Identifier: ournavyintimeofw00matt (find matches)
Title: Our navy in time of war (1861-1898)
Year: 1899 (1890s)
Authors: Matthews, Franklin, 1858-1917. (from old catalog)
Subjects: United States. Navy Spanish-American War, 1898
Publisher: New York, D. Appleton and company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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upon the battle ofMobile Bay and his w^ork in the Mississippi belowI^ew Orleans that the great fame of Farragut rests. Mobile is at the head of a great pear-shaped andshallow bay. The entrance to the bay is thirty milesbelow the city. The channel at the entrance is twothousand feet wide. The distance from one point ofland to the other at the entrance is about three miles.The channel runs close to the eastern side of the en-trance, and there the South had a very strong fort andearthworks, called Fort Morgan. On the westernentrance to the harbor was Fort Gaines, on DauphinIsland, and not far from it was a small fort calledFort Powell, on Tower Island. Fort Morgan wasfive-sided, and had forty guns in its nuiin battery. Itwas also fortified with sand bags, and it was one of thestrongest forts that the !Northern vessels had to attackin the entire war. The other forts at the entrance tothe harbor ))lay((l only n small ))art in this fighting. The South had long (XjXcted an attack on Mobile,
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100 OUR NAVY IN TIME OP WAR. and it began to build, late in 18G3, another of tlierams like the Merrimac. She was called the Ten-nessee. She was the strongest of the vessels of thiskind, and did more fighting than any of them. Shewas two hundred and nine feet long, forty-eight feetwide, and drew fourteen feet of water. On thehull was built a structure with sloping sides. Thiswas seventy-nine feet long and twenty-nine feetwide. It was called a casemate. The sides ofthis structure were made of twenty-five inches ofwood, on which were placed iron armor plates sixinches thick at the bow and five inches thick else-where. The hull of the vessel was armored for sixfeet under water, and a ridge or a knuckle stuck outfrom the vessel two feet under the water around itsfour sides. She carried six rifled guns. One fired fromthe l)ow and another from the stern, and there weretwo on each side. The shutters over the portholesfor the guns were of iron five inches thick. She wasa very strong vessel, bu

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