The Lancaster, anchored above the fleet with some steam up,
claimed to be the first to see the danger. Colonel Ellet signaled the ship to
attack the rebel ram. “As she rounded to give her a little of our kind of
warfare, a 64 pound ball came through our bulwarks and steam drum,” a
correspondent told readers. “Our lead engineer, John Wybrant, was knocked down
and badly scalded inwardly; second engineer, John Goshorn, badly scalded,
jumped overboard, and missing.” Enemy fire also injured three soldiers and seven
black deckhands and coal heavers. “One contraband had both arms and a leg shot
off, badly scalded besides; he died a few minutes later.”
From the Richmond, Commander Alden could see the Lancaster
just astern. The scalded men “jumped overboard, and some of them never came to
the surface again,” he recalled. Ten or twelve men began swimming, but some
just held on to the rudder. The Lancaster ordered a boat to rescue the men, but
according to Alden, “By this time she had drifted astern of us, and the ‘Arkansas’
came on down, and as she passed we fired our whole broadside!” One shot knocked
Brown off the platform where he stood, breaking a marine glass in his hand.
Without flinching, Brown resumed his place directing the ram’s movements. When
a seaman called out that the colors had been shot way, midshipman Dabney Scales
dashed up a ladder, ignoring a hail of fire, to bend on the colors again.
Keeping to midstream, the Arkansas ran the gauntlet of federal vessels anchored
on either side and seemingly escaped damage. The Richmond fired a broadside at
the ram, which momentarily disappeared in the smoke. The Hartford’s gunners
eagerly watched for the smoke to lift so they could take a shot, but the
Arkansas passed by the flagship and then turned to. Suddenly, when it was a
half mile astern, the Arkansas fired two shots at the flagship, which missed,
and the ram steamed downriver.
“The fleet kept up a brisk fire on her as she passed with
all the guns practicable,” the Cincinnati’s O’Neil explained. “Our fire was,
however, necessarily limited owing to the great danger of hitting our
Transports ranged along the bank.” The Cincinnati, below the fleet on picket
duty, still kept its position. The ram steamed off toward the Cincinnati “as if
going to ram us, but probably finding the water too shoal for her continued on
her former course. We opened a heavy fire on her, with apparently good effect
and which she returned.”
When the Arkansas came to the end of the line of enemy
ships, Brown recalled, “I now called the officers up to take a look at what we
had just come through and to get the fresh air, and as the little group of
heroes closed around me with their friendly words of congratulations, a heavy
rifle-shot passed close over our heads; it was a parting salutation, and if
aimed two feet lower would have been to us the most injurious of the battle.”
To Farragut’s “mortification,” the battered Arkansas steamed on to the
Vicksburg wharf and the protection of the Confederate batteries.
The Arkansas had “successfully run through a fleet of
sixteen men of war, six of them ironclad, and mounting in the aggregate not
less than one hundred & sixty guns,” O’Neil commented. “A far more
brilliant achievement than that accomplished by the ‘Virginia’ at Hampton
Roads.”
Visibly shaken by the rebel ram’s success, Farragut
immediately called for a conference with Davis. In the Hartford’s cabin the
flag officer told Davis that he intended to have his fleet raise steam and
immediately go down to destroy the ram. Davis tried to dissuade the irate
Farragut from this rash and dangerous action, arguing that the Arkansas was
comparatively harmless where it was. When Davis declined to attack the ram,
Farragut reluctantly agreed to wait until late afternoon to run past the rebel
batteries. Davis then returned to his flagship.
The soldiers and citizens of Vicksburg greeted the
Arkansas’s arrival with shouts of joy. General Van Dorn dashed off a telegram
to President Jefferson Davis, announcing the ram’s safe arrival and assuring
him that it would “soon be repaired, and then ho! for New Orleans.”
Late in the afternoon the rumble of thunder and a cool
breeze announced the arrival of a storm. The ensuing rain and wind delayed the
fleet’s preparation to run past Vicksburg, but just before 7:00 p.m. Farragut’s
ships got under way in two columns. Farragut’s parting signal left no doubt
about their mission: “The ram must be destroyed.” Davis sent the Sumter down to
Farragut and instructed the Benton, Louisville, and Cincinnati to draw fire
from the upper rebel battery.
Darkness fell as Farragut’s ships neared the upper battery.
When the Confederate gunners opened fire, the Hartford’s gun crews returned
fire, aiming at the gun flashes. As the ship approached the enemy, shot and
shell began whistling overhead. Several enemy shots struck the flagship’s hull,
and one 9-inch shell carried away the starboard fore-topsail bitts on the berth
deck but did not explode. Marines stood by their gun and did not suffer any
injuries, but they heard the disturbing news that their commanding officer,
Captain John Broome, had suffered a bruised head and shoulder. He would
recover, but master’s mate George Lounsberry; Charles Jackson, the officers’
cook; and seaman Cameron were killed by a cannonball. Six others were wounded.
Passing the rebel battery had inflicted a few casualties on
the crews of the Richmond, Sciota, and Winona as well. A shell explosion killed
one man on the Winona, and to keep it from sinking, the ship had to be run on
shore.
As Farragut’s port column passed just thirty yards from
shore, he strained to see the rebel ram in the darkness but could only make out
the enemy’s gun flashes. Lee claimed he had seen the Arkansas lying under a
bank in an exposed position and had fired two solid shots at it from the
Oneida’s 11-inch pivot guns.
When Farragut’s vessels returned, Bell, now commanding the
Brooklyn, boarded the Hartford and found a dispirited Farragut. They had not
destroyed the rebel ram, and Farragut’s fleet had suffered five killed and
sixteen wounded. Davis’s squadron had thirteen killed and thirty-four wounded.
Bell recalled that Farragut vented his anger and disappointment, saying, “The
ram must be attacked with resolution and be destroyed, or she will destroy us.”
That evening, one of the Hartford’s officers put pen to
paper and wrote a letter to his family. “The fight was a hard one,” he told
them, “and the firing on both sides was terrific. . . . Our decks were
slippery, and in some places, fairly swimming with blood.” He revealed that in
the morning he would have to bury a shipmate. “I hope and pray this war may
soon be ended; but God’s will be done. This rebellion must be crushed if it
costs the life of every loyal citizen in the country. The ram can be seen lying
off Vicksburg, and it is expected that she will come down. But we are ready for
her now, and will not be caught napping again.”
The morning of July 16 dawned cold and rainy. “Some of our
missing has turned up and report three of their number drowned in endeavoring
to swim ashore,” the Carondelet’s Morison wrote. “Our dead were taken ashore at
noon and burned. A great many of our crew sick with the ague. In fact, all
hands look dull and stupid.” Many of the Hartford’s crew had taken ill as well.
“Half of the marine guard is on the medical list,” Private Smith noted. “Fifty
odd are on the list.” The Carondelet remained with the fleet for several days,
awaiting repairs to its steam pipes. “The number of our sick still increasing,”
Morison reported, “the captain being amongst the number.” On Sunday he
delivered a message to Walke, who had gone to the hospital boat Red Rover that
morning. “Saw some of our wounded and sick. All seemed to be doing well. Found
that some ‘Sisters of Charity’ were stationed on the boat and all the patients
spoke very highly of their patience and self-denial.”
On July 21 the Carondelet began taking on coal for the
journey to Cairo. “Thirty contrabands were sent to coal her and help work her
to Cairo,” Morison wrote. He was put in charge of some of the contrabands “to
see that they worked and to remain until the job was finished.” Supervising the
coaling kept Morison up until 3:30 a.m., when he got his grog and turned in for
a short nap. The next day, “the first cutter also brought whatever of our sick
were able to stand the journey to Cairo. Twenty five of the contrabands were
kept on aboard, the remainder being sent back to their quarters about 2 P.M.
Carondelet then got under way and headed toward Cairo.”
Still smarting from his failure to destroy the Arkansas,
Farragut gathered Bell, Alden, De Camp, and Renshaw the following morning for a
conference. He proposed to take the three larger ships and attack at night.
Bell wrote in his journal, “I was opposed to the night attack for the reason
that the one just made was a failure; that a low object against the bank could
not be seen.” Bell favored a daytime attack, and Alden agreed, suggesting that
Davis’s ironclads and rams be given the mission. According to Bell, Farragut
responded that he could not control Davis’s ships and could trust only his own
vessels.
Now determined to attack the Arkansas during daylight,
Farragut ordered preparations made and the Sumter fitted out to ram the rebel
ironclad. On July 16 the Arkansas moved into the river, turned, and went back
to the Vicksburg wharf, as if taunting the federal fleet. Farragut fired off a
message to Davis, reminding him that the country would blame both of them for
any disaster that occurred if the ram escaped. He proposed a combined attack on
the rebel ram. Farragut promised his full support if Davis would come down with
his ironclad vessels past the first enemy battery and meet him off Vicksburg to
fight both the batteries and the ram.
In his usual calm, thoughtful manner, Davis replied to
Farragut’s proposed attack by arguing that the Arkansas was “harmless in her
present position” and would be more easily destroyed if it came out from under
the protection of the batteries. Explaining that he was as eager as Farragut to
“put an end to this impudent rascal’s existence,” Davis advised vigilance and
self-control, “pursuing the course that was adopted at Fort Columbus, Island
No. 10, and Fort Pillow.” After reading Davis’s reply, Farragut called for
another council with his commanders, explaining that he had tried to prod Davis
into action, sending him two more messages suggesting that a few shells might
disturb the people at work on the ram, but Davis refused to move.
This council of war resolved nothing, and the Arkansas
remained off Vicksburg, an ever-present reminder of Yankee ineptness. For days
Farragut and Davis engaged in a back-and-forth debate on a course of action to
destroy the Arkansas, but they were unable to resolve their differences. On a
scorching hot July morning, Farragut crossed the peninsula to see Davis, who
informed him that Colonel Ellet had agreed to have one of his rams attack the
Arkansas if the navy would attack the batteries. Chagrined at his rams’
inability to resolve the situation, Ellet had written to Davis on July 20,
arguing that the Arkansas’s presence “so near us, is exerting a very pernicious
influence upon the confidence of our crews, and even on the commanders of our
boats.” He urged that some risk be taken to destroy the ram and to
“re-establish our own prestige over the Mississippi River.” Farragut then
reconsidered Ellet’s proposal to have Davis’s fleet engage the Confederate
batteries while he sent one of his rams to attack the Arkansas at the wharf.
An article in the Cincinnati Daily Gazette offered
additional details about the plan. On Monday morning, Davis, Farragut, and
Ellet had met for an hour on board the ram Switzerland, the newspaper claimed,
where Ellet’s daring plan “was fully discussed and explicitly agreed upon.”
According to this article, “The Commanders agreed that the Essex which is
regarded as little less than invulnerable, should go ahead of the ram and
attack the Arkansas, grapple her, and so distract her attention as to give the
ram the least possible opportunity of butting her.” Ellet agreed to furnish the
Queen of the West for the enterprise, which was set to commence the next
morning, July 22, at daybreak.
The success of the attack depended primarily on Davis’s
flotilla, especially Porter’s ironclad Essex and Ellet’s ram Queen of the West.
Davis’s fleet would bombard the upper batteries at Vicksburg, while the lower
fleet under Farragut attacked the lower batteries. “The Essex was to push on,
strike the rebel ram, deliver her fire, and then fall behind the lower fleet,”
Porter explained. With the Sumter in the lead, Farragut’s vessels would get in
position to cover the lower Confederate batteries and await the Arkansas, which
Davis expected would be driven down or destroyed by the shot-proof Essex. Davis
wanted the Sumter to attack and ram the Arkansas as well, and he rejected a
last-minute message from Farragut suggesting that his fleet come up past the
lower batteries to assist.
The Essex took on coal and sent its crew ashore to fill
sandbags, which were packed on the upper deck over the boilers. The Louisville,
Cincinnati, Benton, and Bragg also prepared for the attack. Ellet selected a
volunteer crew for the Queen of the West “and told his men in plain terms that
he wanted no man to accompany him that was not ready to risk his life in the
project.”
On Tuesday morning, July 22, Davis’s three gunboats, the
Benton, the Cincinnati, and the Louisville, steamed down the Mississippi to
shell the upper rebel batteries as the Essex and the Queen of the West got
under way to make their assault on the Arkansas, which was moored that morning
to the riverbank with its head facing upriver. “We were at anchor with only
enough men to fight two of our guns,” Brown recalled, “but by the zeal of our
officers, who mixed in with these men, as part of the guns’ crews, we were able
to train at the right moment and fire all the guns which could be brought to
bear upon our cautiously coming assailants.”
In his recollections of the engagement, Lieutenant George W.
Gift wrote, “In a few minutes we observed the ironclad steamer Essex steaming
around the point and steering for us.” As the Essex and Queen approached the
upper battery, the rebel gunners opened fire. The ram took aim at the Essex
with its Columbiad, but the Essex pressed on toward the Arkansas. Gift’s gun
crew got off a shot that struck the federal ironclad, but “on she came like a
mad bull, nothing daunted or overawed.” Watching the Essex head toward his
vessel, with the Queen of the West following, Brown realized that Porter’s plan
was to have the Queen run into the Arkansas with its flat bow and shove it
aground so that his ram could butt a hole in Brown’s ram.
Porter did just as Brown expected. He brought the Essex
abreast of the Arkansas, turned, and attempted to ram the rebel amidships.
Brown, however, had cut the bow hawser, hoping to let the current swing the bow
toward the federal ironclad. Every minute counted, and with its speed decreased
by the turn, the Essex missed the lethal, pointed ram and slammed into the
Arkansas at an angle. “At the moment of collision, when our guns were muzzle to
muzzle,” a shot from one of the Essex’s bow guns struck the Arkansas a foot
forward of the forward broadside port, “breaking off the ends of the railroad
bars and driving them in among our people,” Brown wrote. The shot crossed the
gun deck and hit the breech of a starboard gun, cutting down eight of Brown’s
men and wounding six more. Splinters flew in every direction. As Porter brought
the Essex alongside the Arkansas, the ram poured out a broadside. Brown went
ahead on the port screw, turned, and brought his stern guns to bear. In the
face of murderous fire from rebel batteries and riflemen, some of them only 100
feet away, Porter’s men could not board the Arkansas, so he ordered the Essex
to back off and drift downstream.
On the Queen of the West, correspondent Dungannon had a
ringside seat for the encounter with the rebel ram. He watched the Essex about
a mile ahead of him reply to the rebel’s fire and then speed past. “This
disconcerted Col. Ellet considerably for he expected to find the iron-clad vessel
in close quarters with the rebel gunboat. Just at this critical moment, too,
the Flag-Officer Davis waved his hand from the Benton, to Ellet and shouted,
‘Good luck, good luck!’ which Ellet understood to be, ‘Go back Go back!’ and
immediately gave orders for the engines to be reversed.” When Ellet realized
his mistake, he ordered the Queen to head for the Arkansas, which lay with its
prow upstream. Ellet and his son Edward stood on the upper deck of the Queen of
the West, and as it approached the Arkansas, a shower of bullets from
sharpshooters along the shore whistled around their heads. The sound of
shattering hull timbers followed as the rebel ram fired its forward and
larboard guns. Dungannon braced himself as the ship struck the Arkansas just
aft of the third gun on the port side. Delayed by the confusing signal, the
Queen of the West managed to strike only a glancing blow on the Arkansas,
stripping some of its railroad irons half off but not seriously damaging the
ram. The Queen of the West drifted astern, pummeled by fire from the rebel ram,
and Ellet saw that he faced a “fiery gauntlet of a mile of batteries to be
run.” Newsman Dungannon gave the colonel credit as a “courageous commander” who
“nerved himself to the terrible task,” coolly giving orders for the direction
of his vessel and finally reaching the turning point in safety, “amid a perfect
hurricane of shot and shell.”
To cover the run past the batteries by the Essex and Queen
of the West, the gunboats Benton, Cincinnati, and Louisville had engaged the
upper rebel batteries. According to O’Neil on the Cincinnati, “In this
engagement our upper works were badly cut up, but no one on board was injured.”
Damaged but still afloat, the Arkansas slipped away
upstream. The contest with the Essex had been so close that unburned powder
coming through the ram’s gun ports had blackened and burned the faces of some
of the surviving crewmen. And, to Gift’s astonishment, he discovered the ram’s
forecastle littered with hundreds of unbroken glass marbles—the kind boys play
with—fired from one of the Essex’s guns. The Essex and Sumter fled downstream,
now cut off from Davis’s command. To Davis’s consternation, the Sumter had not
participated at all.
This failed attempt to destroy the Arkansas brought recriminations
from all sides. Ellet laid the blame on Davis, who in turn pointed the finger
at Farragut. Davis argued that Farragut had not cooperated with his efforts
above the upper batteries and had withheld his squadron’s support. Nettled,
Farragut defended himself, reminding Bell of the letter received from Davis the
night before the battle in which “he specifically told me that the lower fleet
were to have no share in the affair until the ram was driven down to us.”64
Davis focused his displeasure on the Sumter, which had
failed to come up. In a petulant letter to Foote, Phelps argued that Farragut
should have advised the Sumter’s commander that his plans had changed and
allowed him to act independently. “Because the lower fleet failed to act the
whole affair failed of its purpose though the attempt was a gallant one,”
Phelps told Foote. “The whole thing was a fizzle. Every day we heard great
things threatened only to realize fizzles.” Phelps was not optimistic about the
situation of the lower flotilla: five of the thirteen vessels were undergoing
repairs, 40 percent of the men were sick, and the vessels on the river were
being fired on by enemy batteries. Amidst all this, the officers and men of the
two squadrons could agree on only one important fact: the second attempt to
take Vicksburg had failed dismally.
With the water level in the Mississippi falling, threatening
to strand his larger vessels, Farragut was eager to move downstream, so he
welcomed a telegram from Welles the next day that read: “Go down river at
discretion. Not expected to remain up during the season.” Farragut then called
Bell, Alden, Lee, and Crosby to the flagship for a council, informing them that
the Navy Department had given him permission to go downriver. The Arkansas
still posed a threat, but former fleet captain Bell argued that mounting
another attack with so many vessels in need of repair and so many men sick
would be inadvisable. When all his commanders had spoken their mind, advising
him to abandon the pursuit of the Arkansas and the Vicksburg operation,
Farragut dismissed the four officers and sat down to pen a letter to Welles. He
told the secretary that to attack the ram “under the forts with the present
amount of work before us would be madness.”
The following day, July 24, as the thermometer climbed
toward ninety degrees, Private Smith watched from his station on the forecastle
as Farragut’s ships weighed anchor. “At two o’clock the whole fleet got in line
and proceeded down the river. The river boats carry the troops and also tow the
mortar schooners. The Richmond, Hartford and Brooklyn bring up the rear, the
Brooklyn last.” No one regretted leaving Vicksburg and its debilitating
climate, especially Farragut. Left behind were the slaves who had toiled in the
heat and malarial swamps to dig the canal, denied their promised freedom. Their
frantic, tearful pleas to be taken on board fell on deaf ears but tugged at the
heartstrings of the bluejackets who had shared the arduous work with them.
Farragut intended to drop Williams’s troops off at Baton Rouge and then take
his fleet into the Gulf of Mexico.
Farragut was relieved to be leaving Mississippi’s infernal
heat and mosquitoes, but he remained despondent over his failure to destroy the
Arkansas. In his diary, Welles expressed his own opinion of the saga: “The most
disreputable naval affair of the War was the descent of the steam ram Arkansas
through both squadrons till she hauled in under the batteries of Vicksburg, and
there the two flag officers abandoned the place and the ironclad ram, Farragut
and his force going down to New Orleans, and Davis proceeding with his flotilla
up the river.”
With the lower fleet gone, Davis had decided it would be
safe to send his squadron away from Vicksburg. With 40 percent of his men ill
with malaria and scurvy, Davis knew he had to move to a healthier climate. In
his diary he wrote, “Sickness had made sudden and terrible havoc with my
people. It came, as it were, all at once.” A request for gunboats from General
Samuel Curtis at Helena, Arkansas, offered further enticement, and Davis knew
his withdrawal “would not involve any loss of control over the river.” Davis
explained that he could not have taken Vicksburg without troops, and “this
being so I am as well at Helena as at any point lower down.” Recent reports
from transports and towing vessels confirmed that if Davis had remained at
Vicksburg any longer, he would not “have had engineers nor firemen enough to
bring the vessels up. As it is we have depended very much on the contrabands to
do the work in front of the fires.” A reporter also noted, “It has become an
absolute necessity to employ negroes in almost every capacity in the flotilla,
for they alone seemed adapted to endure the rigors of this plague-infested
atmosphere.”
Illness had deprived Ellet of many of his men as well, and
he told Secretary of War Edwin Stanton that he had “to employ large numbers of
blacks, who came to me asking protection.” Some of these were the African
Americans employed by General Williams and left on the Louisiana shore. Stanton
instructed Ellet to employ “such negroes as you require on your boats, and send
the others who are under your protection to Memphis to be employed by General
Sherman.”
Struggling against the current, the flagship Benton, assisted by the General Bragg and the Switzerland, made it to Helena on the last day of July. After only a few days, however, Davis decided to go to Cairo, leaving Phelps in command at Helena.
1862, CSS Arkansas is destroyed by Cmdr. Isaac N. Brown, CSN, to prevent her capture by USS Essex.
