My favorite comment about this particular event was the Confederate soldier who says that the Yankee fleet was shelling the Choctaw swamp the whole time, to such an extent that he figured they were trying to put an iron bottom on the whole area so that the Yankee soldiers could walk across without having to bridge it. Think it was Theophilus Noel who said that, but it's been so long since I read it that I can't say for sure.