FARRAGUT, DAVID GLASGOW, Rear Admiral, U.S.N. General Order No. 12. U.S. Flag Ship Hartford, Mobile Bay, [Alabama], 6 August 1864. Broadside, 8vo, pencil endorsement on verso "General Order Mobile Fight." "DAMN THE TORPEDOES" A very rare congratulatory order, apparently printed on shipboard the day after the celebrated victory of Farragut's fleet at Mobile Bay, 5 August 1864. It memorializes one of the key Union naval victories of the Civil War, in which Farragut is recorded as having dismissed the Confederates' bristling harbor defenses with the famous line: "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead." The broadside, possibly printed by the same Mr. Brownell mentioned in the letter in the preceding lot, refers directly to those especially feared rebel torpedoes (actually submarine mines). It reads: "The Admiral returns thanks to the officers and crews of the Fleet for their gallant conduct during the fight of yesterday. It has never been his good fortune to see men do their duty with more courage and cheerfulness; for, although they kenw that the enemy was prepared with all devilish means for our destruction, and though they witnessed the almost instantaneous annihilation of our gallant companions in the Tecumseh by a torpedo, and the slaughter of their friends, mess-mates and gun-mates on our decks, still there were no evidences of hesitation in following their Commander-in-Chief through the line of torpedoes and obstructions, of which we knew nothing except from the exaggerations of the enemy, who had given out -- 'That we should all be blown up as we attempted to enter.' "For this noble and implicit confidence in their leader, he heartily thanks them.... At 6 A.M. on the 5th, Farragut's fleet, comprising four ironclads and 14 wooden ships ran past the three Confederate forts protecting Mobile Bay. In the ensuing action, in which the Confederate ironclad the Tennessee was rammed and sunk, the Union ship Tecumseh struck a mine and sank with the loss of some 100 men. "During the action the 63-year-old Farragut was twice 'lashed in the rigging'...so that he would not fall to his death from the high perch to which he climbed better to view the battle" (Boatner, Civil War Dictionary , 558-559. Provenance : Preserved among the papers of George R. Martin, of New York, N.Y., who was commissioned by Lincoln on 30 June 1864 an Assistant Paymaster of the Navy (for his appointment, see lot , and other papers in lot ).
FARRAGUT, DAVID GLASGOW, Rear Admiral, U.S.N. General Order No. 12. U.S. Flag Ship Hartford, Mobile Bay, [Alabama], 6 August 1864. Broadside, 8vo, pencil endorsement on verso "General Order Mobile Fight." "DAMN THE TORPEDOES" A very rare congratulatory order, apparently printed on shipboard the day after the celebrated victory of Farragut's fleet at Mobile Bay, 5 August 1864. It memorializes one of the key Union naval victories of the Civil War, in which Farragut is recorded as having dismissed the Confederates' bristling harbor defenses with the famous line: "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead." The broadside, possibly printed by the same Mr. Brownell mentioned in the letter in the preceding lot, refers directly to those especially feared rebel torpedoes (actually submarine mines). It reads: "The Admiral returns thanks to the officers and crews of the Fleet for their gallant conduct during the fight of yesterday. It has never been his good fortune to see men do their duty with more courage and cheerfulness; for, although they kenw that the enemy was prepared with all devilish means for our destruction, and though they witnessed the almost instantaneous annihilation of our gallant companions in the Tecumseh by a torpedo, and the slaughter of their friends, mess-mates and gun-mates on our decks, still there were no evidences of hesitation in following their Commander-in-Chief through the line of torpedoes and obstructions, of which we knew nothing except from the exaggerations of the enemy, who had given out -- 'That we should all be blown up as we attempted to enter.' "For this noble and implicit confidence in their leader, he heartily thanks them.... At 6 A.M. on the 5th, Farragut's fleet, comprising four ironclads and 14 wooden ships ran past the three Confederate forts protecting Mobile Bay. In the ensuing action, in which the Confederate ironclad the Tennessee was rammed and sunk, the Union ship Tecumseh struck a mine and sank with the loss of some 100 men. "During the action the 63-year-old Farragut was twice 'lashed in the rigging'...so that he would not fall to his death from the high perch to which he climbed better to view the battle" (Boatner, Civil War Dictionary , 558-559. Provenance : Preserved among the papers of George R. Martin, of New York, N.Y., who was commissioned by Lincoln on 30 June 1864 an Assistant Paymaster of the Navy (for his appointment, see lot , and other papers in lot ).
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