It was on March 12, 1863, that Porter’s command started up Red River. The advanced vessels of the fleet reached Alexandria on the 15th, and all the fleet was there on the 16th. It was an easy voyage so far, but above Alexandria were (and are) two rapids not to be passed during low water, and in the spring of 1863 the water was exceptionally low.
However, the Eastport, Mound City, Carondelet, Pittsburg, Louisville, Chillicothe, Ozark, Neosho, Lexington, and Hindman were dragged over with some thirty transports. These went up the river and rendered considerable aid to the army, but the real interest in the expedition lies in the backwoods scheme by which the whole squadron above the falls was saved from destruction.
Joseph Bailey.
From a photograph.
Instead of finding high water at the season when it was naturally expected, the river fell, and ten gunboats and two tugs were left helpless above the falls. Nevertheless, help came when Lieut.-col. Joseph Bailey, of the Fourth Wisconsin Volunteers, saw the situation. Bailey was a log-driver, and knew how to lift a jam over any kind of rifts or obstructions. Nearly everybody who heard of his plan, doubted and many jeered at the idea; “but Bailey had the faith that moves mountains.” Moreover, there were right at hand two regiments of men from Maine—nearly 2,000 men, of whom Jeremiah O’Brien, who captured the Margaretta, would have been proud.
The rifts were a mile long, and at a point below them the high banks were 758 feet apart. The water between the high banks was deep enough to float any gunboat, but not too deep for building a dam. Bailey said he would build a dam there that would flood the rifts to navigating depth, and he did it. The men from Maine swung their axes in the forest near by, and the teamsters hauled the cut trees, branches and all, and dumped them into the water. Here other Maine men piled the trees up with their butts down-stream, cross-tied with logs and their branches interlacing above. Similar dams can be seen in any of the logging regions of the United States in these days. This dam extended from the north bank, a little more than half-way across the stream. From the south bank, for lack of trees, a crib dam—cribs of logs filled with stone—was built. When the opening between the ends of these dams was small enough—when it was but 150 feet wide—it was filled with four coal barges that were loaded with brick and sunk there.
Red River Dam.
From “The Navy in the Civil War.”