Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/588

 556 Victory of Mobile Bay. Importance of Wilmington. [i864 owing to injuries received she could now steam only five knots. The second stage of the fight lasted an hour. The wooden ships in Farragut's fleet made repeated but unsuccessful attempts to ram their opponent; the issue was only decided when the monitors brought their heavy guns to bear. Under their continued pounding, her armour-plates started, her steering-gear was shot away, her funnel broken, and three of her port-shutters jammed. The ironclad was thus reduced to helplessness ; and, Buchanan having been wounded, the white flag was raised. The Tennessee had made a gallant resistance to great odds. The loss of life on board her was not heavy; only- two men were killed and ten wounded a fact which illustrates the efficacy of the protection afforded by armour, for she had been exposed for hours to a continuous and concentrated fire from the heaviest guns then known. In the Northern fleet the loss from the enemy's fire was 52 killed and 170 wounded; in the Tecumseli all but 21, out of a total of 100 officers and men, were drowned. The forts at the entrance of the bay held out for some little time after the battle ; but Fort Gaines, to the west of the entrance, surrendered on August 7, after a bombardment ; while Fort Morgan, attacked from land and sea, protracted its resistance until the 23rd. The town of Mobile itself was not at once occupied, as all the troops available were required for the fierce struggle then proceeding in northern Georgia and before Richmond ; but the port was thenceforth closed to blockade-runners. The political effect of the victory was extremely important. The news of it arrived at a moment of profound discouragement in the North, when Sherman was still groping his way round Atlanta, when Grant had been repeatedly repulsed with terrible slaughter before Richmond, and when the cry for peace was growing ominously in vehemence. A few weeks more, and the tide set decisively in favour of the North; the action in Mobile Bay enabled the Administration to bridge the period of suspense. Of great importance, in the final agony of Lee's army before Rich- mond, was the capture of Fort Fisher, defending the approach to Wilmington, from which port that army was now drawing its supplies. Ammunition, cannon, clothing, and food were imported by blockade- runners, and moved up by rail to Richmond ; and this in spite of the presence of a large squadron off the coast. The supply of flour in Virginia was exhausted in 1864 ; and the Confederate Congress reported that there was not enough meat and bread for the armies, and that meat would have to be obtained from abroad through a seaport. The armies were on short rations ; by the testimony of a Southern private, rats, musk-rats, squirrels, and all kinds of vermin were eaten ; and bread was three dollars a loaf in Richmond. Lee himself informed Colonel Lamb, the Confederate commander at Fort Fisher, that, if Wilmington were lost, the army would be compelled to fall back from before the Confederate capital. A report of the Secretary of the Confederate