Mobile Bay helped close a major remaining Confederate naval outlet and strengthened the Union blockade commonly associated with the Anaconda Plan. The celebrated quotation was probably assembled from several orders, including instructions for full speed and messages to nearby ships. In period usage, the "torpedoes" were anchored mines. Farragut's ordnance experience told him that prolonged immersion could make such weapons unreliable, allowing him to take a calculated rather than blind risk after a Union monitor had exposed a passage through the field. Sailors later reported hearing clicks that they believed were detonators, but no mines exploded as the ships passed.
Chapter · 1:02:27-1:06:34
Mobile Bay, the famous order, and calculated risk
The Mobile Bay attack reveals the context behind "Damn the torpedoes" and how Farragut used ordnance knowledge to judge that pressing through the minefield offered the safer route to victory.