APRIL 4TH, 1865: General Canby requested Rear Admiral Thatcher to provide assistance in the form of "eight or ten boats...and fifty or sixty sailors to row them" for the purpose of moving troops to assault Batteries Tracy and Huger, part of Mobile's defenses.
The Admiral agreed to supply the boats but noted: "To send sixty men in these boats to row them will be nearly a load for them, at least they will be nearly filled with their own crews, so that an assaulting party would find but little room in them, particularly as our vessels are all small and their boats proportionately so.
"I would therefore respectively suggest that your assaulting party be drilled at the oars."
--Old B-Runner
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