“Map showing entrance to Mobile Bay and the course taken by Union fleet,” by Robert Knox Sneden, about 157 years ago today (click to big up):
1710×2200. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/gvhs01.vhs00200/.
The map shows Confederate fortifications (Forts Powell, Gaines, Morgan) and the location of Union fleet in Mobile Bay and the Gulf of Mexico– barred by a line of infamous moored sea mines, then referred to as “torpedoes.”
On 5 August 1864, Union Rear Adm. David Farragut attempted to lead several ships into Mobile Bay, past the formidable Confederate forts and the ironclad CSS Tennessee. Despite the sinking by a mine (?) of the monitor USS Tecumseh, the Union fleet passed through the channel and engaged Tennessee, paving the way for Union land operations against the city of Mobile, Ala. Undermanned and damaged by Union rams, Tennessee surrendered.
Sneden, a skilled landscape painter and a map-maker for the Union Army during the American Civil War, died in 1918 and left behind a number of iconic maps that are part of the LOC– here.
