what i have really taken away is he is a guy who gets thousands of engineers at tesla, the brightest of the bright and hard-working individuals and is able to get products out of them that can be commercialized and really change industry. who have is the guy combined software hardware and add ons and bits in a way that nobody else has. >> monday night on "communicators." >> historian and author discusses the battle of mobile bay in august of 1864, and the leadership roles of union rear admiral david farragut and confederate admiral franklin buchanan. providing resulted in a union

victory and closed one of the confederacy's last major ports. the victory, coupled with the fall of atlanta gave a boost to president abraham lincoln's bid for reelection just a couple of months later. the mariners museum host this 45 minute event. [applause] john: there is an unseen battlefield in every human breast where two opposing forces me to and where they seldom rest. the battle of mobile bay is actually the story of a contest between the two highest ranking naval officers in the civil war, david farragut and franklin buchanan. if you think of two opposing wills, that is what you have happening at the battle of mobile bay. first, i want to talk about who

these characters are. first let's start with franklin buchanan, since he was on one of our ironclads here in hampton roads. franklin buchanan was born on september 17, 1800 in baltimore, maryland. his father was founder of the maryland medical society and his grandfather was a signer of the declaration of independence. he comes from a well-heeled family. he will become a mid-shipment at age 18. he will serve with distinction by 1844. he will be promoted to captain, and he will be named the first superintendent of the united states naval academy in annapolis. he is the founder in many ways of that school. in 1847 he will resign from that

post so he conserve actively in the mexican war, which again he does with distinction, gaining the attention of flag officer matthew perry. perry will decide on buchanan as flag captain and commander of perry's flagship. it is said buchanan was the first naval officer to step foot in japan. let me tell you about buchanan. he is 5'10", he is bald. he was just as arbitrary as nelson. it is said in tokyo bay the chinese pilot would run the susquehanna ground.

buchanan would cut such a fierce look that the chinese pilot would jump overboard. after coming back from japan, the two voyages, he would be assigned as commandant of the washington naval yard, and that is where he would be at the out rake of the civil war. i will tell you right now that buchanan, native maryland are, when the baltimore riots occurred on april 19, 1861, buchanan will resign his commission, saying he cannot lift his sword against his native state. as you all know, maryland does not leave the union. consequently of buchanan, the secretary of the navy with the united states says that was a little hasty, can i have my job back?

of course he gets a big no. on buchanan's letter, "you are dismissed from the service." he's a free agent. but then he becomes the commander of the james river defenses with the css virginia as his flagship. it is buchanan, who on the morning of march 8, 1862 will take his ship on what is called a shakedown cruise. when they get to craney island he will call the men onto the gun deck and say, men, today we will do not just our duty but more than our duty. today we will attack the union fleet.

to your cannon, to your death, we will sink before surrender." we are supposed to be practicing our ship, not fighting. as a result of buchanan's dynamism, the virginia would come out and sink the uss cumberland by 3:30 on the afternoon of march 8. that moment really creates that ironclad revolution that was so fondly talk about. buchanan, however, late in the afternoon, after forcing congress to surrender -- and i want to tell you, buchanan's brother is on board the congress. thomas buchanan. when the congress surrenders he sends some boats over to take off the wounded and the officers as prisoners. the union soldiers on the shore start firing at the congress and

the confederate gunboats. and so buchanan gets so enraged. buchanan gets out and starts shooting at the troops on the shore. he is shot in the thigh, grievously wounded. the mini ball grazes his femur artery. as he is taken below he shouts to the men, "don't worry, men. the wound is not mortal. i will soon be back amongst you." he says, "plug her with hotshot." buchanan has won the greatest confederate victory at the time. he would recover from his wound, he would be promoted to rear

admiral, and then would be detailed to take command at mobile bay. now let's talk a little bit about david glasgow farragut. farragut was born on july 5, 1800. these guys are both 64 years old when they fight the battle of mobile bay. farragut was born in campbell station, tennessee. his father, george farragut -- george farragut is actually from mallorca. he becomes a sea captain and then when the revolution takes place he becomes a lieutenant in the south carolina navy, then a lieutenant in the continental navy. following service, he runs a ferry in tennessee. george farragut would actually

move to new orleans, where he becomes a collector of the u.s. customs in new orleans. he would move there in 1804. david farragut, his real name is james glasgow farragut. what would happen is when george farragut is in new orleans, his wife will actually tend to his friend's father, who is suffering from yellow fever. his friend is david porter, the famous naval officer, whose father is head of the naval station at new orleans. what happens is david porter comes down with yellow fever. mrs. farragut treats him. he dies, she contracts yellow fever, she dies. they have 11 children, so what

is george farragut gonna do? david porter says i will take one of them. young james farragut volunteers and becomes the foster son of david dixon porter senior. and william porter, later captain of the u.s. navy. farragut becomes a midshipman to in 1810. he changes his name when he is detailed as a mid-shipman to david glasgow porter in honor of david porter raising him up. the war of 1812, the you know who is going to be the great hero? it happens to be farragut. at age 12 years old, he will be given command of a captured

merchant ship. he is described as being 5'6", 120 pounds. 100 of those pounds are uniform and pistols, and 20 pounds is farragut. and the crew mutinies on him. he puts down the mutiny with the help of the boats mate. and with his sword and his glaring, the mutineers lay down. captured by british naval forces, farragut is grievously wounded. he is 13 years old, if you can imagine fighting a fierce naval battle and you are 13. farragut would go on. he would be exchanged at the end

of the war and go back into naval service. he would fight pirates in the 1820's and 1830's. he would be in command of the silent, which is one of the -- siren, excuse me. that is serving along the mexican coast. he takes command of the saratoga. he is a bona fide hero. he is at the gosport navy yard as inspector of ordinance. he actually tests naval ordinance out at portman road, they have a test ground there set up on the beach. that is what he would do for an entire year, testing new styles of shell guns. this is a choice assignment.

then farragut, in 1854, will be assigned to mayor island naval station. farragut is sent there to create the naval station. he does so in excellent fashion. he will return to norvick in 1850. macauley is a trunk, farragut is not, they do not get along very well. and farragut would be a part of the forces that abandon gosport navy yard. he is living where his wife is from. both his two wives -- not at the same time, mind you.

the sister to benjamin loyal. just to let you know, he is considered to be a southern sympathizer, born in tennessee, grew up in new orleans, wives in norvick. they move up to hastings, new york. you are trying to remake the navy, and some people suspect farragut. david did a special assignment from assistant secretary of the navy. he goes to talk to farragut and says, "david, we want to consider giving you command of

an expedition to capture norvick." he says that would be a very hard assignment to accept. david dixon porter said, "you are not the man we thought you were." he said, do not trifle with me. he is the man of an even more important job, and that is the capture of new orleans. farragut would become commander of the west gulf squadron. he would orchestrate running his ships past the two coastal defense ports. destroys this week confederate fleet, the confederates are not organized well enough to stop farragut. he captures new orleans, he is

elevated to the rank of rear admiral. he serves around vicksburg. he is taking oceangoing ships way up the mississippi river. he is going to be surprised by the css arkansas, which is another fascinating story. farragut would eventually go back down river. he will come to operate in march 1863 against port gibson, where he tries to run past the batteries at fort gibson. there he will have several ships damaged. two have to float down river. the uss mississippi will run aground and be destroyed by confederate shore batteries. farragut didn't always get away with everything.

farragut goes back down river, he gets the assignment of attacking mobile bay. meanwhile, franklin buchanan is in mobile bay, and he takes the place of a man known as victor randolph. buchanan says you are just an old woman, out the way. victor randolph leaves and buchanan writes secretary mallory, the confederate secretary of navy stephen mallory, "this is shambles here. it is a paddlewheel with one inch of armor. worthless." he advocates pushing for new ironclad construction. the first one they will build is the css tennessee. let me tell you about the

tennessee, it is 210 feet in length, it has a built-in ram, it has six inches of armor forward and five inches along the sides and stern. she is powered by an old ship called the alert engine, so she is slow. she has a draft of 13 feet, which means she has difficulty in getting over the bar. they have to build camels to float her over and get her into mobile bay. she will be armed with six rifled guns, two of them are seven inch guns. she is a powerful ironclad. she only makes five knots.

buchanan is trying to finish and other ironclad because his goal is to get into the mississippi sound and going recapture new orleans. he plans with this one little gunboat to sneak out of mobile bay and to attack the union fleet. buchanan is one of the fiercest officers of the civil war. i will tell you that farragut would be in command of the west coast blockading squadron. he's keeping his ships at pensacola. he decides his assignment is to capture mobile bay. this is a huge assignment. he feels he can only achieve

this with the help of monitors. rumors are about about how powerful the tennessee is. and so he waits to receive monitors. he gets two sent down the coast that are actually -- they are improved monitors, as we would call them. the tecumseh. each one of those ways 43,000 pounds. you have the tecumseh, then the manhattan, that also has two 15 inch guns. and they are armed with four 11 inch guns. he has his main ships, which are the harvard class steam screwed groups.

he knows that the confederate, but confederates have great defense. they have this massive coastal defense port. fort morgan has 11 seven inch brook guns. those are death to iron ships as well as wooden ships. fort morgan guarding the main entrance to the main channel. they closed part of the channel by putting in a field of torpedoes. they have laid 67 torpedoes. torpedoes are what we call mines now. you have a narrow entrance. over on the island you have 18 guns and another fort armed with 11 guns, guarding what is called grants pass.

farragut decides he is going to put his ships into two lines. the monitors are going to be inward starboard. they are going to, number one, go past fort morgan to deal with the tennessee. that is the job of the tecumseh and the manhattan. those two other river class monitors are supposed to come in and fight fort morgan so that the wooden ship column can pass. farragut would take two ships, lash them together. the first in line would be the brooklyn, commanded by james alvin. it is lashed to another boat.

the idea is if one ship gets the sable, the other one can keep it moving past the guns of the port. next in line is the heart forward, lashed to the -- to the hartford. the mungo gila. those are the main ships coming in. you may remember the galena fought there with the monitor. they figured her armor didn't work so they took it off and she is a wooden frigate. they are going to come into line. farragut's flag captain says, "we are going to put them into their battle stations, should we give them whiskey?" he said, "no, i'm going to have

coffee and that is good enough for them. they can face the shock like i do." at 5:30 they would begin their approach to mobile bay. the lead ship is the tecumseh, the tecumseh opens fire at 6:47. she aims at the lighthouse, which you can see right there. you can see the lighthouse next to the confederate flag. then she trains her guns on the water battery.

she is moving because the current is so strong. farragut is bringing in his steamers at at cap speed because the current is so strong and he is coming in with the tide. that is propelling his ships in a far better fashion. also the wind is blowing in from the southwest, so as you see from this the smoke is going onto the porch, so they can't see as well. farragut wants to see everything. he is a lashed to the mainmast halfway up the rigging. he actually climbs up there. he sends a sailor up to lash farragut, not to keep him there, but in case he gets wounded he won't fall down on the deck and die. here he is looking over the battle. the line comes in and commander of the tecumseh will, because he is fighting the current, and his

job is to go after the tennessee, he will move into where these buoys are, which shows where the torpedoes are. he is running ahead, the brooklyn, the first ship in line, stops its engines because he wants to keep the tecumseh ahead. the last thing you want to have been is having engine stop in front of a port. the tecumseh would come forward, and all of a sudden the tecumseh hits a mine. it blows up. it says the tecumseh popped out of the water, came back down, then she flipped up like this, then they saw propeller churning and down she went like an arrow. craven actually stood at the

hatch. he had to go up this latter. the pilot comes along and craven says, after you pilot. those were the last words of craven. out of the crew of 117 men, only 21 survived. that is shocking everybody. the confederates from the side of their batteries, to see an ironclad sink. the union fleet has virtually stopped in front of the confederate canon. one crew member has his legs taken off by a shot. he throws his arms up and a another shot whizzes through and takes his arms off. farragut shouts, "what's amiss?" "torpedose."

he says, "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead." the hartford swings out of line, and he doesn't want to swing toward the monitors because they are in a tight spot. they've stopped as well. farragut swings the hartford out and they go across the minefield, so to speak. there are 67 of them there, and it is said the crew could hear

the snapping of the primers on the torpedoes against the hull of the hartford. but guess what? none of them work. they have been out there too long. this is basically farragut luck. the manhattan turns to go toward the tennessee. buchanan and the other gunboats that are with him, the soma with four guns, the gain with six guns, and the morgan with six guns, the hartford actually rakes her. a shell will burst one of the paddle wheels. the selma is struck through her boilers. and the morgan hides under the

guns of fort morgan. buchanan busts out. he wants to ram somebody. his ship is too slow. he can't get there as the federal ships pass through. they are under those guns until they are under those guns until about 8:00. you can see they thought fort morgan for almost an hour and a half. the federals have lost, 140 men killed, 170 wounded. if you think about civil war battles, all these guys dying. you get your legs blown off on a naval ship, blood, brains, and bone are going to be everywhere. nevertheless the federals will steam in.

they run past the tennessee and they go to an anchorage known as the middle ground in mobile bay. that is where you are supposed to wait to go into port itself. kind of like hampton roads going into portsmouth. farragut gets there, drops anchor, and tells his men, "let's go to breakfast." they all start to get something to eat and all of a sudden someone says to farragut, "i think you should look over there." and there comes the tennessee. he took on an entire union fleet in 1862. what does he want to do today? take on the entire union fleet. he does not care. he says if you do not act you will be shamed for the rest of your life. he tells his men the same type of speech. today we are going to do our duty, not just our duty. we are going to destroy the federal fleet today.

if i am wounded, lay me down to the side and keep on fighting. we will sink before surrender. wow. and here comes the tennessee. farragut, when he sees this, he says, "i did not think old buck was such a fool." this comes to the high point of the battle, as you can see from your little maps. the tennessee has a huge problem, and that is speed. he tries to come up to ram the hartford, but the hartford would ramp the tennessee instead. the brooklyn has a metal added to her bow so she can actually smash into the tennessee. what will happen is free for all while the manhattan and chickasaw layoff off both ends of the tennessee, firing at her. the captain of the chickasaw

claims to have knocked over the smokestack of the tennessee, meaning no more draft for the engines. the chickasaw also swept away the anchor chains, so you can't turn your ship. here is the tennessee virtually dead in the water as the manhattan comes up and starts pounding her. the manhattan had two 15 inch guns. i'll tell you right now, and iron sliver fell into one of the 15 inch guns and doesn't work. they spiked their own gun. they are just firing one of these huge 15 inch guns. the hartford would come to ram the tennessee and the lackawanna would come and ram the hartford inset of the tennessee.

farragut is back up there, tied to the rigging, looking over. the lackawanna rams right where he is up on the mast. they crack the hartford all the way down to the waterline. farragut shouts, "get out of my way." the -- does a big circle to ram the tennessee again. ramming the tennessee doesn't do any damage to her. at this time the manhattan has gotten her ring. she is 50 feet off the tennessee. she will send a 15 inch solid shot into the case of the

tennessee, which crack's feedback and the five inches of iron. she cracks it and light started coming into the deck. buchanan had these nets set up so splinters to not injure anyone. however when that section of the ironclad -- the bolt that bolted the iron plate right to the wood backing would shoot across the gun deck of the tennessee, and guess who it hits? buchanan. and buchanan has his leg broken, grievously injured, they lay him down to the side.

the commander of the tennessee would go to farragut and -- would go to buchanan. what should we do? three of our guns have been jammed. buchanan agrees to a surrender. they send up a white sheet and the action is over. this battle is over by 9:45. it lasted lasted four hours. the battle of mobile bay is this huge competition between these two tremendous naval officers, who were friends before the war and finds themselves on opposite sides. i will have to say the tennessee, when she surrenders, there is nothing they can do. however the federals repair her, putting new smokestack on her, fix those port shutters and use

her to shell fort morgan, commanded by brigadier general richard page, whose commander -- his brother is commander of the css stonewall. they joined the navy because there weren't enough assignments. he is in command of fort morgan. when he is forced to surrender he breaks his sword and throws it into the ocean. he says, "i refused to give it to the accursed northern invaders." he gets court-martialed but is acquitted in a court-martial in new orleans. buchanan, they take him to pensacola and the doctors are worried about his leg. they ask, do you mind if we amputate?

buchanan says you captured the leg, you decide. the battle of mobile bay is a tremendous engagement. it comes at the perfect time for the lincoln administration. the war's not going well. grant is losing all those men during the overland campaign. no outstanding union victory. sherman is struggling to get at atlanta. and all of a sudden, mobile bay, the last freeport on the gulf, is now closed. now the only other outside link the confederate have would be wilmington. buchanan is the founder of the university of maryland.

he tries to run it like a navy ship, so he only lasts two years. he goes down to mobile, where he is president of an insurance company. he returns to eastern maryland, and he will die there. he is buried at y hall. franklin buchanan would died in 1874. david glasgow farragut would be promoted to full admiral. he would be in command of the european squadron. he then would be the only person to be allowed to hold a full admiral rank in the u.s. navy he stays on active service. in 1871 he is visiting the portsmouth naval facilities in

new hampshire, and he will drop dead from a heart attack. what an active career of these both had in naval history. these men wanted to fight like nelson. hugo to the nelson gallery here at the mariners museum, they were proud to serve and ready to fight, ready to do what it took to achieve victory against all odds. those are these men, that i think are the most famous naval officers of the american civil war. in the words of franklin buchanan, i want to remind you all to always always sink before you surrender. thank you. [applause] >> anyone have any questions?

he was a prisoner of war, he was exchanged in february 1865, but he goes back home. his leg is not removed. it's amazing he survived the war. he was taken to pensacola, he was in a naval officer there. he is badly injured. considering what happened to him off of newport, your body can only take so much. i just think buchanan didn't care. >> any other questions? >> did the union renamed the tennessee a lot of merrimac and virginia? john: no, then explain what they do. the merrimac is an abandoned to ship by the u.s. navy.

the confederates bring it up and turn it into a totally different type of ship. you can learn about that in ironclad revolution. the tennessee, they rechristened her teat of later as the uss tennessee. they didn't have to change any names. we like to make things confusing and virginia sometimes. >> i'm familiar with the falklands war. we sold a ship to argentina that later became -- it was sunk with 2000 sailors on board. the united states navy did not name it the belgrano. although it was never changed in its function. john: but by selling it meant that the argentines could rechristen it.

the confederates have a french maid ironclad, the stonewall. the confederates tried to buy it. they said, you can't buy it. they don't need the ironclad anymore, they sell it to the confederates. the confederates tried to bring it across the atlantic, which they do. they only get it to havana in may of 1865. page sells the stonewall to pay off his crew to cuban authorities. the americans then buy it from the spanish. they realize it is a bad french maid ship, so they sell it to the japanese, who then commission it as the azura. it is outdated. they keep it in commission until 1908.

>> me again why we have a monitor at merrimac bridge? john: number one, they misspelled it. the u.s. navy spells merrimac merrimack, as in the merrimack river. it was no longer called the virginia. i think the brilliance comes out quite a lot. if there are not any other questions i appreciate you being here today. we have just started the uss monitor foundation. our goal is to raise $20 million to ensure that the uss monitor,

all those things relating to civil war ironclad that we work on here at the mariners museum is well preserved and well interpreted. we just set up a membership foundation. i think you all got a form. i have lots of ways people can help. if you like ironclads and appreciate the american civil war and how those ironclads changed naval warfare forever, then please stop by our desk. dave or myself would be happy to help you create until i see you all again, i want to give you a great huzzah. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] quick first lady helen cap made severable -- several notable changes to the white house. the