The Anchors Aweigh series was placed in honor of the men of the
US Navy who have served in the defense of our country. Each cache
is dedicated to one of the warships involved in battle. If you find
all the caches in the series, you’ll reveal some nice GeoArt
on your cache map. These are not difficult caches to find. If you
cannot find a cache easily, it’s probably missing. Send me a
picture (by email, not in your log) of where you think the cache
should be, and I’ll accept the find and replace the
cache.
Because of the difficulty in finding suitable locations for some
of the caches, some puzzle caches were used (not this one) so that
the find icon could be in a location separate from the cache. You
should be able to solve the puzzles with information on this cache
page. I suggest you solve the puzzles before you make your cache
run, to help optimize the route.
USS Hartford
USS Hartford, a sloop-of-war, was the first ship of the
United States Navy named for Hartford, the capital of
Connecticut.
Hartford was launched 22 November 1858 at the Boston Navy
Yard and saw action during the Civil War in several battles in the
Gulf of Mexico as the North enforced a blockage against Southern
Gulf ports. Perhaps the most well known was the Battle of Mobile
Bay, during which Admiral Farragut was credited with the famous
words, "Damn the torpedos, full speed ahead!"
Hartford continued as an active ship of the US Navy until
the end of World War II. On 19 October 1945, she was towed to the
Norfolk Navy Yard and classified as a relic. Unfortunately she was
allowed to deteriorate and as a result Hartford sank at her
berth on 20 November 1956. She proved beyond salvage and was
subsequently dismantled.
Battle of Mobile Bay
The man who led the Union fleet at Mobile Bay was Rear Adm.
David G. Farragut, no longer Flag Officer Farragut. The U.S. Navy
had undergone an organizational change in the second year of the
war, one feature of which was the creation of the rank of rear
admiral. The new rank implied that the ships of the navy would be
employed as members of a fleet, not simply as collections of
vessels with a common purpose.
Farragut ordered the 14 wooden-hulled Union vessels would be
lashed together in pairs, in a reprise of a tactic that the admiral
had used earlier at Port Hudson, Louisiana. The intent was that, if
a ship were to be disabled by battle damage to her engines, her
partner would be able to keep her moving.
At dawn on August 5, conditions were nearly ideal for the
attack. The tide was running in, so Farragut had his ships reduce
steam pressure in order to minimize damage if their boilers were to
be hit; he relied on the current to give them speed. The southwest
breeze that sprang up would carry smoke from the guns away from the
fleet, and into the faces of the artillerymen in Fort Morgan, once
of three Confederate forts defending Mobile.
Shortly after the start of the action, monitor USS
Tecumseh moved past the fort and toward the sole Confederate
ironclad, Tennessee, apparently in obedience to that part of
her orders. Commander Tunis A. M. Craven either disregarded or
forgot the instruction to stay to the east of a minefield, so he
took his ship directly across. Almost immediately a torpedo went
off under her hull, and she filled with water and sank in two or
three minutes. Only 21 of her crew of 114 were saved. Craven was
among those lost, so he could not explain his decisions.
Cap. James Alden of Brooklyn was apparently confused by
conflicting orders, so he stopped his ship and signaled Farragut
for instructions. Farragut would not stop his flagship; he ordered
Cap. Percival Drayton to send Hartford around
Brooklyn and into the lead of the column. This took the ship
into the torpedoes that had just sunk Tecumseh, but Farragut
was confident that most of them had been submerged too long to be
effective. His seeming gamble paid off, and the entire column of 14
warships passed through unharmed.
The balance was tilted finally when two monitors arrived.
Tennessee was already almost motionless, her smokestack shot
away and unable to build up boiler pressure. Her rudder chains were
parted, so she could not steer. Furthermore, some of the shutters
on her gun ports were jammed, rendering the guns behind them
useless. Chickasaw took up position at her stern, and
Manhattan began to pummel the ram with her 15 in (380 mm)
guns. The heavy shot bent in the iron shield and shattered its oak
backing.
Fragments killed or wounded some of the crew; one of the
casualties was Adm. Buchanan himself, who suffered a badly broken
leg. No longer able to fight, Commander James D. Johnston, captain
of Tennessee, requested and received permission from the
wounded admiral to surrender. A little more than three hours had
elapsed since Tecumseh had fired the first shot.
An anecdote of the battle that has some dramatic interest has it
that Farragut was lashed to the mast during the passage of Fort
Morgan. The image it brings to mind is of absolute resolve: if his
ship were to be sunk in the battle, he would go down with her. The
truth is more prosaic; while he was indeed lashed to the rigging of
the mainmast, it was a precautionary move rather than an act of
defiance. It came about after the battle had opened and smoke from
the guns had clouded the air. In order to get a better view of the
action, Farragut climbed into Hartford's rigging, and soon
was high enough that a fall would certainly incapacitate him and
could have killed him. Seeing this, Captain Drayton sent a seaman
aloft with a piece of line to secure the admiral. He demurred,
saying, "Never mind, I am all right," but the sailor obeyed his
captain's orders, tying one end of the line to a forward shroud,
then around the admiral and to the after shroud.
Later, when CSS Tennessee made her unsupported attack on
the Federal fleet, Farragut climbed into the mizzen rigging. Still
concerned for his safety, Captain Drayton had Flag-Lieutenant J.
Crittenden Watson tie him to the rigging again. Thus, the admiral
had been tied to the rigging twice in the course of the battle.
Most popular accounts of the battle relate that when
Brooklyn slowed when Tecumseh crossed her path,
Farragut asked why she was not moving ahead. When the reply came
back that torpedoes were in her path, he is said to have said,
"Damn the torpedoes." The story did not appear in print until
several years later, and some historians ask whether it happened at
all. Some forms of the story are highly unlikely; the most
widespread is that he shouted to Brooklyn, "Damn the
torpedoes! Go ahead!" Men present at the battle doubted that any
such verbal communication could be heard above the din of the guns.
More likely, if it happened, is that he said to the captain of
Hartford, "Damn the torpedoes. Four bells, Captain Drayton."
Then he shouted to the commander of Metacomet, lashed to
Hartford's side, "Go ahead, Jouett, full speed." The words
have been altered in time to the more familiar, "Damn the
torpedoes, full speed ahead!"