TTHN Ep 6 - Damn the Torpedoes

There are moments in history that become larger than life—reduced to a single phrase, a single decision, a single flash of action.

“Damn the torpedoes.”

But behind that moment is a life shaped long before Mobile Bay.

In this episode, we trace the full arc of Admiral David Glasgow Farragut—from his beginnings along the Tennessee River near Campbell’s Station… to a childhood marked by loss… to a life forged almost entirely at sea.

By the time the Civil War began, Farragut was not an untested officer looking for opportunity. He was something far more dangerous—experienced, disciplined, and decisive.

At New Orleans, he proved he would act.

At Mobile Bay, he proved how.

But this story is not just about a command shouted in battle.

It is about:

• the weight of decision
• the cost of loyalty
• and the kind of life that prepares a man to move forward when others hesitate

Because when the moment came… Farragut did not wait.

He moved.

Full speed ahead.

Sources

DeHaan, P. (n.d.). Damn the torpedoes: Farragut & USS Hartford: 158 years of service. Self-published.

Farragut Museum. (n.d.). David Glasgow Farragut exhibits and interpretive materials. Farragut, TN.

Tennessee Encyclopedia. (n.d.). David Glasgow Farragut.
https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/david-glasgow-farragut/

Tennessee History for Kids. (n.d.). David Farragut.
https://www.tnhistoryforkids.org/people/david_farragut

American Battlefield Trust. (n.d.). Jorge Farragut.
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/jorge-farragut

Credits:

Hosted by Big John Summers
Produced by Summers Media Enterprises

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Welcome to the Tennessee History Nerd. This is a podcast dedicated to Tennessee's past. Every week we bring you a new story about the people, places, and events that have shaped Tennessee and made it and us who and what we are. So grab your favorite beverage, find a comfortable place, and sit back and enjoy. There are some places where history feels distant, abstract, disconnected from anything we can see or touch. And then there are places where it doesn't. Places where the story feels close enough that you can almost step into it, where the ground itself seems to carry memory. East Tennessee is one of those places, and just outside of Knoxville, along the Tennessee River, there's a point of land where that kind of history took shape. If you go there today, it doesn't look the way you might expect. This isn't a preserved frontier site. There's no reconstructed cabin, no quiet, untouched clearing set aside for reflection. Instead, what you'll find are homes, large homes, substantial homes set along the river, built on land that now carries a very different kind of value than it did in 1801. These aren't modest houses tucked away in the trees. They are the kind of homes that make it immediately clear this land is desirable, and those who own these places are people of means. So this place matters, but not for the reason it did in the early 19th century, because long before any of these homes were built, before roads, before development, before any of that, this same stretch of ground was something else entirely. And it was here on July 5th, 1801, near what was then known as Campbell's Station, a frontier settlement along the Tennessee River, that a boy was born. His name was James Glasgow Farragut. His father, Jorge Farragut Mesquita, later anglicized to George Farragut, had come to America from Spain in 1776. He'd served during the Revolutionary War on the American side and afterward made his way into what would become East Tennessee. Like many men of that era, he went where opportunity and necessity led him. By the 1790s, he'd established himself along the Tennessee River, operating a ferry at a place that would later be known as Lowe's Ferry. That ferry mattered. Before bridges, before developed road systems, before the kind of infrastructure we take for granted today, a ferry was a connection point. It linked communities that would otherwise remain isolated. It made movement possible. It anchored a place. And for a stretch of time, that riverbank was home, but it wouldn't remain that way. In 1807, when James was still a young boy, George Farragut accepted a position in New Orleans as a sailing master for the United States Navy. The move was not temporary. It was a turning point. The family left Tennessee behind, leaving the river, the ferry, the frontier life that had defined those early years, and in doing so they set James on a path that would take him far beyond anything that landscape could have suggested. But before that path fully unfolded, tragedy intervened. Not long after our arriving in New Orleans, James's mother, Elizabeth Farragut, died of yellow fever. The loss was sudden. And for a child still in his earliest years, it was formative. It marked, in a very real sense, the end of one chapter of his life before the next had even fully begun, and it created a void. Into that void stepped a man named David Porter. Porter was a naval officer and he was a friend of the family. And in time he became something more than that. Recognizing both the boy's situation and his potential, Porter took James into his household. He did more than provide stability, he provided direction. Under Porter's guidance, James was introduced to the world of the United States Navy, not as a distant possibility, but as an immediate reality. He was trained, disciplined, prepared. And in honor of the man who had taken him in, Farragut made the decision that was both personal and symbolic. He changed his name. James Glasgow Farragut became David Glasgow Farragut. It wasn't simply a name, it was a turning point. And from that moment forward his life would be tied fully and permanently to the sea. In December of eighteen ten, at just nine years old, Farragut received his midshipman's warrant in the United States Navy. Nine years old. It is truly difficult fully to grasp that today. But in that era, it wasn't unheard of, particularly for boys under the mentorship of established naval officers. Even so, what followed was extraordinary. By the age of twelve, Farragut was already at sea during the War of 1812. He served aboard the USS Essex under the command of David Porter. This wasn't theoretical training. This was war. During that conflict, Farragut took part in the capture of a British vessel, an experience that would mark him early as someone capable of functioning under pressure in real combat conditions. It's one thing to be prepared for a life at sea. It's quite another thing entirely to be tested in it, at an age when most are still years away from adulthood. But that was the pattern of Farragut's early life. Responsibility came early. Expectation came early. And the shaping of his character, his discipline, his decisiveness, his ability to act under pressure began long before the Civil War, long before Mobile Bay, long before the moment for which he would become known. By the time he reached adulthood, Farragut wasn't simply a man who had entered the Navy. He was a man who quite literally had been formed by it. And everything that would come later would rest on that foundation. By the time the Civil War began, David Farragut had already lived a lifetime at sea, not a figure of speech, a lifetime. From the moment he entered the Navy as a boy, the sea wasn't something he visited. It was something that shaped him. And that shaping didn't happen all at once. It happened slowly, over years, over decades, through long stretches of service that didn't make headlines, but mattered nevertheless. Farragut's first real test came almost as soon as his naval life began, the War of 1812. He served aboard the USS Essex under the command of David Porter, the same man who had taken him in and set him on his path. This was not symbolic participation. It was active service. The Essex operated far from home waters, pushing into the Pacific and engaging British shipping in ways that stretched the reach of the young United States Navy. For Farragut, still barely into his teens, it meant exposure to real naval warfare, long voyages, isolation, discipline, danger. At one point he was entrusted with responsibility well beyond what we would expect for someone his age, an early indication of how quickly he was expected to grow into his role, and grow he did. After the War of eighteen twelve, Farragut did not return to anything resembling a settled life. Instead, he continued at sea for years at a time, in the Mediterranean, in the Caribbean, wherever the Navy required him. This was a period of American naval expansion, not in the sense of size, but in reach. The United States was asserting its presence abroad, protecting commerce, suppressing piracy, and establishing itself as a maritime nation. And Farragut was part of that effort. He served in what was often called the Mosquito Fleet in the Caribbean, small fast vessels tasked with hunting down pirates operating in the region. It wasn't glamorous work, it was persistent, demanding, often uncomfortable. He later reflected on those years by noting that for long stretches he never owned a bed, sleeping wherever space could be found aboard a ship. That detail matters because it tells you something about the kind of life he was living. This was not a career built on occasional bursts of action. It was built on endurance. Over time, Farragut's responsibilities increased. He rose through the ranks, lieutenant, commander, captain. Each step marked not just seniority, but trust, trust in his judgment, trust in his discipline, trust in his ability to command. He married in 1824, his first wife, Susan Caroline Marchant, and for a time began to establish something resembling a settled life alongside his naval career. But that stability did not last. In 1840, after a prolonged illness, Susan died in Norfolk. It was a personal loss that marked a difficult period in Farragut's life, one that unfolded largely out of public view, but which those who knew him would later remember as deeply felt. It's a reminder that even a life shaped by the sea wasn't untouched by what happened ashore. Three years later, in 1843, he married again, this time to Virginia Loyal, the woman who would remain his wife the rest of his life. Together they would have a son, Loyal Farragut, born in 1844, and that detail, quiet as it seems here, will matter later, because when the defining moment of Farragut's career finally came, his son would be there to see it. And through it all, Farragut built a reputation not as a dramatic figure, not as a self-promoter, but as something quieter and in many ways more important, dependable. By the time of the Mexican American War in the 1840s, Farragut was already a seasoned officer. He served in support roles during that conflict, important though not as publicly visible as some of the more celebrated naval actions of the war, and that too is part of his story, because Farragut's career was not built on a single defining moment, not yet. It was built on accumulation, experience layered on experience, responsibility layered on responsibility. In the years leading up to the Civil War, Farragut spent significant time in Norfolk, Virginia. This was, in many ways, his home base, a place where his family lived, a place where his connections were rooted, and that matters because it complicates the decision he would later face. Farragut was not an outsider to the South. He was part of it. He lived there. He had relationships there. He had built a life there. At the same time, his professional identity remained tied to the United States Navy, not to a state, not to a region, to a service. In eighteen fifty four, Farragut was assigned to establish and command the Mare Island Navy Yard in California. This was not a combat role. It was administrative, structural, foundational, and it was significant. The United States was expanding westward, and the Navy needed a permanent presence on the Pacific Coast. Mare Island would become that presence. For Farragut, it meant something different from the life he had known, building infrastructure, organizing operations, managing resources. It required a different kind of leadership, not just command at sea, but command over systems, and he proved capable of that as well. By the late 1850s, as the nation moved closer to conflict, Farragut had become something very specific, not a rising officer, not a promising one, but a fully formed naval commander. He had seen combat as a boy, endured long years of service at sea, operated in multiple theaters, commanded ships, built naval infrastructure, and perhaps most importantly, earned the trust of those above him. And he done it all without seeking attention. There's no single moment in this period that defines him. No headline, no dramatic turning point, just a steady accumulation of experience, the kind that doesn't always stand out at the time, but becomes unmistakable when the moment finally arrives, and that moment was coming. Because as the eighteen fifties gave way to the eighteen sixties, the question that had defined his father's generation returned in a different form, not whether to build a nation, but whether to hold one together. And for David Farragut, the answer would not come without cost. By the time the Civil War began, David Farragut was not a young officer looking for opportunity. He was not untested. He was not unknown. He was, by that point, one of the most experienced naval officers in the United States, and that's what made the decision he faced in eighteen sixty one so significant. When the nation fractured, it didn't do so cleanly. Lines were drawn, but people didn't always fit neatly within them. Farragut was a southern man, born in Tennessee, with deep ties to Louisiana, living in Virginia. Everything about his life suggested that if he were to choose a side, it might be the South, and yet he did not hesitate. When Virginia moved towards secession, Farragut made his decision. He would remain with the United States. He left Norfolk, relocated his family to the North, and offered his services to the Union. It was not a decision made in comfort, but it was a decisive one, and it would define everything that followed. In early 1862, Farragut was given command of the West Gulf blockading squadron. His assignment was direct and daunting. Take New Orleans. To understand what that meant, you have to understand what New Orleans represented. It was the largest city in the Confederacy, a major port, a gateway to the Mississippi River. If it fell, the Confederacy would be cut strategically, economically, logistically. But the river did not stand open. It was defended. Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip guarded the approach. Obstructions were placed in the river. Guns lined the banks. The Confederacy expected those defenses to hold. Farragut did not. After days of bombardment, he made the decision that would define the operation. He would run the fleet past the forts, not cautiously, not gradually, but directly, forcing his way upriver under fire. It was a calculated risk, and it worked. In April of eighteen six two, New Orleans fell. It was one of the most significant naval victories of the war. The Mississippi River was opened, Confederate supply lines were disrupted, and the balance of the war shifted. For his success, Farragut was promoted to Rear Admiral, the first man in United States history to hold that rank. But perhaps more importantly, he'd proven something, not just that he could command, but that when he was faced with a difficult decision under pressure, he would act. Two years later, the war had changed, but it had not ended. Mobile remained one of the Confederacy's last major open ports on the Gulf Coast. And it wasn't just open, it was active. Mobile had become a hub for Confederate blockade running, a vital lifeline through which supplies continued to flow in from abroad. It had also served as the home port of the CSS Alabama, the commerce raider commanded by Raphael Sims, whose operations had carried the war far beyond American waters. Protecting that access were the defenses at the mouth of the bay, forts Morgan, Gaines, and Powell, positioned to guard the approaches and deny entry to any force that tried to come in. As long as Mobile remained open, the Confederacy was not cut off, and so, once again, Farragut moved. On the morning of august fifth, eighteen sixty four, his fleet approached Mobile Bay. It was a formidable force. Fourteen wooden warships, four ironclad monitors. Inside the bay, Confederate forces waited. At their center was the ironclad CSS Tennessee commanded by Admiral Franklin Buchanan. Supporting vessels stood ready, and beneath the surface, hidden, silent, was a field of torpedoes, naval mines, the kind that do not announce themselves until it's too late. Earlier we noted that Farragut made a difficult and momentous decision at the beginning of the war. A Southern man, Tennessee born with deep ties to Louisiana and Virginia, he chose the Union. But there was another man in Mobile Bay that day, Franklin Buchanan. Like Farragut, Buchanan was a career naval officer. Like Farragut, he'd spent decades in the United States Navy. Like Farragut, he was Southern born. And like Farragut, he faced the same question in 1861. But Buchanan chose differently. Believing his state would secede, he resigned his commission. When that didn't unfold as expected, he attempted to return, but was refused. From that point forward, he served the Confederacy, and he served it well, but he did so under very different conditions, where Farragut commanded a navy that was increasingly well funded, well supplied, and organized, but canon operated within a system that struggled constantly with shortages, limitations, and constraints, and at Mobile Bay those differences would matter. But so would something else, decision making under pressure. As the Union fleet advanced into the bay, the monitor, USS Tecumseh, moved ahead of the line, and then a sudden explosion. The ship had struck a torpedo. Within minutes she rolled over and sank. The loss was immediate, violent and unmistakable. Many men went down with her, and for those who remained, the danger was no longer theoretical. It was real. Ahead lay the minefield, behind them uncertainty, and under free. Fire from Fort Morgan, the fleet hesitated. Ships slowed and then stopped, because now the question was no longer can we do this? It was what happens if we try? From the deck of the USS Hartford, Farragut could not see clearly. Smoke from the guns had settled across the water, the battle was unfolding, but not visible. So he made a decision. He climbed, up into the rigging, higher until he reached a position near the top of the mainmast. There he had himself secured, lashed in place so that he could see above the smoke. From that vantage point the situation became unmistakable. The fleet had stopped, and if it remained stopped, it would fail. And somewhere below him aboard that same ship was his own son. Loyal Farragut, a young officer in the Union Navy, serving on his father's flagship. He was there in the smoke, in the confusion, in the same moment that would come to define his father's life. When the warning came Torpedoes, Farragut responded. Now this is where the story is often simplified, oversimplified even, and even somewhat sensationalized. The version most people know is damn the torpedoes full speed ahead. It's sharp, it's memorable, it's perfectly suited for retelling. But the historical record suggests something a little more complex. Accounts closer to the event indicate that his command was something likely more detailed, something along the lines of damn the torpedoes, four bells, Captain Drayton, go ahead. Given in the urgency of the moment, through signal, through voice, through command, over time the wording was condensed, refined, perhaps, sharpened into the phrase that would pass into popular memory. But whether spoken exactly that way or not, the meaning was unmistakable. Move forward now, and the fleet did. Through the minefield, past the hesitation, into the bay. The Confederate gunboats engaged but were driven back. The CSS Tennessee, Buchanan's flagship, moved forward to meet the Union fleet. He fought hard, aggressively, but he was outmatched. Union ships closed in from multiple directions, striking the Tennessee again and again. Its armor held for a time, but eventually the damage mounted. Buchanan was wounded. The ship could no longer continue, and it was forced to surrender. With that, Mobile Bay was, for all intents and purposes, lost to the Confederacy. More fighting would be required to take Fort Gaines, Fort Morgan, and Mobile itself, but at that point the outcome was pretty much inevitable. It's easy in hindsight to reduce this moment to a single phrase. But what happened at Mobile Bay was not just boldness, it was judgment. Farragut understood the risk. He knew the danger was real, but he also understood something else, that stopping in that moment was more dangerous than moving forward. There's also evidence that he believed that many of the Confederate torpedoes, naval mines, had become waterlogged and were no longer fully effective. The loss of the Tecumseh suggested otherwise. Whether that ship had strayed outside the cleared path or had simply been unlucky is still debated. But Farragut wasn't leaving the outcome to hesitation, and so he chose, just as he had chosen before, and as his father had chosen in a different generation. The victory at Mobile Bay would secure Farragut's place in history, but it would not be the end of his story, because what followed would bring recognition, honor, and eventually the closing chapter of a life spent almost entirely at sea. The victory at Mobile Bay secured David Farragut's place in history, but it did not end his service. In the months that followed, he was promoted to vice admiral, a rank newly created for him, reflecting both the significance of his achievements and the growing stature of the United States Navy. Two years later, in eighteen sixty six, he became the first man in American history to hold the rank of admiral. It was, in many ways, the formal recognition of what had already been established. He'd proven himself, not once, but repeatedly. After the war, Farragut continued to serve. He was given command of the European squadron, representing the United States abroad at a time when the nation was still defining its place on the world stage. He was received with honors, welcomed by foreign leaders, recognized not just as a naval officer, but as a symbol of a country that had endured its greatest internal trial and emerged intact. And yet for all that recognition, there is something else worth noting. During my visit to the Farragut Museum in Farragut, Tennessee recently, one of the things that stood out wasn't a battle, not a rank, not even Mobile Bay. It was something much quieter. The staff there made it a point to say that by all accounts, Farragut was a genuinely kind man, an honorable man, the kind of man who cared deeply for those around him. That isn't always the image that history preserves. We tend to remember the moment, the command, the phrase, but behind that moment was a person, one who lived a life that wasn't defined solely by what happened in battle, but also by what happened away from it. In the years after the war, Fargut's health began to decline. The long service, the years at sea, the strain of command, it had all taken its toll. And in August of eighteen seventy, while visiting Portsmouth, New Hampshire, he died at the age of sixty nine. More than ten thousand people attended his funeral, among them President Ulysses S. Grant. It was the kind of farewell reserved for someone whose life had left a mark not just on an institution, but on a nation. And yet, for all that he became, the story began in a very different place, along the Tennessee River, near what was once called Campbell Station. And if you stand there today, or if you even look at it from above, you can begin to piece it together. The river's still there, of course, though the TVA dam system has made it a bit deeper and perhaps a bit wider. Overall, the shape of the shoreline hasn't changed all that much, and you can still see the logic of it. On the north side of the water, a stretch of land where homes now sit, some of them substantial, are set along what is today Christus Way, a road that appears to follow the line of what would have been access down to the old ferry crossing in another era. To the west, across the adjacent cove on the north shore of the river, is Admiral Farragut Park, quiet, well maintained, the kind of place that preserves the memory of a local boy who became the focus of national attention. And southward across the river from those two points was once the southern terminus of Lowe's Ferry, a working crossing, a connection point, a place where movement happened. That's the geography Farragut was born into. Not a landmark, not a moment, but a place defined by passage. And today that same ground is still there, just carrying a different kind of significance. At one time a stone marker placed there through the efforts of Admiral George Dewey, himself a figure shaped by Farragut's legacy, stood on that point of land to mark the place of Farragut's birth. Today that marker no longer stands there. It now sits near the Farragut Town Hall, part of a memorial space set aside to remember the man. And there are stories, local accounts, that attempt to explain how and why it was moved. Stories that may or may not be fully accurate, but whether those details are true or not, the result is the same. The land where Farragut was born is no longer preserved as a historic site. The memory of that place has been relocated. And that raises a question, not just about Farragut, but about how we remember. What do we preserve? What do we mark? And what do we allow to be changed? David Farragut's life is not difficult to find. His name is recorded, his achievements are documented, his words, however they were originally spoken, are remembered. But the place where it all began, it's not what it once was. And maybe that's part of the story too. That history isn't just something we inherit, it's something we choose to keep or not. A boy born along the Tennessee River, the son of a man who chose a cause not his own, who would one day face the same kind of choice himself, and who, when the moment came, chose decisively to move forward. Full speed ahead. So that's going to do it for this week's episode. I hope you've enjoyed this journey along with Admiral David Farragut. If you enjoyed today's story, you may be interested to know that the Tennessee History Nerd has a sister podcast, Dolphin Island Diaries, and that this week's episode for that podcast deals with Fort Gaines, which was one of the forts that was integral in the Battle of Mobile Bay, which was central in today's episode on Admiral Farragut. If you'd like to know more about Fort Gaines, I encourage you to check that episode out. Look for Dolphin Island Diaries wherever you download your podcasts. Next week we're heading to southeastern Middle Tennessee to a small mountaintop university and a tough group of young men who experienced an extraordinary yet brutal journey of their own and achieved something that's never been matched since and almost certainly never will be. Join us next week when we look at the story of the Iron Men. Until then, I'm Big John Summers, the Tennessee History Nerd, and I am history. Before we close things out, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the sources behind this episode. This story draws primarily from a combination of historical writing, reference material, and on-site interpretation. A key narrative source for this episode was Paul Dehahn's Damn the Torpedoes, Farragut and USS Hartford 158 Years of Service, which provides detailed background, particularly on the events surrounding the Battle of Mobile Bay and the evolution of the famous command attributed to Farragut. I also relied heavily on interpretive material from the Farragut Museum in Farragut, Tennessee, including exhibit panels and historical markers that outlined Farragut's early life, naval career, and legacy. In addition, I consulted entries from the Tennessee Encyclopedia and educational material from Tennessee History for Kids for supporting biographical detail and historical context. And finally, for additional background on Farragut's father, I referenced a biographical profile from the American Battlefield Trust. As always, I encourage you to explore these sources for yourself. They add depth and perspective to a story that's often reduced to a single line.