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 promoted to a lieutenancy on the eve of
departure from New York his visions of prize-money were doubtless
proportionately enhanced by the capture!

[Illustration: THE CAYUGA.]

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 completing the preparations for
the attack on New Orleans.

The fleet consisted of four heavy sloops-of-war of the Hartford class;
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.

Supporting this force as auxiliary to it, for the bombardment of Forts
Jackson and St. Philip, was Porter's mortar fleet of twenty schooners,
each mounting a thirteen-inch mortar, and a flotilla of five side-wheel
steamers, and the gunboat Owasco, carrying, in all, thirty guns.

[Illustration: Map of the Mississippi River Showing Forts Jackson and
St. Philip