At Brashear City the expedition had to remain some three weeks, until suitable steamers could be furnished from boats in use by the army, then advancing up the Teche. Two small tug boats and two barges were finally provided, with all the equipment and rations supposed to be sufficient for the time it would occupy, calculated by Lieutenant Swift to be ten days. A start was made about May 20th. No surgeon was detailed or medicines provided, although an attempt was made to obtain both in Brashear City. The post hospital officers refused to do anything in the absence of direct orders to do so, although White had a personal request from General Banks to get a couple of panniers, with a full set of surgical instruments and medicines. The bags were obtained, but no instruments and but few medicines. Lieutenant Swift had with him a detail of thirty men, Twelfth Maine Infantry, all practical river lumber drivers. He did not conceal his opinion, that the negro troops were of no use to him in this scheme, and that the men from the Twelfth Maine would make short work of the obstacle.
On arrival at Bayou Sorrel, where they were attacked the first night by guerillas, they went to work with a will for some days, sending the logs right and left floating down towards Lake Chilot, where they again collected together to form a formidable obstacle in their rear, and before they were aware of it they were caught between the obstructions; they could not go ahead or go back. The weather was extremely hot, with mosquitos and flies terribly annoying, and before many days Lieutenant Swift was obliged to call upon Lieutenant White to assist him with the negro troops.
The expedition lay in this bayou between three to four weeks, the water falling steadily until there were places in their rear fordable over sand bars. The men sickened rapidly, measles appeared, and all of the Maine detachment, except five or six men, were on the sick list unfit for duty. Fortunately none died. About sixty-five of the negro detachment were also sick and unfit for duty; seven of them died. Provisions ran short. The few inhabitants in the vicinity gave information that the Confederates were operating around their rear to cut them off, not expecting they could get through in front and must eventually abandon the boats to try and work back by land towards Brashear.
In this emergency Swift appealed to White for a trustworthy man to go to Brashear City for provisions, and arms for the negro companies. Acting Lieutenant McCown was selected, who, with two negroes, managed by travelling at night to work their way back to Brashear, where they obtained provisions, also forty muskets, without bayonets or ammunition, and brought them up upon a small steamer.
Work was pushed day and night by all of the available hands to break through the obstacle in front, as it had become impossible to work back. This was at last accomplished, and with a clear passage beyond this obstacle the steamers were rushed through to the Mississippi, reaching that river late in the afternoon of June 19th, and the men were landed on the east bank, opposite Plaquemine.
One boat struck a snag while entering the Mississippi and sank in water almost up to her deck cabin; all hands, except the captain with a few of the crew, were taken on board other boats. Next morning Confederate soldiers appeared on the river bank and captured those who remained upon the wreck. It was afterwards ascertained that a force of about two thousand cavalry reached a point on the Bayou Plaquemine very soon after the expedition had passed, to find they were too late, when they pushed for Plaquemine Town, capturing the small force stationed there, burning the hospital building, and committing other acts of vandalism.
At the season of the year it was undertaken this expedition was a farce. Had an intelligent officer first made proper inquiries to ascertain the true state of that line of water course, when it was navigable and when not, the probabilities are that the expedition would not have started.
Lieutenant White, Acting Lieutenants Smith and Lovejoy proceeded immediately to the regimental hospital at Bayou Gentilly, sick with fever, and for a time it was doubtful whether they would recover. The two companies went to Port Hudson to rejoin their regiment.
The First Louisiana Engineers received orders to proceed to Baton Rouge May 20th, with General Neal Dow’s brigade. The brigade passed up river May 21st; on the twenty-second the engineer regiment had its first dress parade, with music furnished by the Forty-Seventh Massachusetts regimental band, that regiment having arrived at the Parapet a few days before. Without arms, clothed in straw hats and uncouth clothing (regulation uniforms had not been issued), this regiment made an appearance that agreeably disappointed the military spectator.
On Sunday, May 24th, camp was struck, transports taken, and the First Louisiana passed up the river for Port Hudson, where it did some hard work, received well-merited praise for duty actually performed, and praise for what it did not do. At Port Hudson this regiment did about all of the engineer hard labor of the army, divided into detachments to cover the whole Federal front (about five miles), to throw up temporary fortifications, dig approaches and mines. On the extreme left a work for twenty-one guns was made by these colored troops. In the first assault this regiment carried fascines to fill the ditch, and to their credit it must be said they ran forward, threw them in helter-skelter, expecting to receive the enemy’s fire every moment. The enemy did not fire on them (that was reserved for the assaulting columns of white troops), and they got back without loss. During this siege the regiment was as much under fire every day as any white regiment, suffered a loss of about seventy men, and displayed good pluck for untrained men.