service under the command
of Flag Officer George N. Hollins, formerly of the United States Navy.
At No. 10 the force consisted of the McRae, Polk, Jackson, Calhoun,
Ivy, Ponchartrain, Maurepas, and Livingston; the floating battery had
also formed part of his command. Hollins had not felt himself able to
cope with the heavy Union gunboats. His services had been mainly
confined to a vigorous but unsuccessful attack upon the batteries
established by Pope on the Missouri shore, between New Madrid and
Tiptonville, failing in which the gunboats fell back down the river.
They continued, however, to make frequent night trips to Tiptonville
with supplies for the army, in doing which Pope's comparatively light
batteries did not succeed in injuring them, the river being nearly a
mile wide. The danger then coming upon New Orleans caused some of
these to be withdrawn, and at the same time a novel force was sent up
from that city to take their place and dispute the control of the
river with Foote's flotilla.

In the middle of January, General Lovell, commanding the military
district in which New Orleans was, had seized, under the directions of
the Confederate Secretary of War, fourteen river steamboats. This
action was taken at the suggestion of two steamboat captains,
Montgomery and Townsend. The intention was to strengthen the vessels
with iron casing at the bows, and to use them with their high speed as
rams. The weakness of the sterns of the ironclad boats, their slowness
and difficulty in handling, were well known to the Confederate
authorities. Lovell was directed to allow the utmost latitude to each
captain in fitting his own boat, and, as there was no military
organization or system, the details of the construction are not now
recoverable. The engines, however, were protected with cotton bales
and pine bulwarks, and the stems for a length of ten feet shod with
iron nearly an inch thick, across which, at intervals of about two
feet, were bolted iron straps, extending aft on either bow for a
couple of feet so as to keep the planking from starting when the blow
was delivered. It being intended that they should close with the
enemy as rapidly as possible, but one gun was to be carried; a rule
which seems not to have been adhered to. While the force was to be
under the general command of the military chief of department, all
interference by naval officers was jealously forbidden; and, in fact,
by implication, any interference by