Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 03.djvu/21

Rh brigade of boys, were more deliberate and careful of their ammunition, and we reduced its expenditure to 12,000 rounds per day.

The torpedoes were the most striking and effective of the new contrivance for defence which were used during these operations. Every avenue of approach to the outworks or to the city of Mobile was guarded by submarine torpedoes, so that it was impossible for any vessel drawing three feet of water to get within effective cannon range of any part of our defences. Two ironclads attempted to get near enough to Spanish Fort to take part in the bombardment. They both suddenly struck the bottom on Apalachie bar and thenceforward the fleet made no further attempt to encounter the almost certain destruction which they saw awaited any vessel which might attempt to enter our torpedo-guarded waters. But many were sunk when least expecting it. Some went down long after the Confederate forces had evacuated Mobile. The Tecumseh was probably sunk on her own torpedo. While steaming in lead of Farragut's fleet she carried a torpedo affixed to a spar which projected some twenty feet from her bows; she proposed to use this torpedo against the Tennessee, our only formidable ship; but while passing Fort Morgan a shot from that fort cut away the stays by which the Tecumseh's torpedo was secured; it then doubled under her, and exploding fairly under the bottom of the ill-fated ship, she careened and sunk instantly in ten fathoms of water. Only six or eight of her crew of one hundred and fifty officers and men were saved—the others still lie in their iron coffin at the bottom of the bay. Besides the Tecumseh, eleven other Federal vessels, men-of-war and transports, were sunk by torpedoes in Mobile bay; and their effectiveness as a means of defence of harbors was clearly established by the results of this siege. Had we understood their power in the beginning of the war as we came to do before its end, we could have effectually defended every harbor, channel or river throughout the Confederate States against all sorts of naval attacks. It is noteworthy that the Confederate ironclad Virginia, by her fearful destruction of the Federal war-ships in Hampton Roads early in the war, caused all the maritime powers of the world to remodel their navies and build ironclads at enormous expense, only to learn by the Confederate lessons of Mobile that ironclads cannot avail against torpedoes; for, as the Federal naval captain who had been engaged in clearing Mobile bay of the torpedoes and of the wrecks they had made, after the close of the war remarked to the writer: "It makes no difference whether a ship is of wood, or is tin-clad, or is iron-clad, if she gets over a torpedo it blows the same size hole in the bottom of all alike, which I found on an average to be just twelve feet by eight square." He furthermore stated that he had ascertained that in every instance but one of the wrecks in Mobile bay, the vessel had been sunk while backing—only one exploded a torpedo while going ahead.

During the fight in Spanish Fort our cannoniers found effectual protection from the extraordinarily heavy fire of sharpshooters in