LOCATION OF USS EASTPORT AND EDWARD F. DIX

The following contains the documented location of perhaps the largest ironclad gunboat, the USS Eastport, ever to cruise the muddy waters of the Mississippi and Red Rivers during the Civil War. The site was identified from U. S. Army Corps of Engineers' (CoE) documents, noted below, which describe excavations of the wreckage, for scientific purposes, during 1995. The wreck is buried under the east bank of Red River at GPS coordinates: lat. N 31 d, 38 m, 38.0 s; long. W 92d, 54m, 16.7 s, based on Google Earth’s aerial photo of the shipwreck site. Incredibly, a second ship, the Civil War troop transport Ed. F. Dix, was found by the CoE to lie on top of the submerged Eastport. Magnetometer readings from ground and helicopter surveys were used by CoE to find the shipwreck.

The USS Eastport was a 280-foot ironclad gunboat of the Mississippi Squadron. It was scuttled and sunk by USN Rear Admiral David D. Porter and Com. S. L. Phelps to avoid capture by Confederate land forces on April 26, 1864 after the Eastport had earlier hit a "torpedo" submerged in Red River during Major General N. P. Banks’ Federal retreat near the end of his infamous Red River Campaign. Just after the war, the Federal troop-transport steamboat Ed. F. Dix was on its way up Red River to Shreveport with Federal cavalry onboard, who were preparing to march into Texas. On June 23, 1865, the Ed. F. Dix struck the submerged Eastport and sank on top of it. The Eastport’s forward starboard iron casemate was peeled back and pierced the Dix as it tried to pass over the sunken Eastport.

Today the Eastport and Ed. F. Dix remain submerged and well covered. Both ships lie buried 40-50 feet below ground underneath the eastern levee of Red River about 1.86 miles south (S26W) of Montgomery, LA. The stern of the Eastport lies about 10-feet into (and under) the bottom of the existing eastern riverbed. The 280-foot boat then extends under the eastern levee (built in 1980) east-northeast 270 feet at depths exceeding 40 feet. Previous CoE excavations reveal that some of the iron plating and steam machinery (but no guns) are still there. The wooden Dix lies above and across the Eastport about a third of way back from the (eastern) bow of the Eastport.

While the two shipwrecks are located in the eastern bank of Red River in Natchitoches County, Louisiana, the wrecks apparently are on private property such that local trespass laws would apply.

REFERENCES

“Historical Assessment and Magnetometer and Terrestrial Surveys of the Ironclad Gunboat USS Eastport and Steamboat Ed. F. Dix.” Thomas C. Birchett and Charles E. Pearson. Report to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Vicksburg District. Coastal Environments, Inc., Baton Rouge, 1995.

“The History and Archaeology of Two Civil War Steamboats: The Ironclad Gunboat USS Eastport and the Steamer Ed F. Dix.” Pearson, Charles E. and Birchett, Thomas C. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Coastal Environments, Incorporated, 2001.