EASTPORT BEFORE FORT DE RUSSY

The year 1863 had seen a turn in the Civil War in favor of the Union.  A Confederate foray into the north had been reversed at Gettysburg and the last Rebel stronghold on the Mississippi River at Vicksburg had fallen.  With the Mississippi now in Union hands attention turned to Confederate activities west of the river in Louisiana and Arkansas.  Here the Red River provided the main thoroughfare for cotton and other supplies shipping eastward.  As the spring rains swelled the Red River in 1864, combined Union Naval and ground forces planned an assault.

Their first obstacle was Fort de Russy, named for its builder, Confederate Army engineer COL Lewis G. de Russy.  This fort lay 45 miles up the river from the mouth at the Mississippi, a course over which the Red River forms a northward-projecting loop into northeastern Louisiana.  Fort de Russy lay on the western leg of that loop.  Union troops under BGENs Andrew Jackson Smith and Joseph Mower would land on the eastern leg of the loop at Simmesport and march the 28 miles across the bottom of the loop along what is modern Louisiana State Route 1.  They would envelope the rear of the fort while the ironclad warships of RADM David Dixon Porter would proceed up the Red River to support the assault.  On the morning of March 13^th Porter’s transports began disembarking 10,000 Union troops at Simmesport while the ironclad USS EASTPORT under LCDR Seth L. Phelps, along with NEOSHO, LAFAYETTE, CHOCTAW, OSAGE, OZARK, FORT HINDMAN and CRICKET were sent upriver.  Ahead of the main gunboat force, they were to remove obstructions eight miles below the fort.  Their progress was slowed by LAFAYETTE and CHOCTAW, whose long keels plagued negotiation of the channel.

The obstructions proved formidable.  Arriving on this day Phelps found a row of pilings driven into the river bottom across the channel, braced against a second tier of shorter pilings.  Ties and iron plates bridged each piling creating an impassable, anchored “wall.”  Sunken logs blocked access to the downstream side, and from above, trees had been cut and floated down the river to jam up the pilings.  Phelps’ sailors attached tow lines to the pilings, axes swung, and several of the gunboats repeatedly rammed the obstruction.  For several hours they labored, finally breaking a passage open around 1600.  OSAGE, FORT HINDMAN and CRICKET followed EASTPORT the final miles to Fort de Russy.  Here they found Union troops already engaged.

The battle proved one-sided.  The Confederate defender, MGEN John G. Walker, had marched 5000 rebels out to stall the advancing Federals, and most of these escaped to fight another day.  The 300 garrisoned in the fort surrendered after only a brief engagement.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  19 MAR 25

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Civil War Naval Chronology 1861-1865.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1961, pp. IV-31-32.

Porter, David D.  The Naval History of the Civil War.  Mineola, NY: Dover Pub., 1886, pp. 495-97.

“Report of Rear-Admiral Porter, U.S. Navy, regarding combined movement up the river and capture of Fort de Russy by forces under Brigadier-General Smith, U.S. Army, March 14, 1864.”  IN: Stewart, Charles W.  Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 26, Naval Forces on Western Waters from March 1 to December 31, 1864.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1914, pp. 24-27.

“Report of Rear-Admiral Porter, U.S. Navy, transmitting report of Lieutenant Commander Phelps, U.S. Navy, regarding removal of obstructions and capture of Fort De Russy.”  IN: Stewart, Charles W.  Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 26, Naval Forces on Western Waters from March 1 to December 31, 1864.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1914, pp. 29-31.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Among the guns captured at Fort de Russy were three Naval guns, two 9-inch Dahlgren smoothbores formerly in service on USS NDIANOLA and USS HARRIET LANE (both lost earlier in the war) and a 32-pounder cast in the 1820s.

EASTPORT was originally a rebel ironclad, started by the Confederates in the upper Tennessee River in 1862, but captured on the ways by Union forces.

John George Walker, above, was a seasoned and able combat commander.  He had served with the US Army before the Civil War in the Mexican and Apache Wars.  During the Rebellion he saw action in the Peninsular Campaign, at Antietam, and at Vicksburg before commanding in the Trans-Mississippi.  He fled to Mexico after the war but eventually returned to the United States, serving as consul to Bogota in the post-war years.  His narrative history of the Confederacy west of the Mississippi is still in print today.

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                                              4 SEPTEMBER 1887

                                         RADM GEORGE BROWN

On the moonless night of 14-15 February 1863, 27-year-old LCDR George Brown of the Union Navy’s Mississippi River Squadron took the sidewheel ironclad gunboat USS INDIANOLA south toward Vicksburg.  His mission was a daring run past the vaunted Confederate batteries at Vicksburg.  He towed two coal barges in case any Union warships downstream were in need of resupply.  The trio passed half the batteries before their presence was detected in the darkness, and no shots struck the gunboat.  Six days later Brown started back upstream.  The night of 24 February found INDIANOLA at Palmyra Island, north of Grand Gulf, Mississippi.  Here about 2130, lights were noted in pursuit.

CSS WEBB, DR. BEATTY, GRAND ERA and the former Union gunboat QUEEN OF THE WEST, now in enemy hands, were gunning for Brown!  QUEEN closed first, ramming and sinking one of the coal barges.  Covering musket fire from DR. BEATTY allowed QUEEN and WEBB to repeatedly charge Brown.  Recognizing that he had to keep INDIANOLA’s vulnerable sidewheels from being struck, Brown lingered exposed on the deck to direct his pilot.  At times he knelt on a ventilation grating to communicate instructions to the engine spaces below, with Confederate minié balls whizzing all around!  On several occasions as the rams closed, Brown directed the fire of his gunners, aiming and discharging one gun himself.  None of the Union sailors had seen action before this night, and the darkness only added to the near-panic aboard the overwhelmed INDIANOLA.  Brown coolly directed his gunboat’s response for a terrifying hour.  Then QUEEN succeeded in ramming from the stern, carrying away the Union rudder and punching through her hull.  When a second ramming blow parted the starboard sidewheel shaft and smashed a second hull breach, INDIANOLA became unmanageable.  Two and a half feet of water rapidly flooded the bilges, forcing Brown at 2320 to run INDIANOLA onto the shore.  She came to rest on a sand bar just south of Palmyra Island, where, having lost only two casualties, Brown’s crew destroyed the signal books and valuable gear.

LCDR Brown and INDIANOLA were captured.  He was exchanged months later in Richmond and went on to command USS ITASCA at the battle of Mobile Bay.  After the Civil War he sailed the former CSS STONEWALL to Japan, upon the sale of that vessel.  He was promoted to CAPT in 1877 and commanded the Department of Alaska.  While overseeing the Norfolk Navy Yard this date he was promoted to Commodore.  He went on to command our Pacific Station in the Philippines until his promotion to RADM in 1893.  Then, following a second tour as Commandant of the Norfolk Navy Yard, RADM Brown retired 19 June 1897, his 62^nd birthday.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  11-12 SEP 22

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Cogar, William B.  Dictionary of Admirals of the U.S. Navy, Vol 1 1862-1900.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1989, pp. 21-22.

“Report of Acting Assistant Surgeon Mixer, U.S. Navy, late of the U.S.S. Indianola, regarding the operations and capture of that vessel.”  IN:  Stewart, Charles W.  Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol 24, Naval Forces on Western Waters from January 1, to May 17, 1863.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1911, pp. 392-95.

Site visits.  Vicksburg, and Grand Gulf Military Monument State Park, Mississippi, 15 October 2003.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  RADM Brown passed away before WWI in 1913.  Our Navy has not yet named a warship for RADM Brown.  In fact, deconflicting several Navy men bearing the name “George Brown” can be complicated.  Brown’s son, George, Jr., as well as a second son named Hugh, both served as US Navy officers.  LTJG George Peter Brown (unrelated) was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for his actions at the Battle of the Philippine Sea in 1944.  The Fletcher-class destroyer BROWN (DD-546) remembers an earlier and unrelated enlisted sailor also named George Brown, a hero of the Barbary Wars.

INDIANOLA’s loss thwarted RADM David Dixon Porter’s efforts to blockade the Red River, south of Vicksburg.  The Red River was a pathway for the resupply of Vicksburg from the Trans-Mississippi theater.  At the time Porter’s squadron was stuck north of that city, and he had been detaching warships to run past the city to blockade the mouth of the Red River.  The loss contributed to Porter’s near-disastrous foray up the Red River in March-May 1864.  INDIANOLA remained grounded until January 1865, when Union salvors refloated her after much effort.  She was sold for scrap.

The run past Vicksburg was formidable.  In Civil War days the Mississippi River ran directly in front of the bluffs of the city, then made a hairpin turn to double back past the city a second time within gun range.  Since, the river has carved a new bed, but from the bluffs today, one can still see the trace of the former channel past the city.

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