This swift and easy repossession of the southern coastline by the Union, however important, lacked the wholesale excitement of great and bloody battles, and was a game little appreciated. But in the midst of it came an incident dramatic and startling in the highest degree, its hero being a naval officer, David Glasgow Farragut, son of a Spaniard from the island of Minorca, who had married a girl of Scotch strain and settled in the Tennessee mountains. After the birth of David the family removed to Louisiana, the father receiving a naval command. David as a boy of thirteen was on the _Essex_ at Valparaiso, in 1814, in her famous fight against the _Phœbe_ and _Cherub_. He had done good service on the seas and in port for almost fifty years, but his opportunity did not come until he was sixty years old.[220] [Illustration: THE MISSISSIPPI BELOW NEW ORLEANS] The need of seizing New Orleans, if practicable, was obvious: the place commanded the lower Mississippi, and was the most populous and important city of the Confederacy. The government, therefore, early gave thought to its capture, assigning for that end a land force of eighteen thousand men, under General Benjamin F. Butler, and a powerful fleet. It was recognized that the navy must play the larger part in the operations: eighty-two ships, therefore, were assigned to the West Gulf Squadron, ranging from tugs, mortar-schooners, and chartered ferry-boats to the most powerful man-of-war which the nation owned.[221] To command this great fleet was chosen Farragut, whose force and capacity had been recognized, especially by Welles, Secretary of the Navy.[222] He hoisted his flag on the _Hartford_, a wooden ship of nineteen hundred tons and twenty-four guns, and February 2, 1862, sailed southward from Hampton Roads to Ship Island, midway between the mouth of the Mississippi and Mobile, the rendezvous for the army and squadron.