According to Official Reports in the Naval OR's The Ponchartrain loaded from Fort Bankhead with 32pd ammunitions which they did not carry a gun for. Then when Union Commodore Elliot arrived at Fort Randolph two Confederae Gunboats had just departed there an hour earlier.

The problem with Military Records like the OR's is that they were written for the Military leaders of the times, which knew what was going on anyway. So they are brief and do not contain all the necessary information that we would need to piece together a complete story.