On the 8th the _Saint Mary's_, a fine seagoing steamer and one of the fastest boats in the department, was carrying Lieutenant Emerson, Acting-Assistant Adjutant-General, with important despatches from headquarters to Emory and to the Chief Quartermaster, when, about three o'clock in the morning, she drew the fire of all the Confederate guns. The _Princess Royal_ and the _Kineo_ convoyed her past the upper battery, but from this point she had to trust to her speed and her low freeboard. In rounding Fifty-five Mile Point she was struck five times, one conical shell and one shrapnel penetrating her side above the water-line and bursting inboard.
At half-past six on the morning of the 9th of July, Farragut, who had left Port Hudson on the _Monongahela_ on the evening of the 7th, started from Donaldsonville with the _Essex, Kineo_, and _Tennessee_ in company, ran the gauntlet of the batteries, swept and silenced them with his broadsides, and endured for nearly two hours a brisk musketry fire from the enemy without serious loss suffered or inflicted. At half-past one o'clock on the morning of the 10th of July, the gunboat _New London_, bearing Captain Walker, Assistant Adjutant-General, with a despatch announcing the surrender of Port Hudson, came under the fire of Faries's battery, opposite Whitehall. She was very soon disabled by a shot through her boilers, and was run ashore near the left bank, where the _Tennessee_ and the _Essex_ came to her assistance from below. Landing on the east bank, Captain Walker made his way afoot down the river along the levee until he came in sight of the _Monongahela_, when, at six o'clock in the morning, his signals being perceived, he was taken aboard in one of the ship's boats and communicated to the admiral the good news that the campaign was at an end. To dispose of Taylor could be but a matter of a few days; then once more, in the words of Lincoln, would the great river flow "unvexed to the sea."
Taylor's plans were well laid, and had been brilliantly executed. In no other way, with the force at his disposal, could he have performed a greater service for his cause. Save the severe yet not material check at Donaldsonville, he had had everything his own way: he had overrun La Fourche; his guns commanded the river; his outposts were within twenty miles of the city; he even talked of capturing New Orleans, but this, in the teeth of an alert and powerful fleet, was at best but a midsummer fancy.