ard knocks, that this phrase of Farragut's, embodying the
experience of war in all ages and the practice of all great captains, is
here recalled, "The best protection against the enemy's fire is a
well-directed fire from our own guns."

The disposition adopted for the squadron was chiefly a development of
this simple principle, combined with an attempt to form the ships in
such an order as should offer the least favorable target to the enemy. A
double column of ships, if it presents to the enemy a battery formidable
enough to subdue his fire, in whole or in part, shows a smaller target
than the same number disposed in a single column; because the latter
order will be twice as long in passing, with no greater display of
gun-power at a particular point. The closer the two columns are
together, the less chance there is that a shot flying over the nearer
ship will strike one abreast her; therefore, when the two are lashed
side by side this risk is least, and at the same time the near ship
protects the off one from the projectile that strikes herself. These
remarks would apply, in degree, if all the ships of the squadron had had
powerful batteries; the limitation being only that enough guns must be
in the near or fighting column to support each other, and to prevent
several of the enemy's batteries being concentrated on a single ship--a
contingency dependent upon the length of the line of hostile guns to be
passed. But when, as at Port Hudson, several of the vessels are of
feeble gun-power, so that their presence in the fighting column would
not re-enforce its fire to an extent at all proportionate to the risk to
themselves, the arrangement there adopted is doubly efficacious.

The dispositions to meet and overcome the difficulties imposed by the
enemy's guns amounted, therefore, to concentrating upon them the
batteries of the heavy ships, supporting each other, and at the same
time covering the passage of a second column of gunboats, which was
placed in the most favorable position for escaping injury. In principle
the plan was the same as at New Orleans--the heavy ships fought while
the light were to slip by; but in application, the circumstances at the
lower forts would not allow one battery to be masked as at Port Hudson,
because there were enemy's works on both sides. For meeting the
difficulties of the navigation on this occasion, Farragut seems not to
have been pleased with the arrangement adopted. "With the exception