Farragut assembles a mixed fleet for the bay

Farragut's force combined wooden ships that had served with him on the Mississippi with sidewheel gunboats and four monitors. Metacomet illustrates the double-ended Sassacus-class gunboats used against the smaller Confederate vessels. Manhattan and Tecumseh were Canonicus-class monitors, each carrying two large guns in a single turret. Chickasaw and Winnebago were river monitors with a lighter draught and four smaller guns divided between two turrets. The armored force therefore contained different gun arrangements and draughts, distinctions that mattered when assigning tasks in the bay.