Then, in January, 1863, a naval force was sent to help the army capture Arkansas Post, fifty miles up the Arkansas River. The _De Kalb_ (former _St. Louis_), the _Louisville_, and the _Cincinnati_, and all the tin-clads were in the expedition, and on January 9th and 10th they shot the forts to pieces, and disabled all the guns, seventeen in number, including two nine-inch Dahlgrens that had come all the way from the Norfolk Navy Yard. The white flag was raised before the army could make an assault. General Grant arrived opposite Vicksburg on January 30, 1863, and the plan of attacking Vicksburg by turning the river line on the south was adopted, and that succeeded some months later. Meantime Porter, to control the river between Vicksburg and Port Hudson, sent Col. Charles R. Ellet, with his ram, _Queen of the West_, down past the Vicksburg batteries. Owing to trouble with her steering gear, she did not get off till daylight on February 2d; but the Ellets were the most recklessly brave family known to the Mississippi. The colonel started in the face of fire, rammed and set fire to a Confederate steamer at the Vicksburg wharf, and passed on without losing a man. A small ferryboat, called the _De Soto_, was added to Ellet’s command when below Vicksburg, and then Porter sent down the _Indianola_, one of the newest armored boats. That seemed to give the Union forces full sway as far as Port Hudson; but within a week Ellet attacked a fort near Gordon’s Landing, on the Red River, got his ship aground, and had to abandon her. He retreated in the _De Soto_ until a prize they had captured was reached, when the _De Soto_ was burned, and in the prize (a steamer called the _Era_) they reached the _Indianola_. But the Confederates were still after them, using the abandoned _Queen of the West_ and one of the original Confederate rams, called the _Webb_, with a couple of ordinary river steamers, the whole fleet being protected with cotton. The _Indianola_ tried to escape up the river, but the rams being swifter, chose their own time, and rammed her to death on the night of the 24th. The Confederates once more held the river.