Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 39.djvu/130

 Southern Historical Society Papers.

DEFENCE OF SPANISH FORT.

On Mobile Bay— Last Great Battle of the War.

By P. D. STEPHENSON, Fifth Company, Washington Artillery, New Orleans, La., (Piece Four).

Who knows of "Spanish Fort"? Not many readers of the Herald I suspect, yet it was the scene of one of the most thrill- ing episodes of the war. It was one of the very last incidents, too, for we evacuated the place on the night of April 9, 1865, the day of Lee's surrender. Spanish Fort was one of the outer defenses of Mobile. It was situated about twelve miles below the city and across the bay, on the eastern shore. Look on the map of Alabama and turn to Mobile Bay. At the mouth you notice two islands almost closing the bay, having but a narrow passage. Guarding the passage and facing each other are Forts Gaines and Morgan. Further up the bay, on the eastern side, on a tongue of land not represented on the map, was Spanish Fort, and still further up nearer the city, was Blakely, another fortified place. The sole approach to the city through the bay was a tortuous and narrow channel, marked out by stakes, which ran zig-zag across to Blakley, then down to Spanish Fort and then on out to the Gulf ; all the rest of the bay was filled with torpedoes and a variety of other obstructions. Early in March, 1865, the fifth company of Washington Artillery was having a "good time" in the city of Mobile. They had been detached from the veteran Army of Tennessee, and with it had just passed through the almost unparalleled hardships of Hood's disastrous Nashville campaign. Mobile was one of the protected cities of the South, one of the latest places, if not the very last, to feel the hand of war. Consequently a semblance of the ways of