After six months of tedious delay four monitors came with the assurance that a sufficient number of troops would coöperate. Two of these monitors had single turrets, armored with ten inches of iron and carrying two fifteen-inch Dahlgren guns--guns that used sixty pounds of powder (and might have used a hundred) behind solid-steel shot weighing 440 pounds. The others had eleven-inch Dahlgrens. Eventually a day for landing the troops on Dauphin Island was fixed--August 4, 1864--and Farragut was to pass the forts and anchor in the bay before daylight. The troops were landed, but Farragut had to wait for some of his squadron that had failed to arrive. But during the day they were all there. The wooden ships were prepared much as they had been at the battle of New Orleans, and then all that was wanting was a flood-tide to help sweep the ships, and a southwest wind to blow the smoke of battle into the eyes of Fort Morgan’s gunners. As fortune turned, Farragut got both early on the morning of August 5, 1864. It had been raining the night before, and it is recorded that Farragut could not sleep well. At 3 o’clock in the morning he sent a man on deck to ask how the wind was, and the man brought word that it was southwest. “Then we will go in this morning,” said Farragut, and a few minutes later the boatswains were turning out all hands on every ship of the fighting squadron. It was not a long task to get the men to quarters, but the ships had to be lashed together two and two,--the little _Octorara_ on the off side of the _Brooklyn_, and the little _Metacomet_ on the off side of the flagship _Hartford_, and so on, to protect the little ones from the fire of Fort Morgan. [Illustration: Farragut and Drayton on Board the _Hartford_ at Mobile Bay. _Drawn by I. W. Taber from a photograph._] When this was done the line was formed in two columns, the monitors on the right, next to the fort, in the following order of battle: Monitors--starboard column: _Tecumseh_, 1,034 tons, two guns, Commander T. A. M. Craven; _Manhattan_, 1,034 tons, two guns, Commander J. W. A. Nicholson; _Winnebago_, 970 tons, four guns, Commander Thomas H. Stevens; _Chickasaw_, 970 tons, four guns, Lieut.-commander George H. Perkins.