Admiral Farragut - K-town pt-2

Just looking at the map this morning and noticed that there is a town named Farragut just a few miles west of Knoxville, since we read a quite a bit about Admiral Farragut while we were in the Mobile Bay area this winter I decided to see if there was a connection. Turns out that the Admiral was born in this area when it was know as Campbell's Station, when the City was incorporated in 1980 they picked the name Farragut. The new city hall was built with room for the Farragut Museum, so we decided to take a little road trip over to see what they had. Its a small museum but extremely well set up and has an amazing amount of original items from and about Farragut's life.

When we first got there we figured about 45 minutes to an hour, we ended up being there for over two and half hours, as it turned out there were three volunteers there and they must have been bored or we were the only visitors this day cause they took us on a private tour and made sure that we saw and understood everything in the museum.

Farragut entered the Navy in 1810 at the age of nine, yes nine years old. When he was 12 years old, he was given command of a prize ship that they had captures the "USS Essex" and safely brought it back to port.

It was at his victory in the Battle of Mobile Bay. While tied to the rigging of his ship that he shouted the famous phrase "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead".

The sketch on the left is the actual sketch made by someone on deck during the Battle of Mobil Bay, the painting on the right is just one of many that have been made from the sketch


Admiral Farragut was the first rear, vice, and full admiral of the Navy.
There have been five US Navy destroyers named USS Farragut
He was a pallbearer for Abraham Lincoln
The Admiral served in the Navy for over 50 years and died at the age of 69.