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  In a letter to Welles dated June 30, 1862, and marked “Above Vicksburg,” Farragut reminded the secretary that his presence on the river did not necessarily mean the stream was under Union control. The riverbanks for hundreds of miles were infested with Confederate army units, some equipped with light artillery pieces. These rebels would lie in wait for Union vessels to approach, then attack them in hit-and-run raids that often did considerable damage. Without large numbers of Federal troops to keep the riverbanks clear of the enemy, the river was little more than a gauntlet to be run by Farragut’s ships and boats. Any attempt by unarmed merchant ships to travel the river would be disastrous. Even the army transports required gunboat escorts when they moved about in what many in Washington considered an occupied and controlled river.

  Vicksburg remained an enemy stronghold. Below it on the river, Porter’s mortar boats kept up a steady barrage against the batteries they could reach. He placed over a dozen howitzers behind a line of earthworks he had his crews throw up along the riverbank to protect against a surprise attack from rebel troops. The timed firing of the mighty mortar guns echoed up the river, reminding the Union sailors above the city and the rebel soldiers in it that they were under siege from a powerful enemy.

  Meanwhile, Farragut’s position continued to deteriorate. The river kept dropping, and he was now isolated from his own supplies. If he had not received word from Davis that he intended to leave Memphis and rush to Vicksburg “at the earliest possible moment,” Farragut would probably have run back past the batteries.

  Farragut was anxious for news concerning the Arkansas, which was rumored to be in the final stages of construction up the Yazoo River. Since his own vessels drew too much draft to travel that river, Farragut looked to the shallow-draft rams of the Ellet Ram Fleet for help. Alfred Ellet had just received word of his promotion to colonel, and his assignment as commander of the ram fleet, replacing his dead brother. Colonel Ellet suggested he take two rams and reconnoiter up the Yazoo as far as possible, to learn whatever he could about the Arkansas. Farragut quickly agreed.

  The ram fleet was still very much a family enterprise. The two rams that steamed up the Yazoo were the Monarch, under Colonel Ellet’s command, and the Lancaster, commanded by Alfred’s nephew, Charles Rivers Ellet. At Memphis, the nineteen-year-old Charles had led the party ashore that hoisted the flag over the city’s post office.

  The journey up the Yazoo on June 30 was made with little of the fanfare and élan that usually accompanied an Ellet Ram Fleet expedition. These were the first Union vessels on this river deep in enemy territory, and the soldiers and their officers did not know what to expect. They had heard rumors the river was spiked with torpedoes, now called mines, and that the banks had been lined with Confederate army batteries to protect the big ironclad from attack. Despite their apprehensions, the trip went without incident and without sighting a rebel sailor or soldier for several miles.

  Then, suddenly, as the two rams, their paddle wheels churning the brownish waters as quietly as possible, rounded a gradual bend in the river, they were shocked to find three Confederate gunboats just ahead of them. Anchored in the narrow river were the gunboat-ram General Van Dorn, the only survivor of the battle between the Confederate River Defense Fleet and the Ellet Ram Fleet at Memphis, and two wooden gunboats, the Polk and the Livingston. The latter pair were the remnants of the river fleet formerly commanded by Commodore George Nichols Hollins, who had attempted to support the defenses of New Orleans against Farragut’s fleet in spite of his orders from Richmond.

  Although the Union rams were armed with only two howitzers each - much less firepower than the three gunboats - their sudden appearance in the river shocked the Confederate troops manning the gunboats. Unable to build a head of steam quickly enough to move their vessels, the rebels decided to set them ablaze so the enemy could not capture them. They then scattered into the nearby countryside. Colonel Ellet watched in disappointment as the three boats burst into flames and burned rapidly to their waterlines. He decided there was little else he could do since the fleeing soldiers would sound a warning of his presence, making farther movement up the river exceedingly dangerous. The Monarch and Lancaster slowly turned in the river and returned south to the fleet.

  The following morning, July 1, 1862, Flag Officer Farragut was having breakfast with several of his officers when the cry “Vessels approaching!” was heard from a lookout. Rushing to the deck, Farragut looked north to see a dense cloud of black smoke drifting above the river. Then gradually into view came a small fleet of vessels known as the Western River Flotilla, commanded by Flag Officer Davis. The saltwater sailors aboard the warships looked in gaping surprise at the approach of the smoke-belching armored gunboats, which hunkered low in the water with a menacing appearance. They looked like a group of dangerous turtles swimming downstream. On board the gunboats, the crews looked back in awe at the first majestic seagoing warships most had ever seen. The men aboard both fleets waved and called to each other until many were hoarse.

  The strange little river-war boats of the flotilla, which some called “stinkpots,” dropped anchor alongside the sloops and gunboats of the Gulf Squadron. As the junior of the two flag officers, Davis was rowed to the Hartford to be welcomed by Farragut. The two had been close friends for many years and had not seen each other since the early months of the war. The officers and sailors of the Hartford watched and cheered as the two men greeted each other with genuine warmth and friendship. Despite their close relationship, Farragut and Davis were completely different as men and as naval commanders. Both attempted to camouflage their baldness by brushing their hair across their pates, but there the similarity ended. Farragut was a clean-shaven, effusive man unafraid to show his emotions, while Davis, who sported a very large mustache, was reserved, quiet, and scholarly. One of the few naval officers who had a formal education, he was a Harvard graduate. Welles referred to him as more a scholar than a sailor. Farragut, as we have seen, was impatient, and hated nothing more than waiting around for the action to begin. Davis was slow to act, weighing all his options before moving. Once he moved, it was at a slow pace that permitted him to continue examining all options as they appeared or changed.

  At Farragut’s suggestion, Davis moved the few mortar boats he had in his flotilla down the river so they could fire on Vicksburg in cooperation with Porter’s mortars. They contributed to the din and destruction to which the citizens of Vicksburg were growing accustomed.

  The following day a force of 2,000 Confederate soldiers armed with light artillery batteries launched an attack on Porter’s mortar boats. The earthwork defense line Porter had constructed held, and the howitzers behind it cut the charging infantry down. Within minutes, every available mortar and gunboat south of Vicksburg opened a deadly fire on the attackers. Abandoning their guns, the men fell back in chaos under the heavy fire. Counterattacking Union sailors captured dozens of rebel soldiers who had become stuck in the mud and were unable to escape.

  The combined fleet honored Independence Day with an abundance of flags flying from all vessels, and twenty-one-gun salutes roaring up and down the river. In Vicksburg and her defending batteries, there was no mistaking that the Federals were celebrating. Farragut accepted an invitation from Davis to join him on his flagship, the Jessie Benton, for a trip downriver for a look at the enemy’s batteries above the city.

  It was a cautiously reluctant old deep-sea sailor who climbed into Davis’s boat for his first trip aboard an ironclad. The Benton was one of the largest and most powerful ironclads in the United States Navy, but this gave little comfort to Farragut, who dearly loved the open decks of the mighty warships on which he had served. Built in St. Louis the year before by the noted ironclad contractor James B. Eads, the Benton was 200 feet long, with a beam of forty-five feet. Her casements were covered with nearly four inches of iron, and slanted down and outward so that shells hitting her would slide off into the water. She was armed with nine rifled guns, seven seven-inche
rs, and two nine-inchers, as well as seven thirty-two-pounders.

  Unfortunately for the men aboard Benton, a new rifle battery had been added to Vicksburg’s defenses, which offered Confederate gunners a better opportunity to target the ironclads. When she came within range of this battery, it opened a devastating fire. As the Benton’s gunners tried to get the range of the battery, a shell pierced her armor close to the spot where Farragut was standing. The explosion killed several men who had been near the flag officer. An excited Farragut told Davis, “Everybody to his taste. I am going on deck; I feel safer outside.”

  To occupy their time, the vessels of both fleets engaged in periodic shelling of enemy positions and patrolled the riverbanks for Confederate infantry units attempting to lift the siege of Vicksburg. Boredom and the heat, however, were the worst enemies of the sailors and marines. The monotony was broken by an occasional false rumor that the Arkansas had left her dock at Yazoo City and was steaming down the Yazoo River toward the Mississippi. The Union fleets were anchored just below the place where the Yazoo emptied into the Mississippi, so these rumors helped to create heightened levels of anxiety.

  The heat was unrelenting, and helped produce swarms of insects that attacked any exposed flesh. Of the heat, Davis wrote, “I never can describe to you the heat, the succession of still and breathless days - long, long, weary, red-hot, gasping days.”

  Frustrated by the inability to use his 3,000 troops to help Farragut capture Vicksburg, General Williams hit on an idea that he thought might make the city and its batteries superfluous. Just above Vicksburg, the river made a complete U-turn, forming a long finger of land opposite the city. This peninsula was called DeSoto Point. It was here that Williams had placed his batteries when Farragut’s ships ran past Vicksburg. Looking over a map of this stretch of the river, Williams decided that if he could dig a canal across the peninsula below the Vicksburg batteries, Union ships could avoid passing Vicksburg. This would leave the rebel batteries without any targets, and make for a safe passage.

  The canal would be fifty feet wide, and one and one-half miles long. Ships entering the canal three and one-half miles below Vicksburg would leave it six miles upriver of the city and vice versa. Williams hoped to dig a cut through the peninsula five feet wide and four feet deep. Once opened to the powerful river current, he expected the rush of water through the cut to widen and deepen it sufficiently to allow the ships to pass through. The idea definitely had merit; the main obstacle was manpower. The list of soldiers and officers down with illnesses related to the heat and insects grew every day. To supplement his own force, Williams sent groups of soldiers into the surrounding countryside to “liberate” slaves from nearby plantations. The slaves were promised their freedom in return for working on the canal. Within days, more than 2,000 slaves joined the work. Used to the heat, they were better able to maintain a steady schedule, while the soldiers, many of whom were from northern climates, continued to fall ill.

  The cut reached the far side of the peninsula on July 11. But just a few hours before the final earth was to be removed, and the river allowed to enter, disaster struck. The cut had reached a depth of thirteen feet, some eighteen inches below the level of the river, and eighteen feet wide. Everyone was hopeful of the results when the water smashed its way through. Suddenly the banks of the cut began slipping into the hole, and large sections caved in completely. Work crews rushed to repair the damage, but the river, which was rapidly dropping, fell to a level below the cut before they could finish their work. After three weeks of backbreaking toil, the cut was completed, but the river had dropped so low that only a trickle of water found its way into the deep trench.

  The days of boredom ended during the night of July 14 when two Confederates claiming to be deserters hailed the Essex, a former ferryboat that had been converted into one of Davis’s ironclads. They told a story of the Arkansas being readied for a trip downriver to attack the Union fleets. Both flag officers doubted the truthfulness of the report but decided to send several boats up the Yazoo the next morning to investigate.

  The history of the ironclad ram Arkansas is one of high hopes and deep disappointment. Her construction was begun at Memphis in October 1861. Before she was completed, the city came under attack by the Ellet Ram Fleet, and she was moved to the safety of Yazoo City for completion. Construction, which had been proceeding slowly, speeded up when she was assigned a new commander, Lieutenant Isaac N. Brown. A twenty-eight-year veteran of the U.S. Navy, the Kentucky-born Brown was a man of great energy and determination who swept obstacles aside with zest. A shortage of materials and craftsmen hindered his work, as did the falling river. Brown used his most persuasive arguments to obtain the services of slaves from nearby plantations and 200 soldiers from a local military camp. Work on the boat went on twenty-four hours a day, and when blacksmiths and mechanics were required, he sent troops into the countryside to locate and press into service those he needed. Railroad rails were used as armor where regular boilerplate could not be properly fitted, and shell and shot were obtained far and wide for her ten guns.

  On July 12, 1862, the Arkansas, not yet completed, but forced to move because of the rapidly dropping river, steamed out of Yazoo City and headed south for the Mississippi. Overall command of the vessel had been given to General Earl Van Dorn, as part of the Vicksburg defenses. Van Dorn instructed Brown to bring the boat out of the Yazoo and to Vicksburg as quickly as construction would permit. The plan was for the Arkansas to sweep into the Mississippi, surprising the enemy fleet at anchor, do as much damage to it as possible, and proceed to Vicksburg. There she would take on coal and then attack the mortar boats below the city. After that, she was to steam downriver to attack the enemy vessels at New Orleans and then force her way through the mouth of the river into the Gulf, destroying as many blockade ships as she could. Once in the Gulf, she was to run to Mobile, bolstering the Confederate defenses of that port.

  In the early morning hours of July 15, as the mighty ram steamed slowly downriver, the clearing morning mist revealed three enemy vessels approaching from downstream. The three were the wooden gunboat A. 0. Tyler, a converted side-wheeler from Davis’s flotilla, followed by the Ellet ram Queen of the West, and the ironclad gunboat Carondelet, also from Davis’s flotilla.

  At the same moment the Arkansas spotted the Union boats, lookouts aboard the Tyler roused her commander, Lieutenant William Gwin, from his breakfast. Knowing that his little wooden gunboat was no match for the ironclad, Gwin turned her around and headed back downriver with her stern gun firing for all she was worth. The ram Queen of the West, unarmed except for two howitzers tied to her deck, made as quick a turn as she could and sped south ahead of the Tyler. The only Union ironclad at the scene, the Carondelet, tried to maneuver into position to both fire at the enemy and turn around, something the bulky craft required room to accomplish. When the Arkansas opened fire, the Carondelet’s commander, Henry Walke, realized he would be “a simpleton to ‘take the bull by the horn’” and risk the fatal ramming, “which the enemy desired.” She also fled downstream.

  The Confederate ram raced after the Union ironclad and, after nearly an hour, succeeded in pulling alongside her. The river was not wide enough to allow the Arkansas to ram the Carondelet, so instead Brown lowered his guns as far as they would go and fired a broadside into the Carondelet that crippled her steering gear. The power of the volley pushed the Union boat against the riverbank, where she became entangled in the reeds and stuck in the mud. The Arkansas then turned her attention to the two other boats. The little Tyler raced south as fast as she could, but to Lieutenant Gwin’s great credit, he kept his single stem-mounted thirty-two-pounder firing at the huge ironclad. Good fortune smiled on the Union that day, for the Tyler was able to maintain enough distance from the Arkansas to prevent the ironclad from ramming her. In an incredible feat of bravery, the Tyler’s gun crew found the range and began doing serious damage to this hope of the Confederacy. As the two sped down the narrow river,
one shot knocked Brown off his feet, temporarily rendering him unconscious. Another hit the pilot house, killing the river pilot, while another caused several steam leaks. The brave little wooden gunboat soon drew even farther ahead, as the steam pressure in the Arkansas’s boilers quickly dropped, slowing her considerably.

  Gwin was everywhere on the Tyler at once, shouting for more steam and calling for the gunners to keep firing as the two forward guns of the rebel ironclad sent shells overhead or splashing in the water to either side. Belowdecks, the engineers flung every flammable liquid they could find into the boiler to raise the pressure a few pounds more. They watched the pressure gauge as it lingered at the spot where the red line began, the signal that the pressure was dangerously high.

  Aboard the Arkansas, the situation was even worse. The temperature in her engine room reached 130 degrees, and the gun crews were required to spell the exhausted engineers for brief periods so they would not be felled by the heat. Meanwhile, the boiler pressure continued to drop. At the beginning of the battle, it had reached 160 pounds, but as the ironclad reached the Mississippi, it was down to twenty pounds, and she was moving no faster than three miles per hour.

  Aboard the Federal ships anchored along both shores of the river, sailors and officers listened to the gunfire. Most assumed the three vessels sent up the Yazoo had encountered army batteries stationed along the shores of the river. But not all. Aboard Davis’s flagship, the Benton, the ship’s captain asked the flag officer for permission to get steam up. On Farragut’s flagship, several gun crews began preparing their guns for action, apparently without having been given orders to do so. Other than these, the firing in the distance raised little concern. Of the thirty ships in the combined Union fleets, only one had a full head of steam, the army ram General Bragg, but she did nothing while she awaited orders to attack the enemy ram. The rest of the vessels had banked their boilers in order to conserve fuel.