David G. Farragut

American admiral

• Born: July 5, 1801
• Birthplace: Campbell's Station, Tennessee
• Died: August 14, 1870
• Place of death: Portsmouth, New Hampshire

The first officer given the rank of admiral in the United States Navy, Farragut is most noted for his victory over Confederate forces in the Battle of Mobile Bay during the Civil War. He had served in the Navy for an exceptionally long period and is regarded as a model of a career military career officer.

Early Life

David Glasgow Farragut (FARH-ah-geht) was the son of George Farragut and the former Elizabeth Shine. His mother was a native of Dobbs County, North Carolina, while his father was an immigrant of Spanish ancestry from the British (later French) island of Minorca. George Farragut served as both an army and then a naval officer during the American Revolution, then moved his family to Tennessee and again westward.

In Louisiana after 1807, George Farragut was a sailing master in the Navy who, the following year, suffered the loss of his wife to yellow fever at their home on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain. Because he did not expect to remarry and thought that he could no longer give proper care and attention to his children, the elder Farragut arranged for his son’s adoption by his friend, Commander David Porter . Porter was the commandant of the naval station at New Orleans.

Porter took his adopted son with him to Washington in 1809, and there and at his later home in Chester, Pennsylvania, he gave him better schooling than he had hitherto known. He also introduced him to Paul Hamilton, secretary of the Navy, who promised him a commission as a midshipman. This was issued December 17, 1810, although Farragut was only nine years of age. From 1811 through 1815, Farragut served under Porter aboard the frigate Essex, saw action in the Atlantic and the Pacific in the War of 1812 , and even had the brief opportunity at the age of twelve to command a captured prize ship, the Barclay. Although finally made a prisoner of war after an unsuccessful battle with the British ship Phoebe, the thrill of this early service and the pride he took in his adoptive father’s growing reputation caused Farragut, upon release in 1814, to change his name legally to David. This was also the name of his foster brother, David Dixon Porter; the two maintained a healthy rivalry and friendship down through the years.

At home, in Chester, Farragut added to his education. He then served briefly apart from Porter following a paroled prisoner of war exchange, and concluded the war aboard the brig Spark. With never a thought toward a civilian occupation, Farragut immediately took service aboard a ship-of-the-line, the Independence, which sailed to the Mediterranean Sea to back up Commodore Stephen Decatur’s squadron against the Barbary pirates in what was called the Algerine War.

After this Farragut served aboard a similar ship, the Washington, until he was afforded the opportunity to study under the American consul at Tunis, Charles Folsom. In addition to diplomacy, polite manners, and foreign languages, he was able to develop an understanding of English literature and mathematics. He was a bright young man, though impressive only in demeanor as he was five feet, six and a half inches tall and of average build. With his formal education complete late in 1818, Farragut embarked upon his naval career in earnest.

Life’s Work

Duty was undertaken aboard the Franklin and the Shark, and while aboard the latter brig, Farragut was recommended for promotion to the rank of lieutenant at the unusually young age of eighteen. Recalled to Norfolk, Virginia, he was ordered to sea again in the sloop-of-war John Adams; in 1823 he volunteered for duty aboard the Greyhound when he heard that this ship was to be placed under the command of Captain Porter’s brother, Lieutenant John Porter, and that the captain himself was to command the squadron of which it was a part. The squadron was prepared to fight pirates in the Caribbean Sea, and this was especially welcome duty to Farragut, who had come to detest piracy.

Confiscating the booty of numerous pirates and burning their ships, the “Mosquito Fleet,” as the squadron was known, did effective service over the next two years. British forces then arrived to finish the job, and piracy was virtually eliminated as a common practice in Caribbean waters. An incident that occurred in the town of Foxardo, Puerto Rico, however, while he was in command of the squadron led to Commodore Porter’s court-martial and resignation from the Navy. In later years he would serve his country as a diplomat.

After six months’ service in the Caribbean in 1823, Farragut returned to Norfolk to marry a young woman he had met there. On September 24, 1823, Susan C. Marchant became his wife. With his formal promotion to lieutenant in 1825, Farragut was ordered once again to active duty aboard the frigate Brandywine, which carried the celebrated old hero of that Revolutionary War battle, the Marquis de Lafayette, back to France. When he returned to the United States, Farragut found his wife suffering greatly from neuralgia. Despite a convalescence at New Haven, Connecticut, she continued to decline from the disease until her death on December 27, 1840.

While in New Haven, Farragut had come to attend lectures at Yale and reflect on the lack of educational opportunities available to young boys aboard ships. Upon returning to Norfolk, he organized a school for “ship’s boys,” said to be the first of its kind.

From 1828 to 1829, from 1833 to 1834, and again from 1841 to 1843, Farragut served in the South Atlantic waters off South America. He rose from first lieutenant (executive officer) of the sloop-of-war Vandalia to captain of the schooner Boxer. Several years of shore duty were then followed by orders to Pensacola, Florida, in 1838, where he was placed in command of the sloop-of-war Erie and given duty off Veracruz, Mexico. He was then advanced to the rank of commander in 1841.

Returning to Norfolk early in 1843, Farragut met and married Virginia Loyall, a native of that community, on December 26, 1843. They would have one child, a son, Loyall, born in 1844. As war with Mexico approached, Farragut anxiously requested duty off Veracruz and pressed his ideas for an attack on its fort, Castle San Juan de Ulloa, upon George Bancroft, secretary of the Navy. His overzealousness in doing so, however, delayed his being given a proper command. Finally, in February, 1847, almost a year after the war got under way, he was given the sloop-of-war Saratoga and sent to the port. By that time, however, Veracruz had already been captured by army forces under General Winfield Scott . Nothing came of his service in this war except frustration, a bout with yellow fever, bitterness, and ill feelings.

Assignment to the Norfolk Navy Yard followed the Mexican War in 1848. Posted in California in 1854, Farragut was responsible for the establishment of the soon-to-be-important navy yard at Mare Island. In 1855, he was promoted to the rank of captain. Returning to the east three years later, he was named to command a new steamship, the wooden sloop-of-war Brooklyn. From 1858 to 1860, he remained her captain, assigned primarily to the Gulf of Mexico.

With the election of Abraham Lincoln, the secession of Southern states began in late 1860. As his native state of Tennessee and adopted state of Virginia threatened to follow others and join the Confederacy, Farragut had the same mixed feelings that struck Scott and other Southern unionists; like them, however, he professed his loyalty and stood by the same colors he had served so long.

The war’s beginning, on April 12, 1861, with the firing upon Fort Sumter, was formalized by Lincoln’s call for seventy-five thousand volunteers and establishment of a naval blockade of the Confederate coast. Farragut took his family out of Norfolk and established a home for them at Hastings, New York. On December 21, 1861, Farragut met the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Gustavus Vasa Fox, and received from him orders to take command of the Western Gulf Blockading Squadron, gather all available vessels, and proceed to capture New Orleans.

Farragut designated the steam sloop-of-war Hartford his flagship and departed Hampton Roads in February, 1862, for Ship Island in the Gulf. Seventeen vessels, mostly gunboats, were brought in and sailed up the Mississippi; on April 18, 1862, Farragut, as his orders directed, set his mortar boats to work bombarding Fort Jackson. The fort, however, was too strong to be reduced in this manner, and so Farragut took it upon himself to run past this fort, and Fort St. Philip upstream, at night. After 2:00 a.m. on August 24, the run was successfully completed, Confederate vessels sent against them were destroyed, and New Orleans was taken through the instrument of Benjamin Butler’s army. Farragut then passed Vicksburg on June 28. Instantly he became a national hero and was promoted to rear admiral on July 16, 1862. He added little to his fame with further actions on the Mississippi, which was soon in the capable hands of David Dixon Porter.

In August, Farragut made his headquarters in the evacuated harbor of Pensacola. His blockade of the Gulf coast was now complete save for the fortified Confederate port of Mobile. This was a hornets’ nest of blockade runners and Farragut’s last objective. Receiving added ships and support from Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, he took a fleet of nineteen ships into Mobile Bay on August 5, 1864, past the Confederate batteries of Fort Morgan and through a minefield.

When Farragut’s lead ship, the Brooklyn, hesitated upon spotting the mines, and the monitor Tecumseh was sunk by one (then called a “torpedo”), Farragut ordered his flagship to take the lead and not to slow down. “Damn the torpedoes!” he said, and ordered the Hartford ahead at full speed. Successful at moving by the fort and through the mine field, Farragut’s fleet defeated all Confederate vessels easily except for the Tennessee, a ram that held out through a desperate battle until it had suffered so badly that it surrendered at last. Soon Fort Morgan was in Union hands and the Confederate coast was closed.

As Farragut’s health, ravaged by many tropical diseases, was declining, he was recalled to New York in November, 1864. There he became a communicant of the Episcopal Church. A month later, as of Christmas, he was promoted as the first to hold the rank of vice admiral of the U.S. Navy. The people of New York claimed him as a citizen of their city and bestowed a gift of fifty thousand dollars upon him as the war drew to a close.

On July 25, 1866, Congress created the new rank of admiral for Farragut. He served aboard the flagship Franklin in command of the European Squadron, returning to New York in 1868. He then traveled to California the following year but suffered a heart attack on the return via Chicago. Taken by steamship to be the guest of an admiral at the Portsmouth, New Hampshire, naval yard, Farragut died there on August 14, 1870.

Significance

David Farragut is regarded by many twentieth century historians as an ideal example of the nineteenth century career naval officer. Despite numerous disappointments while in uniform, his adoptive father’s court-martial, and his roots in the South, Farragut remained constant in his allegiance to the United States Navy and the government it represents. His patriotism, coolness and courage under fire, thorough preparation, and belief in education are part of the heritage he and others like him left for later generations of naval officers.

Farragut’s career of fifty-nine years in the service of his country has been equaled by few. What is more, it was a career featuring promotion as the first American to hold the rank of admiral, and it was crowned with the glory of the preeminent naval victory of the Civil War—the Battle of Mobile Bay. Had his health been better at the war’s close, and had he been so inclined, virtually no appointive or elective office would have been beyond his reach.

As it was, Farragut died, like Lincoln, near the peak of his fame and at the high tide of his fortunes. His passing was not so dramatic, but neither was much of his life. It was simply a life of dedicated service.

Bibliography

Duffy, James P. Lincoln’s Admiral: The Civil War Campaigns of David Farragut. New York: Wiley, 1997. Duffy offers new insight into the life of the American first full admiral. Based on source materials made available in the last twenty years.

Farragut, Loyall. The Life of David Glasgow Farragut: First Admiral of the United States Navy, Embodying His Journal and Letters. New York: D. Appleton, 1879. Reprint. New York: D. Appleton, 1907. The author, Farragut’s only child, has written a hagiography greatly improved by his use of Farragut’s letters and journal.

Hearn, Chester G. Admiral David Glasgow Farragut: The Civil War Years. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1998. An account of Farragut’s life and naval exploits, based in part on previously unused family and archival records. Focuses on Farragut’s participation in the Civil War, describing his command of the Western Gulf Blockading Squadron and his victory at the Battle of Mobile Bay.

Lewis, Charles Lee. David Glasgow Farragut. 2 vols. Annapolis, Md.: United States Naval Institute, 1941-1943. Reprint. Salem, N.H.: Ayer, 1980. The author of several excellent books on naval officers has here produced a scholarly biography enriched by original research.

Mahon, A. T. Admiral Farragut. New York: D. Appleton, 1892. A classic work on the subject written by another famous admiral, this biography nevertheless is dated and deemed unnecessarily laudatory.

Nash, Howard P., Jr. A Naval History of the Civil War. Cranbury, N.J.: A. S. Barnes, 1972. Concise and to the point, this is an outstanding one-volume history of the naval struggle between the North and the South. Many references are made to Farragut.

Schneller, Robert J., Jr. Farragut. Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 2002. One in a series of concise biographies of military leaders. Schneller analyzes Farragut’s personality and military leadership style, and concludes that Farragut’s intelligence, confidence, and courage were some of the character traits that made him the most outstanding naval officer of the nineteenth century.