James Russell Soley, Professor U. S. Navy, Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 7.1, The blockade and the cruisers
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

[141] on the batteries. One or two of his shells fell in the town, which led to a protest from the foreign consuls against bombardment without notice; but the injury to the town was afterwards shown to be accidental.

Occupied as he was with active operations in the Mississippi, Farragut early turned his attention to the necessities of the Gulf blockade. In a letter written home shortly after his arrival, he had said: ‘My blockading shall be done inside as much as possible.’ The special charge of the vessels in the Gulf was entrusted to Commodore Henry H. Bell, and the steps already taken to convert the blockade of prominent points into an occupation were continued, especially to the westward of the Mississippi, on the coast of Louisiana and Texas. The principal entrances were Atchafalaya Bay and the Calcasieu, on the coast of Louisiana, Sabine Pass, at the western boundary of the State, and Galveston, Pass Cavallo, Arans's, and Corpus Christi, in Texas. Several small vessels were sent to operate in connection with a detachment of troops in Atchafalaya and its inner waters, under Lieutenant-Commander Buchanan. These operations continued for a long period, though Buchanan was killed two months after his arrival, in an engagement in the Teche. The other points were seized by different expeditions, whose operations were attended with varying success; and on the coast of Texas, blockade and occupation alternated at the different passes with considerable frequency during the rest of the war. One great difficulty in holding the occupied points was the want of troops. In December, 1862, Farragut writes: ‘It takes too much force to hold the places for me to take any more, or my outside fleet will be too much reduced to keep up the blockade and keep the river open’—two primary considerations in the operations of the squadron.

At all the passes on the coast of Texas and Louisiana there