Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 2.

[589] one 20-pounder and three 12-pounder brass cannon on her gun-deck. She was manned by a good crew, well armed, and was accompanied by a squad of soldiers; and her machinery was protected by three hundred bales of cotton. Thus prepared, she went down the river before dawn on the morning of the 2d of February (the day Grant arrived at Young's Point), first to attack and destroy the steamer City of Vicksburg, that lay under the guns of the batteries at the city, and then to push farther down the river. After receiving a terrible cannonade while attacking the steamer, she passed on down, and just below Natchez destroyed three others. She ran a few miles up Red River, and, returning, repassed the Vicksburg batteries.

On the 10th of February

1863.

she was started on another raid down the river, to capture Confederate transports, pass the Port Hudson batteries, if possible, and effect a junction with the fleet of Farragut below that point. Accompanied by the gun-boat De Soto and a coal-barge, she again ran by Vicksburg, went up the Red River to the Atchafalaya, and, entering that stream, captured

Feb. 12.

a train of army-wagons; and at Simmsport, a little farther on, a quantity of stores. Returning to the Red River, she went up that stream also, and, a little above the mouth of the Black River, captured the small steamer Era, laden with corn and other supplies, and bearing a few Texan soldiers. These were paroled, and the Era was left in charge of a guard.

The Queen of the West pushed on about twenty miles farther, toward a battery on the river called Fort Taylor, making the captured pilot of the Era ply his vocation on the ram. When turning a point near the fort the fellow ran her aground, when the Confederate guns opened upon her so severely and accurately that she was soon utterly disabled, and Ellet and his crew were compelled to leave her as a prize and retreat on floating bales of cotton. The De Soto, lying just below, picked them up. Going down the river, that vessel was also run into the bank by the treacherous pilot, and lost her rudder, when she and the coal-barge were scuttled and sunk.

The Era was now Ellet's last refuge. Throwing her corn overboard, she was made to go down the stream as rapidly and lightly as possible, the rebel pilot, strange to say, still at the helm, when he ran her ashore just after reaching the Mississippi. Four armed boats were then in close chase, the leader being the powerful iron-clad ram Webb,

The Indianola.1

which had been lying at Alexandria, about sixty miles up the Red River. After much exertion the Era was loosed, and went slowly up the river, when she met the powerful iron-clad Indianola, just above Elles's Cliffs,² coming down in a fog. When