"And at last, when the dim day broke, And the sullen sun awoke, Drearily blinking O'er the haze and the cannon-smoke, That even such morning dulls, There were thirteen traitor hulls On fire and sinking!" --_Henry Howard Brownell_ * * * * * "Thus," says the son of Farragut, in his admirable biography, "was accomplished a feat in naval warfare which had no precedent, and which is still without a parallel except the one furnished by Farragut himself, two years later, at Mobile. Starting with seventeen wooden vessels, he had passed with all but three of them, against the swift current of a river but half a mile wide, between two powerful earthworks which had long been prepared for him, his course impeded by blazing rafts, and immediately thereafter had met the enemy's fleet of fifteen vessels, two of them ironclads, and either captured or destroyed every one of them. And all this with a loss of but one ship from his squadron." The following day, he wrote:-- "My dearest wife and boy,--I am so agitated that I can scarcely write, and shall only tell you that it has pleased Almighty God to preserve my life through a fire such as the world has scarcely known. He has permitted me to make a name for my dear boy's inheritance, as well as for my comfort and that of my family." The next day, at eleven o'clock in the morning, by order of Farragut, "the officers and crews of the fleet return thanks to Almighty God for His great goodness and mercy in permitting us to pass through the events of the last two days with so little loss of life and blood." April 29, a battalion of two hundred and fifty marines and two howitzers, manned by sailors from the _Hartford_, marched through the streets of New Orleans, hoisted the Union flag in place of the Confederate on the city hall, and held possession till General Butler arrived with his troops on May 1. After the fall of the city, the forts surrendered to Porter.