oast town and fort, for their dreaded
enemy was no longer in the way. The fame of Cushing's deed went all over
the North, and his name will stand forever among the brightest on the
honor-roll of the American navy.

FARRAGUT AT MOBILE BAY

Ha, old ship, do they thrill,
The brave two hundred scars
You got in the river wars?
That were leeched with clamorous skill
(Surgery savage and hard),
At the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

* * * *

How the guns, as with cheer and shout,
Our tackle-men hurled them out,
Brought up in the waterways...
As we fired, at the flash
'T was lightning and black eclipse
With a bellowing sound and crash.

* * * *

The Dahlgrens are dumb,
Dumb are the mortars;
Never more shall the drum
Beat to colors and quarters--
The great guns are silent.
--Henry Howard Brownell

During the Civil War our navy produced, as it has always produced
in every war, scores of capable officers, of brilliant single-ship
commanders, of men whose daring courage made them fit leaders in any
hazardous enterprise. In this respect the Union seamen in the Civil War
merely lived up to the traditions of their service. In a service with
such glorious memories it was a difficult thing to establish a new
record in feats of personal courage or warlike address. Biddle, in the
Revolutionary War, fighting his little frigate against a ship of the
line until she blew up with all on board, after inflicting severe loss
on her huge adversary; Decatur, heading the rush of the boarders in the
night attack when they swept the wild Moorish pirates from the decks of
their anchored prize; Lawrence, dying with the words on his lips,
"Don't give up the ship"; and Perry, triumphantly steering his bloody
sloop-of-war to victory with the same words blazoned on his banner--men
like these, and like their fellows, who won glory in desperate conflicts
with the regular warships and heavy privateers of England and France, or
with the corsairs of the Barbary States, left behind a reputation which
was hardly to be dimmed, though it might be emulated, by later feats of
mere daring.

But vital though daring is, indispensable though desperate personal
prowess and readiness to take chances are to the make-up of a fighting
navy, other qualities are needed in addition to fit a man for a place
among the great sea-capta