American Minute for April 29th:
"Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!" yelled Admiral David Farragut, who had lashed himself atop the mainsail to see above the smoke. His fleet of wooden ships with hulls wrapped in chains, and his four iron clad monitors, were attacking Fort Morgan in Mobile Bay, August 5, 1864. When one of his ships, the TECUMSEH, sank after hitting an underwater mine, called a torpedo, his fleet faltered in confusion, but Farragut drove them on to capture the last Confederate stronghold in the Gulf of Mexico. Earlier, APRIL 29, 1862, Farragut captured New Orleans, the Confederacy's largest city. Sailing the Mississippi River at night, his ships were hard to hit, as he tied tree branches to the riggings and covered the hulls with mud. The first U.S. Navy Admiral, Farragut declined offers to run for President. A statue of him is in Farragut Square, Washington, D.C. His son, Loyall Farragut, wrote in a book titled The Life and Letters of Admiral David Glasgow Farragut: "He never felt so near his Master as he did when in a storm, knowing that on his skill depended the safety of so many lives." During his last illness, David Farragut asked for a clergyman to pray to the Lord, saying: "He must be my pilot now!"
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