1SS4.]
��Captain George Hamilton Perkins, U.S.N.
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��time and instruction to fit them for their new duties. A fair soldier may be made in three months — a good seaman not in three years.
The vessel was ordered to join Farra- gut's fleet in the Gulf, but, with the usual delays incident to new ships, did not get off from New York until the first week in March, arriving at Ship Island on the thirty-first, by way of Key West, and having made a prize on the way. As the young executive had been
��three corvettes of the Iroquois class ; nine gunboats of the Cayuga class, and the large side-wheel steamer Mississippi, carrying in the aggregate one hundred and fifty-four guns, principally of nine- inch and eleven-inch calibre ; but as the large ships carried their batteries mostly in broadside, the actual number that could be brought to bear, under the most favorable conditions, on every given point, would be cut down to the neighborhood of ninety guns.
���THE CAYUGA.
��promoted to a lieutenancy on the eve of departure from New York his visions of prize-money were doubtless propor- tionately enhanced by the capture !
The next day she sailed for the mouth of the Mississippi, where, and at the head of the passes, the rest of the fleet was assembled, and Flag- Officer Farragut busily engaged in com- pleting the preparations for the attack on New Orleans.
The fleet consisted of four heavy sloops-of-war of the Hartford class;
��Supporting this force as auxiliary to it, for the bombardment of Forts Jack- son and St. Philip, was Porter's mortar fleet of twenty schooners, each mount- ing a thirteen-inch mortar, and a flotilla of five side-wheel steamers, and the gunboat Owasco, carrying, in all, thirty guns.
The forts in question, forming the principal defences of New Orleans, were heavy casemated works with traverses on top for barbette guns, some ninety miles below the city at a
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