t into action, as a
divisional officer, in the gunboat Cayuga, the commander of the latter
generously yielding the first place on board his own ship.

A fleet of twenty mortar-schooners, with an accompanying flotilla of
six gunboats, the whole under the command of Commander (afterward
Admiral) David D. Porter, accompanied the expedition. Being of light
draught of water, they entered without serious difficulty by Pass a
l'Outre, one of three branches into which the eastern of the three
great mouths of the Mississippi is subdivided. Going to the head of
the Passes on the 18th of March, they found there the Hartford and
Brooklyn, steam sloops, with four screw gunboats. The steam vessels of
the flotilla were at once ordered by the flag-officer to Southwest
Pass, and, after finishing the work of getting the heavy ships across,
they were employed towing up the schooners and protecting the advance
of the surveyors of the fleet.

The squadron thus assembled in the river consisted of four screw
sloops, one side-wheel steamer, three screw corvettes, and nine screw
gunboats, in all seventeen vessels, of all classes, carrying,
exclusive of brass howitzers, one hundred and fifty-four guns. Their
names and batteries were as follows:

-----------------------+------+-----+----------------------------------
NAME. | Tons.|Guns.| Commanding Officer.
-----------------------+------+-----+----------------------------------
_Screw Sloops._ | | |
| | |
Hartford | 1990 | 24 | Flag-Officer David G. Farragut.
| | | Fleet-Captain Henry H. Bell.
| | | Commander Richard Wainwright.
Pensacola | 2158 | 23 | Captain Henry W. Morris.
Brooklyn | 2070 | 22 | Captain Thomas T. Craven.
Richmond | 1929 | 24 | Commander James Alden.
| | |
_Side-Wheel._ | | |
| | |
Mississippi | 1692 | 17 | Commander Melancthon Smith.
| | |
_Screw Corvettes._ | | |
| | |
Oneida | 1032 | 9 | Commander S. Phillips Lee.
Varuna | 1300 | 10 | Commander Charles S. Boggs.
Iroquois | 1016 | 7 | Commander John De Camp.
| | |
_Screw Gu