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Updated: June 12, 2025
So we fell back on Sveaborg, which place was bombarded by the combined fleets, I venture to think most successfully, and I believe, had we had a force to land, we could have taken possession of that large and important fortress. Our losses during the operation were small on board the squadron of mortar-boats which I had the good luck to command some fifty-eight men hors de combat.
Farther down in the bend of the stream above Vicksburg he came upon a more animated scene. Here were the mortar-boats in full blast, bombarding the city, every shot lighting up the stream for a wide space around. But the gun crews were too busy to pay any attention to the seeming drift-log that glided silently by the fleet or to notice the man that lay at full length within it.
The mortar-boats, or "bombers," as they began to be called, were anchored between 3,000 and 4,000 yards below Fort Jackson, upon which the attack was mainly to be directed. From the view of those in the fort, the boats that lay under the right bank were covered by trees.
It had only served to prove, that, safe in their heavy earthworks, the Confederates could defy any attack by ships alone. This fact was clear to the Union authorities, and they began massing troops about the hostile works. Two months later, Porter's mortar-boats, the frigates and gunboats, and the batteries and muskets of an immense body of troops, opened on the works.
On March 15th, Commodore Foote moved with his fleet of gunboats and mortar-boats to the neighborhood of Island No. 10, and next day engaged the batteries on the island and the main-land, at long range, to ascertain their position and armament. Next day five gunboats and four mortar-boats moved down to within two thousand yards of the upper battery or redan, and opened fire.
Louis; in ordering gunboats, tugs, and mortar-boats; in producing some kind of system out of utter confusion,; in trusting good men like Lyon; and in sending the then unknown Ulysses Grant to take command at Cairo, the excellent strategic base where the Ohio joins the Mississippi.
On the 9th Farragut received orders from the Navy Department, dated on the 5th, and forwarded by way of Cairo, to send Porter with the Octorara and twelve mortar-boats at once to Hampton Roads. Porter steamed down the river on the 10th. This was obviously one of the first-fruits of the campaign of the Peninsula just ended by the withdrawal of the Army of the Potomac to the James.
General Grant, at his interview on the flag-ship, was advised of the serious injury to the fleet, and informed that Commodore Foote, leaving his two ironclads least injured to protect the transports at the landing, would proceed to Cairo with the other two, repair them, hasten the completion of the Benton and mortar-boats, and return to the prosecution of the siege.
But Farragut, stanch old sea-dog as he was, did much of his grandest fighting on the turbid waters of the Mississippi; and the work of the great fleet at Port Royal was fully equalled by Porter's mortar-boats below New Orleans. Let us follow the fortunes of the Union fleet on their cruises about the great rivers of the interior, and first discover what the work was that they set out to perform.
Louis." The others followed within the appointed time. Before the autumn of 1861, the river navy of the United States numbered nearly a score of vessels, while nearly forty mortar-boats were in process of construction. Of this flotilla, Capt. A. H. Foote, an able naval officer, was put in command, and directed to co-operate with the land forces in all movements.
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