The media image of Hurricane Katrina is mainly focused on the damage in New Orleans, but the Mississippi and the Alabama coast also received damage. The upper sign on the Grand Mariner marina wall in Mobile shows where the water level got to during Katrina. There was pretty extensive damage around the waterfront areas of Mobile with a storm surge of over 16 ft and 67 MPH winds.
The lower sign shows the water level from Hurricane George in 1998. (You can enlarge any picture on the blog by clicking on it.)
We rented a car to see the sights in Mobile. One day was for grocery and Christmas gift shopping. The next day we toured the tourist sites downtown. First was Fort Conde, a 4/5 scale reproduction of a 1720 's French fort on this site downtown. The picture shows a model of the original fort.
Next we toured the Conde-Charlotte Museum House. This house which was originally built as a jail was later converted into a residence in 1854. It now has been preserved and functions as a museum furnished with period antiques that depict Mobile's history under five flags: French, English, Spanish, Confederate, and American.
This bed shows just some of the beautiful pieces in the house.
You know that you are in a real barbecue place when you can see the coals. The Dreamland Barbecue restaurant does their cooking in an inside cooker that you can walk right up and see the ribs on the grill.
After lunch we went back downtown to the Museum of Mobile. Inside were pictures and displays showing the history of Mobile and important features. Of architectural significance was the use of iron decorations, particularly wrought iron fences.
This view down on of the business main streets shows the typical balconies over the sidewalk with iron balconies.
Examples of houses.
Mobile has a free downtown trolley called MODA that does a circuit of downtown. Along with old buildings we saw a green square downtown decorated for Christmas.
We had rented a car for two days which had to be returned on Saturday. I decided to take in one more historical site so I drove south to Dauphin Island to see Fort Gaines. This fort was on the SW side of the inlet from the Gulf of Mexico to Mobile Bay. During the Civil War the fort protected the bay from Union ships until Admiral Farragut brought his blockading fleet through the inlet and into Mobile Bay to attack the defending Confederate ships. At the same time Union Infantry attacked this fort from the land side.
This is the view from Fort Gaines across the Mobile Bay inlet with Fort Morgan (seen as a small rise at the horizon) on the opposite island. The distance across is about 3 miles and a modern car ferry runs from near one fort to the other.
Of course, the thing that most of us remember about the battle of Mobile Bay is the quote attributed to Admiral David Farragut -"Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!) History books I read recently indicated that what he may have said was approximately, first "Damn the torpedoes" and then slightly later to the Captain of his flagship "Four bells, Captain Drayton" which means go to full speed. What ever he said the quote left for history encapsulates Farragut battle philosophy, you are less exposed and in less danger if you charge ahead aggressively and take on the enemy. Audacity can be extremely effective in rattling and defeating the enemy.
The torpedoes Farragut was referring were also called those "infernal devices" and are today called mines. There were probably two types in use to protect the entrance to Mobile Bay. They were placed part way across the entrance leaving a small opening for Confederate craft to move in and out from Mobile. I was surprised to discover that during the Civil War 27 vessels were sunk by mines and 14 damaged.
On the road out to Fort Gaines the was a stretch of about a mile where houses used green marine channel markers apparently to mark their address. It was an unusual decoration.
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