On 3 January 1863 she headed downstream again and the next day, with ten other Union gunboats, got underway up the White River in Arkansas, with Union army troops under Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, to capture Fort Hindman. On 11 January, Rear Adm. David Dixon Porter ordered "New Era" to take on board, from "Baron de Kalb" and , men wounded during the expedition for transportation to a hospital ship at the mouth of the White River; then to proceed to Island No. 10 to relieve .