Belowdecks, when Lieutenant Commander Cummings was informed of the direction change, he cried, “I would rather lose the other leg than go back. Can nothing be done?” Nothing could be done. The Richmond and the Genesee continued downriver until they were out of the enemy’s range, where they dropped their anchors at about 1:00 a.m. The Richmond had been engaged with the enemy for over one hour, and had suffered such heavy damage that many believed if the swift gunboat had not been lashed to her side, she would have been destroyed by the enemy batteries. Cummings succumbed to his wounds four days later.
Next in line were the Monongahela and the Kineo. Both made it almost to the river bend, when the gunboat’s rudder was disabled by several rifle shots from the western bank. The Kineo returned the fire and either killed or drove off the rebel soldiers. As she prepared for the turn, having to move from the center of the river closer to the eastern bank, the big sloop suddenly grounded with such force that the lines securing the sloop to the gunboat snapped. Because she was unable to free herself without the help of the Kineo, new lines were run between them. All this took over twenty minutes to accomplish. During that time, rebel gunners took advantage of the Monongahela’s predicament and poured shells and canister into her at an alarming rate. In the hail of fire, the ship’s bridge collapsed, killing three men and severely injuring Captain McKinstry, rendering him unconscious.
As sailors fought to reunite the two vessels, one grounded, the other unable to maneuver properly because of rudder damage, they were exposed to enemy fire. Screaming men fell along the entire main deck, where the flow of blood made it nearly impossible to secure a foothold. Finally, success was achieved, and amid the continuing bombardment, the gunboat pulled her companion free. The Monongahela’s executive officer, future admiral and Spanish-American War hero, Lieutenant Winfield Scott Schley, ordered both vessels to continue upriver, and they both attempted to restart their voyage. Unfortunately, the lines that had been hastily run between both vessels were only temporary, and once again they snapped. Unable to continue north without the use of her rudder, the Kineo drifted helplessly downriver with the current. She returned as much fire as she could while she passed beneath the batteries. As with the other vessels in the force, her guns could not reach the bluffs, so her crew concentrated their fire on the Confederate infantry and cavalry that had massed along the western bank.
The Monongahela almost made it to the safety of the river bend alone, when her engines suddenly stopped. A crank pin, overheated and damaged during the efforts to free the ship from the grounding, cracked. Unable to regain power, the ship drifted back downriver, powered only by the current. Once again, she was subjected to a severe pounding as she swept below the batteries.
Last in line was the Mississippi. Because Farragut felt that the old side-wheeler had the least chance of successfully running the batteries, he had positioned her at the end of the line, where, if she failed to make the passage, she would not interfere with the other ships.
As the Mississippi began her passage, she was completely enveloped by the smoke caused by the ongoing battle of the ships ahead of her. Her executive officer, Lieutenant George Dewey, reported that his ship passed the Monongahela while she was grounded without ever seeing her. “Both Captain Smith and myself,” Dewey later wrote, “felt that our destiny that night was in the hands of the pilot. There was nothing to do but to fire back at the flashes on the bluffs and trust to his expert knowledge. It was a new experience for him, guiding a heavy-draught oceangoing ship in the midst of battle smoke, with shells shrieking in his ears.”
As had her predecessors, the Mississippi took a pounding from the Confederate guns. The smoke was so thick by now that men literally choked on it. The rumble of cannon fire, the blasts of exploding shells, and the deep booming of the mortars made most men deaf to shouted orders.
Straining to see through the smoke and keep control of his fear at the same time, the civilian pilot watched for some sign indicating the ship had reached the point in the river where it would have to make a sharp turn in order to negotiate the river bend. Suddenly he realized the ship had reached the place he sought and shouted as loud as he could, “Starboard the helm! Full speed ahead.” The huge paddle wheels rapidly gained speed and drove the ship high up on a sandbar. The pilot had been mistaken and ordered the turn before actually reaching the river bend. The officers and crew reacted quickly and professionally to the grounding. Dewey attributed this to their weeks of training while stationed in the Gulf, and the fact that most of the crew had been aboard when the ship ran Forts Jackson and St. Philip the year before.
The Mississippi had just begun to gain momentum when she struck the bar. This helped drive her farther on the sandbar than might otherwise have been the case. Smith immediately ordered the paddle wheels reversed at full speed. The ship did not move. She began to list badly to port, so the port guns were run in to attempt to balance the weight and help right her. Nothing seemed to be going well. “Every precaution to meet the emergency was taken promptly,” according to Dewey, “and there was remarkably little confusion.”
For thirty-five minutes the crew struggled in vain to free their ship. Orders had to be shouted two and three times so they could be heard above the barking of the ship’s guns, the pounding of the big wheels against the sandbar, and the throbbing of the straining engines. Offered another stationary target, gunners on the nearby bluffs soon found their range and began splintering the fine old ship that had seen such glorious duty in the Far East. Several shells hulled her, and a fire broke out in the flammables storeroom, which is normally protected from enemy fire because it is usually below the waterline.
Standing on deck amid the noise and smoke, Captain Smith, a man known for his calm deportment, used a flint to light a cigar. Looking around at the death and destruction, he was heartbroken over the thought of losing so many crewmen, and the real possibility of losing his ship to enemy fire. As Lieutenant Dewey approached, he said, “Well, it doesn’t look as if we could get her off.” Quietly Dewey replied, “No, it doesn’t.”
Around them, the noise continued at its deafening rate. Sand and water splashed onto the listing ship from shells that missed, and wood and metal splinters flew through the air from those that did not miss. “Can we save the crew?” Smith asked, to which his executive officer answered, “Yes, sir!” The order to abandon ship was given. Despite this, the gunners on the starboard side kept up their firing as if they expected to be victorious.
The lifeboats on the starboard, facing the bluffs, had all been destroyed, so the wounded were brought on deck and placed in the three port boats. Several trips to the nearby shore had to be made by the boats. Dewey realized that if the men who took the boats to shore failed to return, those left on board were sure to die, so he jumped into one of the boats and went to the shore with it. As the boats emptied of men, Dewey ordered four men to remain to row the boat he was in back to the crippled ship. Each man thought the order was for another, and all abandoned him, except the Mississippi’s black cook, who remained to help. Shamed that the white sailors who had been trained to fight had left their officer alone, with only the black cook voluntarily remaining, several men returned and rowed back to the ship. A second boat joined the return trip after an acting master’s mate named Chase used his revolver to force four crewmen back into his boat.
While the last remaining crew members boarded the waiting boats, Smith and Dewey searched the ship for survivors. Having found only one, a young ship’s boy partially buried under a pile of dead bodies, they set several fires. Smith was determined that no rebel flag would ever fly over his ship. As the fires spread and became visible to those high on the bluffs, a loud and sustained rebel yell of victory exceeded even the sounds of the shells exploding.
As the boats rowed away and got caught in the current, the Mississippi burst into flames. Soon, water rushed into the lower decks and began to lift her off the bar. Flames leapt into the air from a dozen places, as the vessel slo
wly regained the water. Turned around by the powerful current, she began drifting downriver. As she passed the enemy batteries, her port guns, which had been loaded in case they were needed, began firing when the flames reached their primers. As Dewey and the others watched, she became “a dying ship manned by dead men, firing on the enemy.”
Watching his ship drift off into the night in flames, Captain Smith removed his sword and pistols and dropped them into the river. “I’m not going to surrender them to any rebel,” he told Dewey. Smith’s act was a bit premature, for those on board the boat were soon rescued by the Richmond, which was at anchor downriver.
Meanwhile, upriver, unable to see what was happening beyond the river bend, Admiral Farragut waited with intense anxiety for the arrival of his ships. The first sign of disaster came with the explosions and flames that destroyed the Mississippi. The cannon fire slowed and eventually ceased. Farragut realized the rest of his fleet was not coming. Several signal flares were fired into the night sky, but they elicited no response. The Hartford and the Albatross were the only Union vessels to make the run successfully, and now they were alone in the Confederate-dominated section of the river.
THE LAST ECHOES of naval guns and shore batteries died away. Word soon reached General Banks that Farragut had maneuvered two vessels north of Port Hudson. Having taken virtually no part in the battle, and seeing no purpose in remaining, Banks ordered his troops to withdraw. Rumors quickly spread among the reserve units that the front-line troops had fought a desperate battle and had been defeated. Dreading their fate in enemy hands, these units, consisting of two infantry brigades, some artillery, and the quartermaster’s wagon train, began withdrawal in what rapidly escalated to a panicked retreat. Overcome by the heat and humidity, many threw their equipment and ammunition onto the roadsides. The front-line troops, who knew firsthand they had engaged in no real battle, withdrew slowly. Many of them were angry over not seeing action after their tedious march from Baton Rouge. As Banks rode past these men, he was greeted by a sullen silence. Only a day earlier the same troops had cheered him when they thought he was leading them into battle.
On the river below Port Hudson, the Union fleet made a “melancholy spectacle.” The decks of the Richmond were covered with blood and body parts. Laid out wherever space could be found were the survivors of the illfated Mississippi. The Monongahela looked as if she were made of Swiss cheese. At least eight shots had passed completely through her hull. As sailors struggled to wash the decks of the remains of their shipmates, doctors cared for the wounded, and carpenters quickly hammered coffins together.
North of Port Hudson, Admiral Farragut spent a sleepless night wondering what fate had befallen the remainder of his fleet. The following day, Sunday, March 15, 1863, the sun rose bright in the morning sky. The officers and men aboard the flagship busied themselves with the same chores that occupied the crews of the Union ships below Port Hudson. The decks had to be washed of blood, the wounded cared for, and temporary repairs made to the ship herself. Lookouts watched the river above and below them for enemy activity. Occasionally they would catch sight of Confederate cavalry moving about on either side of the river. A few of the more brazen of these rebel soldiers actually rode to the edge of the river and watered their horses in full view of the Union sailors.
The presence of mounted enemy units on both shores precluded any possibility that Farragut could send word of his position to the fleet by an overland route. Although the river was quiet all morning, the rebel troopers remained nearby. It was obvious that they intended to fire at anyone attempting to land from the enemy warship. The thick woods at the bend in the river made it impossible for the Hartford to catch sight of the rest of the fleet, even when she moved down almost within range of the Port Hudson batteries. Unable to communicate his safe passage, he had a message nailed to a launch, which was then set adrift to be carried downriver by the current.
Farragut was concerned that the failure of the rest of his ships to pass the batteries might be viewed as a military disaster. The following day, as the Hartford and the Albatross cautiously steamed upriver in search of enemy vessels, he wrote his report of the action to Secretery Welles. It began, “It becomes my duty to report disaster to my fleet… .”
Welles saw the entire affair differently from the way his admiral did, stranded as he was alone on the enemy’s river. The following month he wrote Farragut, “The Navy Department congratulates you and the officers and men of the Hartford upon the gallant passage of the Port Hudson batteries, and also the battery at Grand Gulf. Although the remainder of your fleet were not successful in following their leader, the Department can find no fault with them.” The great naval theorist Alfred T. Mahan studied Farragut’s actions at Port Hudson, and concluded, “Thus analyzed, there is found no ground for adverse criticism in the tactical dispositions made by Farragut on this memorable occasion.”
Secretary Welles’s response to the operation, in which three-fourths of the vessels Farragut hoped to get past the Port Hudson batteries failed, was typical throughout the Union. To a nation used to reading of immense numbers of casualties in the great land battles of the war, the loss of three dozen men to close the Red River seemed a small price. Farragut’s fleet reported 113 casualties, of which thirty-five were killed and seventy-eight wounded. While the numbers belied the ferocity of the battle, many in the North viewed it as an acceptable price to pay to get a great warship like the Hartford, and her gunboat consort, to the mouth of the Red River. An effective blockade would stop the flood of supplies that fed the Confederate forces throughout the South.
No one regarded the battle at Port Hudson as a failure for the Union, least of all the Confederate government or the rebel forces at Port Hudson itself. When Farragut passed their fortifications, the troops at Port Hudson had less than two weeks’ worth of rations in their storehouses. Major General John C. Pemberton, Confederate commander of the Department of Mississippi and East Louisiana, which included both Vicksburg and Port Hudson, wrote the War Department in Richmond, “The Mississippi is again cut off, neither subsistence nor ordnance can come or go.” Six days after Farragut had passed beneath Port Hudson’s guns, Pemberton wrote to the commanding officer of the District of Western Louisiana, Major General Richard Taylor, son of former president Zachary Taylor. It was through Taylor’s district that supplies passed before they crossed the Mississippi River to reach the Confederate armies. Pemberton emphasized the dangerous position of the troops stationed at Port Hudson by reminding Taylor that “Port Hudson depends almost entirely for supplies upon the other [west] side of the river.”
Actually, the condition at Vicksburg was almost identical to that at Port Hudson. Nearly surrounded by Grant’s armies, Vicksburg depended almost entirely for her supplies on steamers coming down the Red River and heading north on the Mississippi. Confederate control of this section of the Mississippi was itself dependent on keeping the Red River open. Farragut presented the only danger to keeping the Red River open, since the Indianola had run the Vicksburg batteries a month earlier and been captured by rebel gunboats.
Hundreds of thousands of pounds of bacon and other provisions were at that very moment moving down the Red River, en route to Port Hudson. One Confederate officer responsible for getting supplies down the Red River into the Mississippi responded in this way: “Great God! How unfortunate. Four steamers arrived today from Shreveport (with supplies intended for Port Hudson). One had a load of 300,000 pounds of bacon, three others are reported coming down [the Red River] with loads. Five others are below with full cargoes designed for Port Hudson, but it is reported that the Federal gunboats are blockading the river.” The presence of the Hartford sent all these steamers scurrying back up the Red River long before they reached the Mississippi and the blockading Federals.
The distance from Port Hudson north to Vicksburg is over 200 miles. Two Union vessels alone could not control the entire length of the river between these strongholds, but they could do something eve
n more consequential: They could close the Red River to enemy traffic. This was Farragut’s reason for risking his ships in running the Port Hudson batteries. The admiral’s instructions to the captains of his fleet had been clear. Any ship surviving the run past the batteries was to steam to Vicksburg and offer its services to the Union forces operating against that city. If not required there, they were to “proceed to the mouth of Red River, and keep up a police of the river between that river and Port Hudson.” Farragut intended to follow his own orders.
Just as dawn broke over the river on March 16, two men emerged from the woods on the west bank and, waving their arms and calling, paddled out into the river in a small dugout canoe. Taken aboard the Hartford, they identified themselves as crewmen of the Queen of the West who had survived her grounding and capture on the Red River and made their way to the Mississippi, where they had waited for the appearance of a friendly vessel. From these men, Farragut learned of the final fate of the ironclad Indianola. The daring attack on the Union ironclad by rebel gunboats served as a warning to him to keep a vigilant guard at all times. He also took special precautions to protect his ship against attack from Confederate rams. Heavy chains were hung over the sides. Huge cypress logs were cut from the woods along the riverbanks and tied just above the waterline to act as buffers, should a ram attempt to penetrate the ship’s wooden hull.
Later that day, the two Union vessels dropped anchor near the mouth of the Red River. News of Farragut’s passing of the Port Hudson batteries had traveled fast up the river. Hours before the great masts of the Hartford could be seen by curious onlookers who had been drawn to the spot where the rivers joined, Confederate transports and gunboats had turned tail and scattered. Most had sped up the Red River, where they expected to be safe from the warship’s powerful guns.
Early on the morning of March 17, the Hartford and the Albatross weighed anchor and headed north. The level of the Mississippi was rapidly rising as a result of the spring thaws farther north. She was beginning to expand her banks, causing the yearly flood of the plains along her route. The water rushing down from the mountains far beyond the horizon also increased the speed of her current. This condition made the going rough, and it was not until late in the afternoon that Farragut arrived at Natchez, Mississippi. Just below the town, a party of sailors from the Hartford went ashore and cut the telegraph line south to Port Hudson in several places.
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