Farragut’s climbing aloft in the main shrouds, where his flag-lieutenant, John Crittenden Watson (who still survives him, an honored admiral), lashed him to prevent his falling; his anger with the slowing of the _Brooklyn_ when her captain saw the monitor _Tecumseh_ go down before him from the explosion of a mine; Farragut’s order, shouted from aloft: “Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead!”; the more than Sydneyan courtesy of Tunis Craven, the captain of the unfortunate _Tecumseh_, in stepping aside from the port of the turret and saying to the pilot: “After you, sir,” and going down with his ship; the final magnificent grappling of the _Hartford_, _Monongahela_, and _Lackawanna_ with the ironclad _Tennessee_, make a story which it needs a poet to tell and which should be enshrined in the heart of every lover of complete courage and genius in action, and in no man were these more personified than in Farragut. America would seem to have lost that genius for praise in poetry of her heroes and heroic actions which has remained in full vigor in England, whose poets seem to rise ever to the occasion, even if at times soaring somewhat above it. But better the latter than none at all. Still, whether sung or not (for Brownell’s fine poem was but a taste of what should be), Mobile Bay remains one of the finest dramas ever enacted upon the salt flood of ocean. The great bombardments of Fort Fisher on December 24th, 25th, and 27th, and again on January 11th-15th by the fleet of fifty-eight ships under Admiral Porter, during which the fort was assaulted by 2,000 seamen and marines which, though unsuccessful in itself, greatly assisted that of the army, were the last naval events of high importance of the war. During this bombardment, in which the most powerful ships of the navy assisted, 16,682 projectiles were fired, weighing 1,652,638 pounds. All of the nineteen guns on the sea face of the fort were dismounted. On April 9th came the surrender of Lee at Appomattox, and peace. CHAPTER XXII