Charles R. Ellet commanded the Lancaster during action on the Yazoo River near Liverpool, Mississippi, to capture or destroy three Confederate gunboats. The Confederates burned their ships; the CSS General Van Dorn, CSS General Polk and CSS Livingston, when they saw the Union forces approaching. On July 15, Queen of the West, , and engaged the Confederate ironclad ram on the Yazoo River. The Arkansas was heavily damaged but escaped into the Mississippi River and took refuge under the Confederate batteries at Vicksburg, Mississippi. On July 22, Queen of the West and attacked Arkansas, despite the batteries at Vicksburg. During the engagement, the Queen of the West rammed Arkansas but inflicted only minor damage and rejoined the Mississippi River Squadron ships above Vicksburg. In August, the USS Benton along with Ellet's rams Monarch and Lancaster, captured the CSS Fairplay at Milliken's Bend on the Mississippi River. When captured, the steamer was carrying five thousand muskets and ammunition headed for the Army of the Trans-Mississippi. Ellet and the Queen of the West continued to support operations against Vicksburg. On September 19, while escorting two transport barges, the Queen of the West had a short engagement with Confederate infantry and artillery on the Mississippi River above Bolivar, Mississippi. Ellet and the Queen of the West also conducted operations in the Yazoo River clearing mines and engaging Confederate batteries. In November 1862, the Mississippi Marine Brigade, an amphibious raiding unit, was organized by Alfred W. Ellet. The ram fleet was incorporated as a part of the brigade. On November 5, Charles was promoted to the rank of colonel and became the third member of the Ellet family to lead the ram fleet. Ellet was only 19 years old which made him one of the youngest colonels in the Union Army. In December 1862, Ellet was assigned the task to arm the USS Lioness with a torpedo raft, known as a devil, and use it to destroy armed rafts on the Yazoo River directly in front of the batteries at Drumgold's Bluff. While the mission planned for December 31 was scrapped due to heavy fog, Admiral David Dixon Porter praised Ellet in a report to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. Porter wrote, "Colonel Ellet took it upon himself the perilous duty of running up in the Lioness, in face of the batteries, to clear out the torpedoes or break the wires, and to