s, unless convoyed by an armed steamer, were often attacked. One
had been sunk, and the enemy was reported to be establishing batteries
along the shores. These could be easily silenced, but to keep them
under required a number of gunboats, so that the communications were
seriously threatened. The fleet was also very short-handed, needing
five hundred men to fill the existing vacancies. Under these
circumstances Flag-Officer Davis decided to withdraw to Helena,
between which point and Vicksburg there was no high land on which the
enemy could permanently establish himself and give trouble. By these
various movements the ironclad Essex and the ram Sumter, now
permanently separated from the up-river fleet, remained charged with
the care of the river below Vicksburg; their nearest support being the
Katahdin and Kineo at Baton Rouge.

On the 5th of August the Confederates under the command of
Breckenridge made an attack upon General Williams's forces at Baton
Rouge. The Arkansas, with two small gunboats, had left Vicksburg on
the 3d to co-operate with the movement. The Union naval force present
consisted of the Essex, Sumter, Cayuga, Kineo, and Katahdin. The
attack was in superior force, but was gallantly met, the Union forces
gradually contracting their lines, while the gunboats Katahdin and
Kineo opened fire as soon as General Williams signalled to them that
they could do so without injuring their own troops. No Confederate
gunboats came, and the attack was repelled; Williams, however, falling
at the head of his men.

The Arkansas had been prevented from arriving in time by the failure
of her machinery, which kept breaking down. After her last stop, when
the order to go ahead was given, one engine obeyed while the other
refused. This threw her head into the bank and her stern swung down
stream. While in this position the Essex came in sight below.
Powerless to move, resistance was useless; and her commander,
Lieutenant Stevens, set her on fire as soon as the Essex opened, the
crew escaping unhurt to the shore. Shortly afterward she blew up.
Though destroyed by her own officers the act was due to the presence
of the vessel that had gallantly attacked her under the guns of
Vicksburg, and lain in wait for her ever since. Thus perished the most
formidable Confederate ironclad that had yet been equipped on the
Mississippi.

By the withdrawal of the upper and lower squadrons, with the troops
under General Williams, the Missis