nders and all the rifles, except one of 5.82 calibre,
bore upon the channel. There were also twenty flanking 24-pounder
howitzers and two or three light rifles, which were useless against
the fleet from their position.

Such were the shore defences. In the waters of the bay there was a
little Confederate squadron under Admiral Franklin Buchanan, made up
of the ram Tennessee and three small paddle-wheel gunboats, the
Morgan, Gaines, and Selma, commanded respectively by Commander George
W. Harrison, and Lieutenants J.W. Bennett and P.U. Murphy. They were
unarmored, excepting around the boilers. The Selma was an open-deck
river steamer with heavy hog frames; the two others had been built for
the Confederate Government, but were poorly put together. The
batteries were: Morgan, two VII-inch rifles and four 32-pounders;
Gaines, one VIII-inch rifle and five 32-pounders; Selma, one VI-inch
rifle, two IX-inch, and one VIII-inch smooth-bore shell-guns. Though
these lightly built vessels played a very important part for some
minutes, and from a favorable position did much harm to the Union
fleet in the subsequent engagement, they counted for nothing in the
calculations of Farragut. There were besides these a few other
so-called ironclads near the city; but they took no part in the fight
in the bay, and little, if any, in the operations before the fall of
Mobile itself in the spring of 1865.

The Tennessee was different. This was the most powerful ironclad
built, from the keel up, by the Confederacy, and both the energy shown
in overcoming difficulties and the workmanship put upon her were most
creditable to her builders. The work was begun at Selma, on the
Alabama River, one hundred and fifty miles from Mobile, in the spring
of 1863, when the timber was yet standing in the forests, and much of
what was to be her plating was still ore in the mines. The hull was
launched the following winter and towed to Mobile, where the plating
had already been sent from the rolling mills of Atlanta.

Her length on deck was 209 feet, beam 48 feet, and when loaded, with
her guns on board, she drew 14 feet. The battery was carried in a
casemate, equidistant from the bow and stern, whose inside dimensions
were 79 feet in length by 29 feet in width. The framing was of yellow
pine beams, 13 inches thick, placed close together vertically and
planked on the outside, first with 51/2 inches of yellow pine, laid
horizontally, and then 4 inches of oak lai