Webb and Dr. Beatty took their prize in tow, only to have her sink over a sandbar off Palmyra Island. Salvage parties worked furiously to patch the hull and raise Indianola. Slaves from Brierfield, the nearby plantation of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, were sent over to assist.

Once again, a significant portion of the Mississippi was still in Confederate hands. Two of Porter's finest vessels, Queen of the West and Indianola, were gone. Along with the December 1862 repulse of Union forces at Chickasaw Bluffs, Vicksburg had reason to rejoice. 'Piping and dancing have been the order of the night for every night this week,' reported Vicksburg Daily Whig publisher Marmaduke Shannon. 'Victory celebrations and relief from tension could be carried too far, by both citizens and soldiers,' the newsman warned.

Before Indianola's crew was jailed, the finger pointing began. Still unable to pass Port Hudson, Admiral Farragut blamed his own adoptive brother, Admiral Porter. 'Porter has allowed his boats to come down one at a time and they have been captured by the enemy, which compels me to go up and recapture the whole or be sunk in the attempt.' Porter blamed Ellet for grounding Queen 'under the guns of a battery which she had foolishly engaged. Had Ellet waited patiently he would have been joined in less than 24 hours by Indianola. I can give good orders, but I cannot give officers good judgement.' As for Indianola, Porter declared,'she had been indifferently fought. She gave up too soon. She would have gained victory if properly managed!'

Unconcerned with who was to blame, Gideon Welles thundered, 'The Indianola is too formidable to be left at large.' He demanded that a sufficient squadron be gathered to recapture the ironclad before she was salvaged. Porter, on the other hand, thought that he had too few vessels for a sufficient squadron. Two more Ellet rams, Lancaster and Switzerland, had been sunk or severely damaged by battery fire. None of his remaining vessels could match the speed and maneuverability of Queen or Webb. Not wanting further embarrassment, Porter came up with the idea of using a mock ironclad to frighten away Rebel salvagers.

Starting with an abandoned flatboat, Porter put his command to work constructing his ruse. Tapered logs were added to the sides of the flatboat to give it a hull-like appearance. Canvas and wooden planks were used in the center to form a casemate, pilothouse and paddle-wheel housings. Two unusable lifeboats were bolted to fake davits for further realism. Blackened logs served as the vessel's weaponry. Pork barrel smokestacks were added to either side of the pilothouse. For a dark, sinister appearance, the exterior was blackened with tar. As a final touch, two iron pots filled with tar and oakum were placed at the base of the smokestacks and ignited. Clouds of black smoke curled upward as the ersatz ironclad was set adrift in the Mississippi current. Dubbed Black Terror, she was built in 12 hours for a mere $8.63.

At 11 p.m., on February 25, Black Terror was towed into the Mississippi, cut loose and sent on her journey. After cruising past Vicksburg, the vessel struck the west bank of the Mississippi near Warrenton, but Union soldiers pushed her back into the current, and soon Black Terror was drifting at 5 knots. Confederate crewmen on Queen of the West saw Black Terror approaching and turned about and headed downriver to warn any vessels of the Union's latest threat. Coming upon the wrecked Indianola, Captain McCloskey of Queen warned the salvage party of the ironclad's approach. The frightened salvagers decided to scuttle Indianola to prevent her recapture. The guns were spiked or thrown overboard. What was left was set on fire, burning her down to the waterline. Colonel Wirt Adams, commander of a nearby cavalry regiment, remarked, 'With the exception of the wine and liquor stores of the Indianola, nothing was saved. The valuable armament, the large supplies of powder, shot and shell are all lost.' Black Terror, her mission completed, drifted on for two more miles, then struck a mudbank. She fired no shots and no crew members appeared on the deck. Curious about the lack of any crew activity, a Confederate party from ashore rowed toward the silent vessel. Upon closer inspection, they realized too late the duplicity.

The Southern press wasted no time in running down the botched Indianola salvage effort. 'Laugh and hold your sides lest you die of a surfeit of derision,' stated the Richmond Examiner, 'blown up because, forsooth, a flat boat or mud scow, with a small house taken from a back garden of a plantation put on top of it, is floated down the river, before the frightened eyes of the Partisan Rangers.'

Not only had Indianola been denied to the Confederate Navy, but Webb and Queen skeedaddled up the Red River, never again to emerge on the Mississippi as a threat. 'Gunboat panic seized the whole country,' reported the Examiner, 'and it became a serious question at the Navy Department whether liberty and the Southern Confederacy could exist in the presence of a cannon floating on a piece of wood in the water.' The Confederacy would have to rely on the garrisons of Vicksburg and Port Hudson to hold its shrinking portion of the Mississippi. Both key cities would fall the following summer to Union land troops supported by gunboats. Black Terror, however, had also played a small role in clearing the Mississippi of Rebel ships. Porter modestly summed up his piece of naval trickery as 'a cheap expedient which worked very well.' It was likely the most effective $8.63 spent by the Union's military forces during the entire war.

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This article was written by Donald L. Barnhart Jr. and originally appeared in America's Civil War magazine.

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