Farragut: Damn the Torpedoes, Born Right Here

This Knoxville suburb carries the name of the United States Navy's most famous fighting admiral, and with good reason: David Glasgow Farragut was born right here, at a place then called Campbell's Station, on the fifth of July, eighteen oh one.

Farragut became the first officer ever to hold the rank of full admiral in the United States Navy. His defining moment came on the fifth of August, eighteen sixty-four, at the Battle of Mobile Bay. Confederate mines, then called torpedoes, blocked the channel. When the lead Union ship struck one and began to sink, Farragut ordered his own flagship forward with the words that would follow him forever: Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. His fleet smashed through and sealed off one of the Confederacy's last major Gulf ports. The town that grew around his birthplace was incorporated and named for him in the nineteen eighties, making this one of the newest municipalities in Tennessee to honor one of the oldest names in American naval glory.