Battle of Sabine Pass

From Dixiepedia: The PC-Free Encyclopedia

In September 1863, Union forces sailed toward the Sabine River. The Union XIX Corps embarked 4,000 troops and the US Navy sent a flotilla of four gunboats: the USS Arizona, the USS Sachem, the USS Clifton and the USS Granite City. On September 8th, the flotilla passed the bar into the Sabine River. Lt. Richard W. Dowling and 43 enlisted men with six guns (two twenty-four pounders and four thirty-two pounders) engaged the Union fleet.

Accurate artillery fire ruptured the boiler of the Sachem, putting her out of action, and cut the tillage cables of the Clifton, causing her to run aground. Later a round hit the boiler of the Clifton. The tiny Confederate force sank two Union gunboats, killed and wounded 50 of the enemy and took 150 captives, in a battle Jefferson Davis called "the Confederate Thermopylae."