History of the Nineteenth Army Corps

of these could be used to fire at an enemy directly ahead, and, in the operations awaiting the fleet, it is within bounds to say that not more than one gun in four could be brought to bear at any given moment. With this fleet were twenty mortar-boats, under Porter, each carrying one 13-inch mortar, and six gunboats, assigned for the service of the mortar-boats and armed like the gunboats of the river fleet. Farragut, with the Hartford, had reached Ship Island on the 20th of February; the rest of the vessels assigned to his fleet soon followed. Then entering the delta, from that time he conducted the blockade of the river from the head of the passes.

The Confederacy was now being so closely pressed in every quarter as to make it impossible, with the forces at its command, to defend effectively and at the same moment every point menaced by the troops and fleets of the Union. Thus the force that might otherwise have been employed in defending New Orleans was, under the pressure of the emergency,