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1862] Farragut at New Orleans. 553 operations were usually based. New Orleans and the mouth of the Mississippi were defended by two works Fort St Philip, an old-fashioned structure, armed with 52 guns, situated on the east bank of the river, below New Orleans, at a bend, so that it enfiladed the channel ; and Fort Jackson, a stone work, on the west bank, armed with 74 guns. Afloat on the river, to support the forts, were the roughly-constructed, lightly- armoured ram, the Manassas, two ironclads in an incomplete condition, and several small gun-boats, hastily armed, and manned with improvised crews. The Confederates were short of stores and ammunition; only four of the guns in the forts were rifled ; and most of the others were of small calibre. The passage of the river was blocked, in part by booms, in part by schooners anchored in the stream and secured to each other with strong chains. On April 18 Farragut began to bombard the forts with mortar schooners, and continued the bombardment for some days, at the same time effecting with his small ships an opening in the obstructions which blocked the fairway. In the dark hours of the morning of the 24th he moved up to pass the forts, with five steam sloops, three corvettes, and nine gun-boats. The formation adopted was "line ahead," Farragut's flagship, the Hartfwd, taking station in the centre of the line. The leading ships received a heavy fire from the forts, but sustained no vital injury; most of them, indeed, were little the worse for their pounding. The ram Manassas and some fire-rafts which were let loose by the Con- federates were on the whole more troublesome than the forts. During the engagement, the want of initiative in the older officers of the United States 1 squadron was curiously illustrated by the action of one captain, who hailed ship after ship, in order to obtain Farragut's permission to run down the Manassas^ instead of acting on his own judgment. Farragut himself was for some minutes in great danger. A fire-raft came down on the Hartford and set her on fire; while at the same moment she grounded under the guns of Fort St Philip. But her crew extinguished the flames; the ship came off the shoal ; and Farragut went ahead with a loss of only ten killed and wounded. Three of the ships in the rear failed to make the passage, mainly because the day was breaking when they reached the forts. The ships which had passed set to work at once to destroy the hostile flotilla, and then pushed on and took possession of New Orleans. The two forts, thus left isolated, surrendered, as Farragut had anticipated, on April 28. The blow was politically a most serious one. If New Orleans had not fallen, wrote the Southern envoy in Paris a few weeks later, the recognition of the Confederacy by France could not have been much longer delayed. This great feat was accomplished with a loss to the fleet of only 37 killed and 147 wounded, and one small ship rammed and sunk. In April, 1863, the Federal navy attacked the Charleston forts ; but on this occasion the conditions were less favourable, and the attempt CH. XVII.