guns, was a far more impressive fighting machine by virtue of her armor. Tennessee had been built on the Alabama River near the town of Selma. Her guns were prepared under the direction of Commander Catesby ap Roger Jones, who had commanded CSS Virginia (ex-USS Merrimack) in her famous duel with on March 9, 1862, the second day of the Battle of Hampton Roads. Jones succeeded to command of Virginia after her original commander, Franklin Buchanan, was wounded the previous day. Buchanan had been promoted to the rank of admiral for his exploits that day, the first admiral in the Confederacy. Admiral Buchanan was now in command of the small Confederate flotilla at Mobile. Launched before her machinery and guns were in place, Tennessee was towed down to Mobile Bay for completion. Once that was done she had to cross the Dog River Bar to get into the lower bay. Tennessee drew , but the bar had only of water at high tide. To get her across, workers had to build a set of caissons, called "camels" by shipbuilders. These were fitted to her sides and pumped out, and barely lifted the ship enough to clear the bar. On May 18, 1864, she finally entered the lower bay. Tennessee was the only armored vessel that the Confederate Navy put into lower Mobile Bay, but there were plans for others. Buchanan hoped that he would have as many as eight, including a pair of floating batteries, with which he could challenge the Union blockade, attack Pensacola and perhaps even recapture New Orleans. The manufacturing and transportation facilities of the South were not capable of this ambitious program, however, some of the projected fleet were completed in time to defend Mobile after the lower bay had been lost, but they were not there when most needed. Nevertheless, they imparted some urgency to Farragut's plans to maintain the blockade. The United States Union Navy The man who led the Union fleet at Mobile Bay was Rear Admiral David G. Farragut, no longer Flag Officer Farragut. The U.S. Navy had undergone an organizational change in the second year of the war, one feature of which was the creation of the rank of rear admiral. The new rank implied that the ships of the navy would be employed as members of a fleet, not simply as collections of vessels with a common purpose. The ships