“The Battle for the Bay”

This poem describes the battle for Mobile Bay, termed by Admiral Farragut “one of the fiercest naval combats on record” (VIII, Doc. 102), and is indebted to Farragut’s official report of the battle (VIII, Doc. 100-106). Farragut’s attacking fleet began the fight by steaming boldly into the bay and exchanging fire with the guns of Fort Gaines. Soon, however, as Farragut puts it, “It was apparent that there was some difficulty . . . . I saw the Tecumseh struck by a torpedo, disappear almost instantaneously beneath the waves . . .” (Doc. 101). This information probably led to Melville’s lines in stanza six:

But what delays? ‘mid wounds above
Dim buoys give hint of death below . . . .
A cheer for the Tecumseh!—nay,
Before their eyes the turreted ship goes down!

When Melville relates in stanza three that “The Admiral rushes to his rightful place,” he is referring to Farragut’s decision to take his flagship to the head of the line. Melville had mentioned in stanza four that Farragut “Sailed second in the long fleet’s midmost line,” a fact for which he had authority in the Admiral’s remark that “It was only at the urgent request of the Captains and commanding officers that I yielded to the Brooklyn being the leading ship of the line” (Doc.101). (Farragut’s flagship was the Hartford.) It was after the sinking of the Tecumseh that Farragut went to the head of the fleet: “I determined at once, as I had originally intended, to take the lead” (Doc. 101).
Melville’s wording of the details of the battle in stanzas ten through thirteen follows Farragut’s account very closely at times. Since Melville’s account is drawn from one compact passage given in successive paragraphs, rather than compounded from details scattered through several reports (his common procedure), his poetic method can be seen here quite clearly, and the accounts follow in full:

But no, she turns—the Tennessee!
The solid Ram of iron and oak,
Strong as Evil, and bold as Wrong, though lone—
A pestilence in her smoke.
The flagship is her singled mark,
The wooden Hartford. Let her come;
She challenges the planet of Doom,
And naught shall save her—not her iron bark.Slip anchor, all! And at her, all!
Bear down with rushing beaks— and now!
First the Monongahela struck—and reeled;
The Lackawana’s prow
Next crashed—crashed, but not crashing; then
The Admiral rammed, and rasping nigh
Sloped in a broadside, which glanced by:
The Monitors battered at her adamant den.
 The Chickasaw plunged beneath the stern
And pounded there; a huge wrought orb
From the Manhattan pierced one wall, but dropped;
Others the seas absorb.
Yet stormed on all sides, narrowed in,
Hampered and cramped, the bad one fought—
Spat ribald curses from the port
Whose shutters, jammed, locked up this Man-of-Sin. No pause or stay. They made a din
Like hammers round a boiler forged;
Now straining strength tangled itself with strength,
Till Hate her will disgorged.
The white flag showed, the fight was won—
Mad shouts went up that shook the Bay;
But pale on the scarred fleet’s decks there lay
A silent man for every silenced gun.

The full account given by Farragut reads:

Having passed the forts and dispersed the enemy’s gun-boats, I had ordered most of the vessels to anchor, when I perceived the ram Tennessee standing up for this ship. This was at forty-five minutes past eight. I was not long in comprehending his intentions to be the destruction of the flag-ship. The Monitors and such of the wooden vessels as I thought best adapted for the purpose, were immediately ordered to attack the ram, not only with their guns, but bows on at full speed, and then began one of the fiercest naval combats on record.
The Monongahela, Commander Strong, was the first vessel that struck her, and in doing so carried away his own iron prow, together with the cutwater, without apparently doing her adversary much injury. The Lackawanna, Captain Marchand, was the next vessel

to strike her, which she did at full speed; but though her stern was cut and crushed to the plank ends for the distance of three feet above the water-edge, to five feet below, the only perceptible effect on the ram was to give her a heavy list.
The Hartford was the third vessel to strike her, but, as the Tennessee quickly shifted her helm, the blow was a glancing one, and as she rasped along our side, we poured our whole port broadside of nine-inch solid shot within ten feet of her casemate.
The Monitors worked slowly, but delivered their fire as opportunity offered. The Chickasaw succeeded in getting under her stern, and a fifteen-inch shot from the Manhattan broke through her iron plating and heavy wooden backing, though the missile itself did not enter the vessel.
She was at this time sore beset; the Chickasaw was pounding away at her stern, the Ossipee was approaching her at full speed, and the Monongahela, Lackawanna, and this ship were bearing down upon her, determined upon her destruction. Her smoke-stack had been shot away, her steering chains were gone, compelling a resort to her relieving tackles, and several of her port shutters were jammed. Indeed, from the time the Hartford struck her until her surrender she never fired a gun. As the Ossipee, Commander Le Roy, was about to strike her, she hoisted the white flag, and that vessel immediately stopped her engine, though not in time to avoid a glancing blow (Doc. 102).

In using this account, Melville stripped it down to a skeleton and then expressed it in as dramatic terms as he could. All of the details as given by Farragut are present in Melville’s lines, from the “rasping” blow of the flagship to the Chickasaw’s “pounding away at her storm.”