Farragut: America’s First Admiral

Brassey’s Military Profiles

“Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!”

With those words, David Glasgow Farragut led a fleet of Union warships into Mobile Bay, where he achieved one of the most celebrated victories in American naval history. What separates the good officer from the great one, writes historian Robert J. Schneller, Jr., is the courage to make difficult decisions in the heat of combat despite personal fear or the awful realization that some men will have to pay in blood. Farragut’s personal attributes, such as his sharp intelligence and confidence, his keen situational awareness, and his courage to act boldly at decisive moments, produced the Union’s most important naval victories and resulted in his appointment as the U. S. Navy’s first admiral. These qualities made Farragut the greatest naval officer, Union or Confederate, of the Civil War and, indeed, the most outstanding U. S. naval officer of the nineteenth century.