Proceed at once, no matter what. This cliché is a quotation of Admiral David Glasgow Farragut’s order during the Civil War, at the battle of Mobile Bay (August 5, 1864). It has been repeated ever since, under a variety of circumstances. Thus, the novelist Robert Ludlum used it in Apocalypse Watch (1995): “If this administration can root out the Nazi influence . . . It’s damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead.” Similarly, Nevada Barr used it in Burn (2010): “Your definition of ‘careful’ is vaguely analogous to most people’s definition of ‘damn the torpedoes.’”