Wednesday April 16, 1861

The Pickens Expedition Arrives

Delayed by heavy weather and by stops to help secure Union fortifications at Key West, Florida, the Atlantic, with Colonel Harvey Brown and Captain M. C. Meigs aboard, arrived off Fort Pickens the evening of April 16.

By 2 o'clock in the morning of April 17, Brown entered Pickens with his first reinforcements. Throughout the day, troops, supplies, and horses were transferred to the fort. After the arrival of the remaining ships of the expedition, Fort Pickens had a garrison of about eleven hundred soldiers and laborers, and six months of provisions.

Bibliography: OR, pp. 378, 394-96; Bearss, "Civil War Operations . . . Part II," pp. 239-42.