“Damn the torpedoes! Full steam ahead!” were the words of Admiral David Farragut, who captured Mobile, Ala., and on this day, April 29, 1862, captured New Orleans. Under tremendous fire, he breached the heavy chain cable that was stretched across the Mississippi, and courageously led his ships up the channel filled with mines, called “torpedoes.” The loss of New Orleans was a major disaster for the South, as it was the Confederacy’s largest city. During his last illness, David Farragut, the Navy’s first four-star admiral, asked for a clergyman to pray to the Lord for him, saying: “He must be my pilot now!”
Let’s curb the kangaroo court of anonymous sources
Tim Graham