Mobile Bay, Alabama

 First timer?  In this formerly once-a-day blog (and now pretty much a once-a-week blog), I use an app that provides a random latitude and longitude that puts me somewhere in the continental United States (the lower 48).  I call this “landing.”

I keep track of the watersheds I land in, as well as the town or towns I land near.  I do some internet research to hopefully find something of interest about my landing location. 

To find out more about A Landing A Day (like who “Dan” is) please see “About Landing” above.  To check out some relatively recent changes in how I do things, check out “About Landing (Revisited).”

Landing number 2480 ; A Landing A Day blog post number 920

Dan:  Today’s lat/long (N30^o 17.503’, W87^o 50.321’) puts me in far southwestern Alabama:

Here’s my local landing map:

I need to stop right here.  This landing represents one of my gray areas.  I had a choice:  1)  I could toss out this landing, call it a water landing, and try again; or 2) I could deem this intrinsically part of a given state, and get on with it.

Obviously, I have selected option 2.  I always toss aside Great Lakes landings, Chesapeake and Delaware Bay landings, and Long Island Sound landings.  But I’ve kept single-state landings that aren’t out in the open ocean, like Puget Sound and Barnegat Bay NJ.  I think I’m being consistent, here . . . 

Anyway, I’ll zoom back to put my landing in a slightly more regional context:

Obviously, there’s no need for a watershed analysis . . .

I went over to Google Earth (GE) and had a little trouble finding a clear view of the Bay, but I (with the Orange Dude’s help, I managed):

And here’s what the OD sees:

I love water and beaches and boats and seaside landscapes, so I figured I’d be good just poking around the southern end of Mobile Bay. 

I’ll start with two old forts perched on either side of the entrance to Mobile Bay:

And GE close-ups, first Fort Gaines on Dauphin Island to the west:

And then Fort Morgan, to the east:

These would be cool spots to visit.  Both forts were built in the pre-Civil war 1830s era, with the intent of protecting Mobile Bay (and the city of Mobile) from invasion from foreign forces.  There wasn’t any big news at the forts until the Civil War, when the Yanks under Admiral Farragut thought they’d run through the narrow 3-mile opening into Mobile Bay.  From Wiki:

The Battle of Mobile Bay of August 5, 1864, was an engagement of the American Civil War in which a Union fleet commanded by Rear Admiral David G. Farragut, assisted by a contingent of soldiers, attacked a smaller Confederate fleet led by Admiral Franklin Buchanan and three forts that guarded the entrance to Mobile Bay.

Here’s a historic sketch of the run-up to the battle (from Wiki).  We’re looking out to sea, with the Confederate Navy in the foreground, and the approaching Union vessels in the rear:

And here’s a painting after the engagement (once again looking out to sea, with Fort Morgan on the left):

Farragut decided that he need to simply rush the defense. His order, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” became famous.

[More about the famous quote in a bit.]

The battle was marked by Farragut’s seemingly rash but successful run through a minefield that had just claimed one of his ironclad monitors, enabling his fleet to get beyond the range of the shore-based guns.

Here’s a Wiki picture of the ironclad monitor that was sunk, the USS Tecumseh:

This was followed by a reduction of the Confederate fleet to a single vessel, ironclad CSS Tennessee.

CSS Tennessee did not then retire, but engaged the entire Northern fleet.

Here’s a shot of the Tennessee taking on the entire northern fleet (dark boat, black smoke):

Tennessee’s armor enabled her to inflict more injury than she received, but she could not overcome the imbalance in numbers. She was eventually reduced to a motionless hulk and surrendered, ending the battle.

A photograph of the Tennessee, dead in the water:

With no Navy to support them, the three forts also surrendered within days. Complete control of lower Mobile Bay thus passed to the Union forces.

About the famous quote:  “Damn the torpedoes!  Full speed ahead!”  I asked my wife Jody about her thoughts on the origin of the phrase (which she had heard of).  She said that she assumed it was from WW II, in the Pacific theater.  I probably would’ve said the same thing.  I mean, when were torpedoes invented, anyway?  (Answer:  self-propelled torpedoes were invented in the early 1900s, and used extensively in WW I.)

Well, it turns out that back in the day, there were naval mines that floated on or just below the surface of the water that would explode upon contact.  The entrance to Mobile Bay was so mined back in 1864.  And yes, these were called torpedoes.

Before leaving history class, here’s a World War I recruitment poster featuring David Farragut at Mobile Bay:

Here’s a shot from the Fort Morgan website:

And this shot posted on GE by Bonny Folkestad, of Fort Gaines:

Moving right along . . . I idly Googled “Mobile Bay,” but perked up when I found this in Wiki:

Annually, and often several times during the summer months, the fish and crustaceans will swarm the shallow coastline and shore of the bay. This event, appropriately named a jubilee, draws a large crowd because of the abundance of fresh, easily caught seafood. Mobile Bay is the only place on earth where jubilees are a common occurrence.

What the heck?  “Jubilee” was Wiki-clickable:

During a jubilee many species of crab and shrimp, as well as flounder, eels, and other demersal fish will leave deeper waters and swarm—in large numbers and very high density—in a specific, shallower coastal area of the bay.  A jubilee is a celebrated event in Mobile Bay, and it attracts large crowds, many drawn by the promise of abundant and easy-to-catch seafood.

Although similar events have been reported in other bodies of water, Mobile Bay is the only place where the regular appearance of this phenomenon has been documented

The Mobile Bay jubilee typically takes place at least annually, and sometimes several times per year; years without a jubilee have been recorded, but they are exceedingly rare. Many accounts of the jubilee exist, the oldest dating back to the 1860s.

The size, scope, and duration of the jubilee can vary greatly. Sometimes a 15-mile  stretch of coast representing most of the eastern shore can be affected, and at other times the extent can be limited to as little as 500 feet (150 m) of coastline. Most jubilees happen in the pre-dawn hours.

Author Archie Carr comments, “At a good jubilee you can quickly fill a washtub with shrimp. You can gig a hundred flounders and fill the back of your pickup truck a foot deep in crabs.”

In addition, harvesting them is made considerably easier by the effect that the oxygen deprivation has on the animals. Their behavior has been described as “depressed and moribund”, or “unnatural”; crabs are observed “climbing tree stumps to escape the water” and flounder “slither up the banks.”

While the occurrence of jubilees in Mobile Bay predates European settlement in the region, it is unknown exactly when or how these events came to be known by this name. The first recorded printed use of the term “jubilee” in this context was in the Mobile Daily Register (now the Mobile Press-Register) on July 29, 1912:

… Hundreds of live sea crabs and fish … completely covered the beach at Point Clear and Zundels Sunday morning. A fisherman of experience in explaining the unusual occurrence stated that it was a “jubilee”… People who saw the wild scramble of fish and crabs on the sandy beach say they won’t soon forget the sight.

This was not, however, the first time the newspaper had covered the phenomenon; in his research, oceanographer Edwin B. May found several dozen mentions of similar events, the earliest dated back to July 17, 1867 and alludes to the fact that the phenomenon was known to have happened earlier:

EXCITEMENT AMONG THE FISH—Yesterday all the fish in the bay seemed to be making for the Eastern shore. Large numbers of crabs, flounders and other fish were found at the water’s edge, and taken in out of the wet. They were counted by the bushel. Annually this phenomenon occurs with the fish along the Eastern shore. They all appear to forsake the deep water, and swim and cluster in immense numbers to the shore.

— Mobile Daily Register, July 17, 1867

It was not until 1960 that the phenomenon was explored in-depth by marine biologist Harold Loesch for the journal Ecology.

After researching the oral histories and journalistic records of past jubilees, measuring physical and meteorologic conditions, and taking biological and chemical measurements, Loesch concluded that accumulated organic material on the bay floor could, under a certain set of conditions, result in a rapid depletion of oxygen in parts of the bay, driving fish to the surface seeking oxygenated water.

Additional research confirmed Loesch’s conclusions.  Here are some random pictures I lifted from Google images:

Heading back down towards my landing, I wondered how long it would take to drive from Dauphin Island to Fort Morgan.  Google Maps has the answer:

It’s closer to 2½ hours if you hug the coastline.  But how about taking the ferry?  It’s only about 3.5 miles:

And winter fares aren’t bad:

Here’s a beach shot taken on the south shore of the barrier island just south of my landing:

I’ll close with this Mobile Bay shot posted on GE by Thomas Myers:

That’ll do it . . .

KS

Greg

 

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