ner in which the first
stopped to engage Fort St. Philip. Stopping to fire, then moving slowly,
then stopping again, the reiterated broadsides of this big ship,
delivered at such close range that the combatants on either side
exchanged oaths and jeers of defiance, beat down the fire of the exposed
barbette batteries, and gave an admirable opportunity for slipping by to
the light vessels, which brought up the rear of the column and were
wholly unfit to contend with the forts. The Mississippi and Oneida
keeping close behind the Pensacola and refusing to pass her, the Cayuga
was thus separated from all her followers.

The isolation of the Cayuga was therefore caused by her anomalous
position at the head of the column, a post proper only to a heavy ship.
It was impossible for her petty battery of two guns to pause before the
numerous pieces of the enemy; it was equally impossible for the powerful
vessels following her to hasten on, leaving to the mercy of the
Confederates the gunboats of the same type that succeeded them in the
order. That the Cayuga was thus exposed arose from the amiable desire of
the admiral to gratify Bailey's laudable wish to share in the battle,
without compelling an officer of the same grade, and junior only in
number, to accept a superior on his own quarter-deck in the day of
battle, when the harvest of distinction is expected to repay the patient
sowing of preparation. The commander of the Cayuga, who was only a
lieutenant, had reconciled these conflicting claims by volunteering to
carry Bailey's divisional flag. As there is no reason to suppose that
Farragut deliberately intended to offer the gunboat up as a forlorn hope
by drawing the first fire of the enemy, always the most deadly, and thus
saving the more important vessels, the disposition of her constitutes
the only serious fault in his tactical arrangements on this occasion--a
fault attributable not to his judgment, but to one of those concessions
to human feelings which circumstances at times extort from all men. His
first intention, an advance in two columns, the heavy ships leading and
closely engaging the forts with grape and canister, while the two-gun
vessels slipped through between the columns, met the tactical demands of
the proposed operation. The decision to abandon this order in favor of
one long, thin line, because of the narrowness of the opening, can not
be challenged. This formation was distinctly weaker and more liable to
stra