Small Talk-Trivia

Mobile, Alabama

By Stephen Davis · Originally published September 2019 · pp. 41–46

1. Mobile was founded in 1711 by settlers from what European country? 2. This fort, at the tip of a peninsula on the eastern side of the entrance to Mobile Bay, was named for an American Revolutionary hero, Daniel ______. 3. In the battle of Mobile Bay, Aug. 5, 1864, ranking Confederate naval officer was this admiral, who had commanded the C.S.S. Virginia at Hampton Roads on March 8, 1862, until wounded in the leg. Who? 4. “Damn the _____! Four bells! Captain Drayton, go ahead!” was the Union commander’s famous order during the battle of August 5. What did he damn? 5. Guarding the entrance to Mobile Bay was this large, brick-casemated fort on the tip of Dauphin Island on the west side of the bay. It was named after this career U.S. army officer who is buried in Mobile. 6. Against eighteen Federal

warships, the Confederates at Mobile Bay had four: the Gaines, Morgan, Selma, and this huge ironclad, named for which state? 7. “Naval history records few contests between forces so unequal in ships, guns and men, and but few in which the weaker party displayed equal heroism.” This was written about the naval battle in Mobile Bay by the Confederate Secretary of the Navy. What was his name? 8. Termed the last major battle of the Civil War was the Union assault, Apr. 9, 1865, against this Confederate fort east of Mobile. Which? 9. Who was the Union naval commander in the naval battle of Mobile Bay? 10. ….and what was the name of his flagship in the battle? Answers found on page 46. Steve Davis is the Civil War News Book Review Editor. He can be contacted by email at: [email protected].

Small Talk Trivia Answers 1. France, under Pierre LeMoyne, Sieur d’Iberville (Arthur W. Bergeron, Jr., Confederate Mobile [Jackson, MS, 1991], 3). 2. Daniel Morgan (1736–1802), Virginia Continental officer and victor at the battle of Cowpens, S.C., January 1781 (Chester G. Hearn, Mobile Bay and the Mobile Campaign: The Last Great Battles of the Civil War [Jefferson, NC, 1993], 41). 3. Franklin Buchanan (1800–1874) (Craig L. Symonds, Confederate Admiral: The Life and Wars of Franklin Buchanan [Annapolis, MD, 1999], xv-xvi, 168). 4. “…torpedoes!” (Hearn, Mobile Bay, 91). Civil War torpedoes were floating powder containers attached to a chain and anchor. During the war 43 Union vessels were sunk or damaged by Confederate torpedoes. Among these are counted the Housatonic, victim of the C.S.S. H. L. Hunley, at Charleston Harbor, Feb. 17, 1864. In the battle of Mobile Bay, the monitor Tecumseh was sunk by a torpedo (Milton F. Perry, Infernal Machines: The Story of Confederate Submarines and Mine Warfare [Baton Rouge, LA, 1965], 199-201). 5. Fort Gaines, named for Virginia-born Edmund P. Gaines (1777–1844) (Zed H. Burns, Confederate Forts [Natchez, MS, 1977], 96). 6. The C.S.S. Tennessee. In mid-1863 she began to be built at the Selma navy yard, with iron plate cast at Atlanta and cannon cast at the Selma Naval Gun Foundry and Ordnance Works. Carrying six 6.4-inch and two 7-inch rifles, the huge ship was propelled by engines that could only move her slowly (Maurice Melton, The Confederate Ironclads [New York, 1968], 205, 209). Map of the naval battle, naming the eighteen U.S. and four C.S. vessels is in Jack Friend, West Wind, Flood Tide: The Battle of Mobile Bay [Annapolis, MD, 2004], 220). 7. Stephen Russell Mallory (ca. 1811–1873). Mallory was born in Trinidad before birth records began to be made. Biographer Joseph T. Durkin guesses 1810 or 1811 (Confederate Navy Chief: Stephen R. Mallory [Columbia, SC, 1987 (1954)], 10n.). Another suggests 1813 (Rodman L. Underwood, Stephen Russell Mallory: A Biography of the Confederate Navy Secretary and United States Senator [Jefferson, NC, 2005], 5). The quote comes from Emory Thomas’ article on Mobile Bay in Civil War Times Illustrated, April 1977, p. 45. 8. Fort Blakeley. Around the fort Confederates planted a large number of sub-terra shells (land mines). “We had quite a number killed by torpedoes,” wrote a Connecticut artillerist (Paul Brueske, The Last Siege: The Mobile Campaign [Philadelphia, PA, 2018], 124). The fort is sometimes spelled Blakely, but Brueske includes photographs taken at Historic Blakeley State Park. 9. David Glasgow Farragut (1801-1870), who in July 1866 became “the first full admiral in the United States Navy” (Chester G. Hearn, Admiral David Glasgow Farragut: The Civil War Years [Annapolis, MD, 1998], 309). 10. The U.S.S. Hartford. The 2900-ton screw sloop was launched in November 1858. She sank at berth in Norfolk Navy Yard in 1956 (Tony Gibbons, Warships and Naval Battles of the Civil War [New York, 1989], 163).