Porter sounds to me like a "loose canon" on the Powhattan.
DiogenesLamp: "It also doesn't make any sense how you can use your "entire force" if your plan is to stay safely out of range of the guns.
Perhaps you can explain what "force" would be employed in such a situation? "
I wouldn't read anything into the term "entire force" beyond the orders saying none of those ships were excused from duty if he needed them.
DiogenesLamp: "And how much attacking would that have required?
If you have read about the Confederate preparations you would know that those small boats would have been massacred.
They had floating bonfires in the channels, and mortars sighted in to rain shrapnel down on anything in the channel."
Impossible to say today what they did or didn't really have.
But the Doubleday/Fox/Lincoln plan was small boats under cover of darkness and maybe even fog, which should have reduced the threat from Confederate shore batteries by 90% or more.
What about "floating batteries"?
If they were close enough to Fort Sumter, they could be sunk by the fort's guns.
If they were far enough away to avoid Sumter's guns then they could be sunk by guns from the Union ships.
Or maybe simply harassed enough to let the resupply boats slip through unnoticed...
Point is, it was indeed a realistic plan but did require Major Anderson to hold out a few days longer, until conditions were favorable, and of course, that didn't happen.
He sounds like a man in the supreme confidence that he had Presidential carte blanche for starting a war with the South. As he never revealed his secret orders, we can only surmise that they would either embarrass the government or outrage the populace. Probably both.
It is just a stroke of luck that Porter was stopped by Meigs, or he would have started the war in Pensacola by attacking the Confederates without provocation.
I wouldn't read anything into the term "entire force" beyond the orders saying none of those ships were excused from duty if he needed them.
What are gunships supposed to do when sent on a mission?