Rear-Admiral David D. Porter’s Federal naval flotilla continued to struggle getting down the Red River due to low water levels. The U.S.S. Eastport hit an enemy torpedo and was grounded several times over a five-day span. Finally, on April 26, the gunboat grounded for the last time on the Alexandria rapids. Porter had no choice but to order the crew to destroy their ship. Federal crewmen used 3,000 pounds of gunpowder to blow the Eastport up before transferring to the U.S.S. Fort Hindman. According to Marine Lieutenant Frank Church, the Eastport was made “as perfect a wreck as ever was made by powder.”
During this action, Confederate shore batteries and snipers from Lieutenant-General Richard Taylor’s Confederate Army of West Louisiana attacked other nearby gunboats. This was consistent with Taylor’s goal to “keep up a constant fight with the gunboats, following them with sharpshooters and killing every man who exposes himself.”
Porter’s flagship, the U.S.S. Cricket, came under heavy attack as Confederates riddled her with 38 shots and inflicted 31 casualties (12 killed and 19 wounded) out of 50 on board. Confederate troops tried to board the vessel but were beaten back, and the Cricket got away only by drifting powerlessly downriver. Commander Thomas O. Selfridge stated, “The escape of the Cricket was almost miraculous.”
As the Federal ships continued downriver, they came under artillery and rifle fire near the mouth of the Cane River (a tributary of the Red). The Champion No. 5, a transport carrying slaves to freedom, sustained a shot through her boiler that burned 100 slaves to death. The wooden gunboat Juliet was disabled but towed to safety by the Champion No. 3, also damaged with a shell destroying her boiler.
Meanwhile, Taylor’s ground troops continued to harass Major-General Nathaniel P. Banks’s retreating Army of the Gulf. Near Bayou Cotile, Confederate cavalry attacked Banks’s rear guard, which consisted mainly of troops from Brigadier-General Andrew J. Smith’s contingent on loan from Major-General William T. Sherman’s army. Ultimately the Federals “were forced to fall back after burning everything in the neighborhood.”
Fighting resumed on the 27th, as the Confederate guns disabled the Fort Hindman and sent her drifting downstream. The Champion No. 5 was grounded and burned, and the Juliet sustained more damage. The heavy ironclad U.S.S. Neosho tried to lead the other ships to safety under what Porter called “the heaviest fire I ever witnessed.”
Porter reached Alexandria later that day, where he met up with Banks and his army. General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant had long sought for Banks to turn east and advance on Mobile, Alabama, and Banks had just received a message from Grant instructing him not to be “detained one day after the 1st of May in commencing your movement east of the Mississippi. No matter what you may have in contemplation, commence your concentration, to be followed without delay by your advance on Mobile.”
However, most of Porter’s fleet was still above the Alexandria rapids, which were becoming more impassable by the day. Banks assured Porter that he would not start his move on Mobile until Porter’s fleet had safely evacuated the Red River. Porter sent a pessimistic report to Navy Secretary Gideon Welles: “… I find myself blockaded by the fall of three feet of water, three feet four inches being the amount now on the falls; seven feet being required to get over; no amount of lightening will accomplish the object… In the meantime, the enemy are splitting up into parties of 2,000 and bringing in the artillery… to blockade points below here…”
Porter acknowledged that he may have to scuttle his entire fleet to prevent it from falling into Confederate hands and wrote that “you may judge my feelings at having to perform so painful a duty.” He then offered a scathing account of the Red River campaign thus far: “It has delayed 10,000 troops of Gen. Sherman, on which he depended to open the State of Mississippi; it has drawn Gen. (Frederick) Steele from Arkansas and already given the rebels a foothold in that country; it has forced me to withdraw many light-draft vessels from points on the Mississippi to protect this army…”
Welles placed the blame for the failure on the Red River solely on Banks, writing in his diary:
“Rear-Admiral Porter has sent me a long, confidential letter in relation to affairs on Red River and the fights that have taken place at Mansfield, Pleasant Hill, etc. The whole affair is unfortunate. Great sacrifice of life and property has been made in consequence of an incompetent general in command. It is plain from Admiral Porter’s account that Banks is no general, has no military capacity, is wholly unfit for the position assigned him. He has never exhibited military capacity, and I regret the President should adhere to him… The President should, if Porter’s statements are reliable, dismiss Banks, or deprive him of military command… I asked (Chief of Staff Henry W.) Halleck… what the army opinion was of the recent conflicts on Red River. He said we undoubtedly had the worst of it, and that Banks had no military talent or education… Whether he will recommend the withdrawal of Banks from the army remains to be seen.”
Grant ordered Banks to immediately end his campaign in Louisiana, return to his New Orleans headquarters, and turn army command over to his top subordinate. The order ending the campaign was suspended when Grant learned that Banks had to stay on the Red River and help Porter’s flotilla to escape. But the order for Banks to turn over his command remained in place.
A ray of hope appeared on the 29th when Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Bailey, a former Wisconsin lumberjack who was now an engineer with the Nineteenth Corps, proposed building a wing dam above the falls to raise the water level to the required seven feet. Then, the dam would be opened and the vessels would ride the high current over the jagged rocks, past the rapids to safety. Porter later wrote:
“This proposition looked like madness, and the best engineers ridiculed it, but Col. Bailey was so sanguine of success that I requested Gen. Banks to have it done… two or three regiments of Maine men were set to work felling trees… every man seemed to be working with a vigor seldom seen equaled… These falls are about a mile in length, filled with rugged rocks, over which at the present stage of water it seemed to be impossible to make a channel.”
Work began on the 30th, as 3,000 Federals started building a dam of logs, rocks, and dirt spanning the 758-foot-wide Red River. The Federals also sunk four barges filled with stones to raise levels. The work continued into May, as Porter relied on this desperate engineering effort to save his naval flotilla.
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