Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 Excerpt:...the channel (nearly west). Another battery of nearly the same strength they have placed on the beach farther to the north, and apparently in front of the curtain, which bears upon (enfilades) the channel after it changes its course to nearly northwest. The inference can be fairly drawn that on these, the two strongest water fronts, and the only ones originally designed to mount guns in casemate, the casemates have been closed or masked, since the embrasures were not high enough to clear the guns mounted on the beach in front, as above described. The information we have corroborates this inference. I regret that I can not state the precise number and caliber of guns bearing upon the different portions of the channel. The number on the two principal water fronts is probably about thirty each of the above-named calibers, and on the front, looking on the channel approach, about fifteen, all 7-inch rifles. The entire fleet off Mobile consisted of 4 monitors and 26 wooden ships. Of these, all but 12 wooden ships started for the bay. These 12 were left for the purpose of blockade and external cooperation. My sketch herewith will give you very clearly the admiral's dispositions for the passage, which were ingenious and strategic. The object in lashing by twos was to diminish the chance of sinking or abandonment, one of a couple being struck, for example, so as to sink her, the other would float her up; or, if her machinery were disabled, her consort would take her through. The intervals were determined (for the wooden ships) by the consideration that as one couple turned at B (see sketch), upon the new course, so as to be exposed to the raking fire of the fort, the next succeeding couple would be throwing its broadsides of grape and canister into the raking batteri...