobile belonged, whether a department or a district, had the defense of the city as its objective.

The Union high command did not seriously contemplate an attack against the Mobile defenses until relatively late in the war. While strategic objectives in other areas caused the Union military authorities to delay a move against Mobile, the strength of the defenses around the city played a part in the decision. A naval demonstration against an earthen fort at Grant's Pass in February 1864 resulted in little damage to that work. Admiral David G. Farragut successfully led a squadron of monitors and wooden gunboats past Fort Morgan and Fort Gaines in August 1864 and captured the lower bay defenses. The commitment of land forces elsewhere prevented the Union navy from proceeding at that time in a campaign against Mobile itself. Such a campaign finally got under way in March 1865, but it had defensive works on the eastern shore as its primary objective. After brief sieges, these Confederate fortifications fell. Faced by overwhelming numbers, Mobile's commander
evacuated the city on April 12, 1865, and the city's governmental authorities surrendered Mobile to the enemy that same day.


Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 

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I was working on a thread on Ft Powell but have been tied up with family issues. I recently acquired 3 CS artillery rds fired from Ft Powell and recovered back in the 70's from the sand bars in front of the fort. Below is some of my research and the shells. More will be in the thread.


When the Civil War began in April 1861, the Confederacy first attempted to fortify the pass with a battery of three 32-pounder cannon on Grant's Island. Parapets, or walls, of oyster shell and sand shielded the battery, which was later supplemented by an 8-inch Columbiad cannon.

Col. William Llewellyn Powell was in overall command of the lower bay defenses but fell ill and subsequently died on September 25, 1863. In October, Fort Grant was officially re-named Fort Powell in his honor.

Fort Powell was a sand fortification constructed by the Confederacy to guard the entrance into Mobile Bay from the Mississippi Sound. Located at Grant's Pass slightly northwest of Fort Morgan and north of Fort Gaines, the fort was constructed on a half-acre artificial island of oyster shells and sand.

The most significant engagement Fort Powell took part in was the Battle of Mobile Bay. Around 7:50 a.m. on August 5, 1864, Farragut and his fleet got past Fort Morgan and engaged the Confederate fleet. The naval battle between U.S. Navy and Confederate ships was finished by 10:30 a.m. At this point, federal forces focused on attacking and capturing Forts Powell, Gaines, and Morgan.

Fort Powell received several hits from federal artillery on August 5, but none of the men inside were harmed. One shell demonstrated the fort's vulnerability by entering one of the sally ports and passing through a bombproof shelter before burying itself in the opposite wall. Meanwhile, shells hitting the face of the fort drastically shifted the sand so quickly that Col. Williams feared he could not hold out long. Williams telegraphed Col. Charles D. Anderson at Fort Gaines that Fort Powell should be evacuated, or else he would be forced to surrender within two days at the most. Anderson advised Williams to save his men when the fort was no longer defensible. Believing that time was at hand, William waited until low tide and marched his approximately 140-man garrison to Cedar Point. The retreating Confederates blew up the fort at 10:30 p.m. on August 5. U.S. military reports show some ammunition and several guns were intact among the rubble, despite the Confederate effort to destroy the fort.

Fort Powell was the only fortification in Mobile Bay constructed by Confederate forces, as well as the only fortification in the lower bay defenses built using sand with wooden reinforcements instead of brick. The cypress plank that this pen is made from was recovered from the fort site in 1980 after a hurricane uncovered the island. Today there are no remains of the island showing.

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Great info UCV !

:thumbsup:
 
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Farragut referred to the February 1864 bombardment of Fort Powell in a letter to G.V. Fox, Asst. Sec. of the Navy: "We have been making a diversion in favor of Genl. Sherman, by attacking Fort Powell, (as it is called) on Shell Island in Grant's Pass." To Gideon Welles, Sec. of the Navy, he wrote "I have been shelling Fort Powell, on Shell Island, in Grant's Pass, Mississippi Sound, during the past week, but have made but little impression upon it, as we cannot approach nearer than 4,000 yards... We cannot get within 800 yards in the small boats, so as to assault it, but it assists General Sherman by keeping up the idea of an attack upon Mobile, which is looked for hourly by the Confederates. Would that were true; now is the propitious time." Farragut's reference was to Sherman's "Meridian Raid."
 
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Farragut's reference was to Sherman's "Meridian Raid."
Wow !

I never knew the Union Army & Navy had that much coordination between the "Meridian, Mississippi Raid" and capturing Mobile.
But it makes perfect sense!

The CSA was protecting Mobile, Alabama at all costs during that late stage of the War.
The Confederate "Brass" even ordered General Nathan Bedford Forrest down to the Mobile area.
But that was too little too late.

Considering what the Confederate States Navy was facing, they did give the United States Navy more than a few surprises.
Their flagship, CSS Tennessee remains my favorite Confederate ironclad.

From what I have read in the book "Confederate Mobile," there were three different attacks on Ft.Powell by the Union Fleet in February of 1864. Naturally, the main battle of of Mobile Bay was August of that same year.

BTW, welcome to CWT @Lester Moore !

There more than a few threads on this site about Mobile Bay.
 
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Operational Art and the Campaigns for Mobile, 1864–65: A Staff Ride Handbook
Daniel W. Jordan III
A Staff Ride Handbook
Combat Studies Institute Press
US Army Combined Arms Center
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

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Foreword
This particular work encompasses two separate campaigns in the area of operations around Mobile Bay, Alabama. Both campaigns include the elements of what we now call joint operations. The first campaign, navy-led and supported by modest ground operations, took place in August 1864. In this campaign, Rear Admiral David Farragut led a joint operation whose objective was to control access into and within Mobile Bay. The main effort was a naval operation, but Army ground forces took part in seizing two separate fortifications, including the mighty Fort Morgan at the mouth of the Bay. The second campaign took place the following spring of 1865. In this joint operation, conducted on the east side of Mobile Bay, the service roles were reversed: army-led with naval support. Notably, the 1865 campaign could not have been conducted without Farragut's success in August 1864, thus bringing to life the idea that a campaign is a series of joint, sequenced, and related operations "aimed at achieving strategic and operational objectives within a given time and space" (Army Doctrine Reference Publication 3-0, Unified Land Operations). The lessons of operational art and campaign planning were just as relevant in 1864–65 as they are today. Throughout this handbook, the lessons from the operations around Mobile Bay are juxtaposed with these current concepts. The author also paid particular attention to the roles of the African American soldier in these two campaigns. Quotations are historically correct, and the book uses the historical unit designation of "US Colored Troops" or USCT. However, when discussed in the narrative, African American soldiers are treated with dignity and respect using modern terminology. Thus, the text within reflects the evolution of Black America, from breaking racist barriers during the Civil War to its historical representation today. This handbook also incorporates a variety of themes that touch on our understanding of the levels of war, from the strategic through the operational to the tactical. These themes include leadership, small-unit tactics, appreciation for the terrain, time and space, Army and Joint doctrinal principles, as well as the principles of the operational art. Followed diligently, the directions within will take you from stand to stand (or stops), allow you to present information pertinent to that stand, and introduce modern doctrinal principals using historical examples. Feel free to modify and adjust the staff ride within to reflect your particular unit or personal training objectives. However, please remain cognizant of the courage and bravery of the individual sailor, marine, and soldier in the course of these two campaigns, for that is what binds us across the ages as a profession of arms.


Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 

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