APRIL 26TH
Farragut's fleet silenced Confederate batteries at Chalmette en route to New Orleans. High water allowed the ships to be able to fire over the levees into the city. The largest and wealthiest city and seaport in the Confederacy surrenders.
Now Union ships can steam up the Mississippi River and conduct operations with those coming southward.
The CSS Mississippi, launched on April 19th and described by Confederate officers as "the strongest...most formidable war vessel that had ever been built," was destroyed to prevent capture. Had the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond been able to finish her shaft in time, it might have been a different story.
Commander Charles H. McBlair, CSN, notified the Navy department that because of the passage of the forts below New Orleans, he was going to take the unfinished ironclad Arkansas, building at Memphis, up the Yazoo River to complete. He also had ordered the Tennessee to be destroyed on the stocks if Memphis fell.
Too bad for the CSS Mississippi. --Old B-R'er
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