page_title: Battle of Mobile Bay
section_title: "Damn the torpedoes"
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Mobile Bay / Incidents of the battle / "Damn the torpedoes"
caption_attribution_description: World War I recruitment poster featuring American admiral David Farragut (1801-1870). Caption: "U.S. Navy. Help your country. Enlist in the Navy. 'Damn the torpedoes, go ahead!' Farragut at Mobile Bay, Aug. 5, 1864."
context_page_description: The Battle of Mobile Bay of August 5, 1864, was an engagement of the American Civil War in which a Union fleet commanded by Rear Admiral David G. Farragut, assisted by a contingent of soldiers, attacked a smaller Confederate fleet led by Admiral Franklin Buchanan and three forts that guarded the entrance to Mobile Bay. Farragut's order of "Damn the torpedoes! Four bells. Captain Drayton, go ahead! Jouett, full speed!" became famous in paraphrase, as "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!"
  The battle was marked by Farragut's seemingly rash but successful run through a minefield that had just claimed one of his ironclad monitors, enabling his fleet to get beyond the range of the shore-based guns. This was followed by a reduction of the Confederate fleet to a single vessel, ironclad CSS Tennessee.
  Tennessee did not then retire, but engaged the entire Northern fleet. Tennessee's armor enabled her to inflict more injury than she received, but she could not overcome the imbalance in numbers. She was eventually reduced to a motionless hulk and surrendered, ending the battle. With no Navy to support them, the three forts also surrendered within days.
context_section_description: Most popular accounts of the battle relate that Brooklyn slowed when Tecumseh crossed her path, and Farragut asked why she was not moving ahead. The reply came back that naval mines (then called "torpedoes") were in her path—to which he allegedly replied, "Damn the torpedoes." The story did not appear in print until several years later, and some historians question whether it happened at all.
  Some forms of the story are highly unlikely; the most widespread is that he shouted to Brooklyn, "Damn the torpedoes! Go ahead!" Men present at the battle doubted that any such verbal communication could be heard above the din of the guns. More likely, if it happened, is that he said to the captain of Hartford, "Damn the torpedoes. Four bells, Captain Drayton." Then he shouted to the commander of Metacomet, lashed to Hartford's side, "Go ahead, Jouett, full speed." The words have been altered in time to the more familiar, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!"
caption: A World War I recruitment poster featuring David Farragut at Mobile Bay
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