ad built it years before.

"The plan made and carried out was to let Porter's fleet make the attack
upon the forts first, while Farragut, with his larger and stronger
vessels, should await the result just outside the range of the rebel
guns; then, when Porter had succeeded in silencing them, Farragut was to
push on up the river, clearing it of Confederate vessels, and cutting
off the supplies of the fort. That accomplished, Butler was to land his
troops in the rear of Fort St. Philip and try to carry it by assault.
Those two forts, St. Philip and Jackson, were about thirty miles from
the mouth of the river, Fort Jackson on the right bank, and Fort St.
Philip on the left.

"Ship Island, the place of rendezvous, is about one hundred miles
northeast of the mouth of the Mississippi. In the last war with England,
as I have told you, St. Philip had kept the British in check for nine
days, though they threw one thousand shells into it.

"Fort Jackson was a larger fortification, bastioned, built of brick,
with casemates and glacis, rising twenty-five feet above the water. Some
French and British officers, calling upon Farragut before the attack,
having come from among the Confederates, while visiting whom they had
seen and examined these forts with their defences, warned him that to
attack them would only result in sure defeat; but the brave old hero
replied that he had been sent there to try it on and would do so; or
words to that effect.

"The forts had one hundred and fifteen guns of various kinds and sizes,
mostly smooth-bore thirty-two pounders. Above them lay the Confederate
fleet of fifteen vessels, one of them an iron-clad ram, another a large,
unfinished floating battery covered with railroad iron. Two hundred
Confederate sharp-shooters kept constant watch along the river banks,
and several fire-rafts were ready to be sent down among the Federal
vessels. Both these and the sharp-shooters were below the forts. Also
there were two iron chains stretched across the river, supported upon
eight hulks which were anchored abreast.

"Farragut's naval expedition was the largest that had ever sailed under
the United States flag, consisting of six sloops of war, twenty-one
mortar schooners, sixteen gun-boats, and other vessels, carrying in all
two hundred guns.

"But the vessels were built for the sea and were now to work in a much
narrower space--a river with a shifting channel and obstructed by
shoals.

"To get the larg