almost as one man they cried: "Save the admiral! get the admiral on
board the Lackawanna." But Farragut, leaping actively into the chains,
saw that the ship was in no present danger, and ordered her again to be
headed for the Tennessee. Meanwhile, the monitors had come up, and the
battle raged between them and the great ram, Like the rest of the Union
fleet, they carried smooth-bores, and their shot could not break through
her iron plates; but by sustained and continuous hammering, her frame
could be jarred and her timbers displaced. Two of the monitors had been
more or less disabled already, but the third, the Chickasaw, was in
fine trim, and Perkins got her into position under the stern of the
Tennessee, just after the latter was struck by the Hartford; and there
he stuck to the end, never over fifty yards distant, and keeping up a
steady rapping of 11-inch shot upon the iron walls, which they could
not penetrate, but which they racked and shattered. The Chickasaw
fired fifty-two times at her antagonist, shooting away the exposed
rudder-chains and the smokestack, while the commander of the ram,
Buchanan, was wounded by an iron splinter which broke his leg. Under the
hammering, the Tennessee became helpless. She could not be steered, and
was unable to bring a gun to bear, while many of the shutters of the
ports were jammed. For twenty minutes she had not fired a shot. The
wooden vessels were again bearing down to ram her; and she hoisted the
white flag.

Thus ended the battle of Mobile Bay, Farragut's crowning victory. Less
than three hours elapsed from the time that Fort Morgan fired its first
gun to the moment when the Tennessee hauled down her flag. Three hundred
and thirty-five men had been killed or wounded in the fleet, and one
vessel, the Tecumseh, had gone down; but the Confederate flotilla
was destroyed, the bay had been entered, and the forts around it were
helpless to do anything further. One by one they surrendered, and the
port of Mobile was thus sealed against blockade runners, so that the
last source of communication between the Confederacy and the outside
world was destroyed. Farragut had added to the annals of the Union the
page which tells of the greatest sea-fight in our history.

LINCOLN

O captain. My captain. Our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follo