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Updated: May 31, 2025
It was an awful moment the crisis of the fight and of Farragut's career as well. The ships were halted in a narrow channel, right beneath the forts; a few moments' delay meant that they would be blown out of the water. "What's the matter there?" he roared. "Torpedoes!" came the cry from the Brooklyn's deck, for her captain had perceived a line of little buoys stretching right across her path.
But the blow of the ram had done no damage, for she had struck one of the coils of chain that had been hung down the "Brooklyn's" side. The two vessels slowly swung apart; and, after a final broadside from the "Brooklyn," the "Manassas" drifted away in the pitchy darkness to seek for new adversaries.
From that time forward changes began to occur indicative of advancement and it is impossible to disassociate them from the fact that a part of the Brooklyn's cargo was a press and a font of type, and that the 238 colonists aboard that vessel and others who found their way to the little town, brought with them books more, one careful writer tells us, than could be found at the time in all the rest of the Territory put together."
Gentlemen of the Trustees, in accepting the Bridge at your hands, I thank you warmly in Brooklyn's name for your manifold and arduous labors. MR. PRESIDENT On behalf of the City of New York, I accept the great work which you now tender as ready for the public use of the two cities which it so substantially and, at the same time, so gracefully joins together.
Ladies and gentlemen, I take pleasure in introducing to you the orator of the day, Mr. Thomas P. Peters." Mr. Peters was greeted with hearty applause as he arose. His oration in part follows: ORATION OF MR. PETERS "To speak a word for Brooklyn at this time, I was not the first choice of the Committee of Arrangements. Unanimously that honor was assigned to one of Brooklyn's favorite sons.
"Has the Tennessee not fired yet?" anxiously asked Anna, but no one was sure. Across the breeze, that kept the near side of the picture uncurtained, she perfectly saw the Tecumseh close abreast of the flashing, smoke-shrouded fort, the Brooklyn to windward abreast of both, and the Hartford at the Brooklyn's heels with her signal fluttering to all behind, "Close order."
Fortunately, the rear ships were some little distance off; but Farragut, ignorant of the cause of the Brooklyn's action, saw his line of battle doubling up and threatened with an almost inextricable confusion, in the most difficult and exposed part of the passage, under a cross-fire from the fort and the enemy's vessels.
I beg your pardon most awfully for frightening you, but it's really very urgent." There was a brief silence. Then she said: "Brooklyn's a queer place. Wait a few minutes, please." Aubrey stood absently fingering the pattern on the wallpaper. He suddenly experienced a great craving for a pipe, but felt that the etiquette of the situation hardly permitted him to smoke.
Of still another firm, the most active member is a leader of Brooklyn's annual Sunday-school processions, though he prides himself on his cold blood, and before leaving his home in the morning to go to his office replaces his heart with a paving-stone. But why go on?
The wooden ships pushing into the bay through the torpedo-strewn channel and under the fierce storm of shot and shell from Fort Morgan, lashed together in pairs for mutual support in case of disaster; the sudden and tragic sinking of the Tecumseh by torpedo stroke, with the loss of the heroic Craven and most of his brave officers and men; the halt of the Brooklyn in mid-channel in face of that dire disaster, which, with the threatened huddling of the ships together by the inward sweep of the tide, portended swift discomfiture and possible defeat; the intuitive perception and quick decision that literally enabled Farragut to take the flood that led to fortune, in the instant ordering of the Hartford to push ahead with his flag and assume the lead he had relinquished only at the urgent request of the Brooklyn's commander; the restored order and prompt following of the fleet, regardless of torpedoes, on the new course blazed out by the eagle eye and emphatic tongue of the fearless old admiral as he grappled with the emergency from the futtock-shrouds of the flagship; the little boat putting off from the Metacomet, suddenly lighted up by its saucy ensign, in the midst of the fiery chaos and thunderous roar of battle, to save the few souls struggling in the water from the ill-fated Tecumseh, calling forth admiration, alike from friend and foe, at the intrepidity of its mission; the dash of the enemy's powerful ram Tennessee, clad in heaviest armor, down the Union line, endeavoring to strike each vessel in turn; the separation of the coupled ships when beyond the reach of Morgan's guns, and the dash of the gunboats led by Jouett, of the Metacomet, like hounds released from the leash, at the enemy's flotilla; the reappearance of leviathan Tennessee and the fierce tournament that ensued, with turtle-backed Chickasaw following close under her stern with bulldog grip that knew no release; the intrepid skill and desperate valor never surpassed, with which the ram manoeuvred and withstood the hammering and ramming of the wooden ships, the pounding and shattering of the ironclads, before she yielded to the inevitable fate that awaited her, all conspired to form a scene of grand and dramatic circumstance almost without parallel in naval warfare.
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