Fort St. Philip protected New Orleans from attack via the Mississippi River.
source: The Pictorial Field Book of the War of 1812
Fort St. Philip during the Battle of New Orleans
By 9am on January 8, 1815, the Battle of New Orleans was all but over. With Lt. General Pakenham and Maj. General Gibbs dead, Maj. General Lambert determines that the army cannot successfully regroup, so he orders a withdrawal from the battlefield in Chalmette. History marks this as the end of the War of 1812. There was one more incident connected to the battle that happened the next day, 9-January. Royal Navy vessels had been detached from Lake Borgne after the capture of American gunboats there on 14-December-1814.
On 30-December-1814, six smaller vessels were ordered detached from the main Lake Borgne force. They sailed back into the Gulf, then entered the Mississippi. These were: Herald, 18, sloop of war, Thistle, 12, brig of war, Pigmy, 10, schooner, and two bomb vessels, Aetna and Volcano. HMS Herald, 38, a frigate, was to lead the force up the river, but was too large to enter the pass. So, the smaller vessels proceeded.
Diversion
The plan was for the force to create a diversion from the main attack in Chalmette. The bomb vessels would fire exploding shells at/over Fort St. Phillip. Once past the fort, they could continue up the river to Chalmette and support Pakenham. The attack unraveled, as Herald ran aground on 5-January, It took the force from 7-January to 9-January to reach the fort. Even though the main army withdrew on 8-January, the flotilla continued. The vessels laid seige to the fort from 9-January to 18-January, with the bomb vessels firing over fifty shells a day. The other vessels were unable to engage the fort directly. The fort had furnaces to heat shot, forcing all of the British vessels to maintain distance. While the mortars did some damage to the fort, it wasn’t enough to subdue its defenses. The British attempted landings for ground attacks, but these were also unsuccessful. The British ceased fire on the fort on the evening of 18-January and left the Mississippi River on 22-January. The flotilla re-joined Vice Admiral Cochrane and his flagship, HMS Tonnant, 80, and pulled back to Mobile Bay.
The British inability to penetrate the Mississippi River made the diversion a failure. In 1862, Flag Officer Farragut of the Union Navy learned from this. His squadron of small ships and bomb vessels were small enough to clear Forts Jackson and St. Phillip, enable the capture of the city.
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