| The secession of Virginia from the Union on 17 April 1861 extended
Confederate territory to the southern bank of the Potomac, greatly imperiling
the capital of the United States and prompting immediate action to strengthen
Washington's almost nonexistent defenses with Northern troops. Two days later,
supporters of the South clashed with soldiers of the 6th Massachusetts as
that regiment was passing through Baltimore en route to Washington. This
prompted Baltimore officials to order the destruction of railroad bridges
north of their city. This action severed all direct rail connection between
Washington and the large cities of the North, which were sending troops to
its defense. To reopen the flow of the capital, the Army commandeered a number
of steamships in Northern ports for service as transports. Alabama
-- which would become the first ship to serve the United States Navy under
the name of that state -- was one of these steamers. |
| Laid down in 1849 by William Henry Webb in his shipyard on New
York City's East River, Alabama was launched sometime in 1850, probably
on either 19 January or 10 June. In any case, the steamer was delivered to
the New York and Savannah Steam Navigation Co. in January 1851. Before the
month was out, she sailed for Savannah on her first run for her owner. |
| The urgent need to strengthen the defenses of Washington ended
more than a decade of commercial service along the Atlantic coast for
Alabama. Taken over by the Army shortly after the Baltimore riots,
the steamer embarked troops at New York and got underway for the Virginia
capes in company with two other transports. Escorted by the Navy's just
recommissioned brig Perry, the little convoy rounded Cape Charles
and proceeded up Chesapeake Bay to the mouth of the Severn River. Upon its
arrival at Annapolis on 25 April, the Union soldiers disembarked and boarded
trains, which, bypassing Baltimore, took them to Washington. |
| However, paperwork seems to have been slow in catching up with
the actions taken by the Federal Government during the opening weeks of the
Civil War, and the earliest charter for its use of Alabama is not
dated until 10 May 1862. Meanwhile, into the summer of 1861, the steamer
had continued to carry troops, munitions, and supplies to Annapolis and to
Fort Monroe, the Union's only remaining hold on the shores of Virginia's
strategic waters in the Virginia capes-Hampton Roads area. |
| The Union Navy purchased Alabama at New York on 1 August
1861 from the firm of S. L. Mitchell and Son and, after fitting the ship
out for naval service, commissioned her at the navy yard there on 30 September
1861, Comdr. Edmund Lanier in command. |
| The ship was assigned to Flag Officer Samuel F. Du Pont's newly
established South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, which was charged with guarding
the Confederate coast from the border between North and South Carolina to
the tip of the Florida Peninsula. Du Pont's orders also called for him to
capture some harbor within his sector as a base and a port of convenience
for Union ships moving to and from the Gulf of Mexico. |
| While taking hold of the administrative reins of his new command,
the flag officer assembled a group of warships at New York City for a joint
Army-Navy expedition against Port Royal, South Carolina, which he had selected
as the site of the new base. On 16 October, Alabama got underway in
this task force and headed for the Virginia capes. Two days later, the Union
men-of-war anchored in Hampton Roads, the staging point for the impending
attack. |
| However, on the 25th, before the expedition could sortie for
the South Carolina coast, word reached Du Pont that Susquehanna had
suffered engine trouble which seriously impaired her efficiency. Responding
to this crisis, the flag officer ordered Alabama to waters off Charleston
to plug this new hole in the blockade of that strategically and symbolically
important port. Thus, Alabama lost her role in the conquest of Port
Royal. |
| When Alabama arrived on station outside Charleston bar
on the 27th, she began performing more than her normal share of steaming
since Flag, her companion there, was crippled by boiler trouble. On the morning
of 5 November, she chased, boarded and took possession of La Corbeta
Providencia of Majorca, which, four days earlier had been stopped by
Monticello. While that Spanish bark's papers were on board that Union
screw gunboat for examination, a storm arose and separated the two vessels.
Thus, Providencia could show no papers to Comdr. Lanier, so he sent
her to Hampton Roads as a prize. After the true facts were determined, the
bark was turned over to the Spanish consul at New York for return to her
owner. |
| On 12 December, while proceeding from the recently acquired Union
base at Port Royal to St. Simon's Sound, Georgia, Alabama sighted
a large vessel some 12 to 14 miles south of Tybee Island. After a brief chase,
she brought the stranger to and, on boarding, identified her as
Admiral, a sailing ship which had left Liverpool two months before,
bound for St. John, New Brunswick. However, the boarding party found among
the ship's documents, a contract agreeing to deliver her cargo of salt, coal
and general merchandise to Savannah. Since this evidence destroyed the
credibility of her clearance papers, Lanier sent Admiral to Philadelphia
where she was condemned by the prize court. |
| During the remainder of the autumn and the ensuing winter, besides
serving on blockade duty, Alabama performed widely varied duties for
her squadron such as carrying dispatches and supplies to fellow warships
in the area, searching for the missing schooner Peri, and towing
granite-laden ships of the stone fleet to Charleston from Savannah where
their use as obstructions to stop blockade runners had been obviated by hulks
which the Southerners themselves had sunk in the channel leading to that
port to bar the entry of Northern warships. |
| In late February and early March 1862, she was part of the task
force, which occupied Fernandia and Amelia Island, giving the Union virtual
control of Florida's entire Atlantic coast. At the conclusion of this operation,
Du Pont, on 6 March, ordered Alabama to carry his chief of staff,
Capt. Charles Henry Davis -- who had been earmarked to head a squadron and
soon would be given command of the Western Flotilla -- north to deliver to
the President a report of the Union's bloodless victory. |
| Since the Confederates had erected batteries along the Virginia
bank of the Potomac making navigation of that river extremely dangerous for
Union ships, the flag officer sent her to Baltimore rather than directly
to Washington. His eagerness to have the good news reach the Union capital
prompted Du Pont to have Alabama skip the customary stop at Hampton
Roads. |
| This decision deprived the steamer of a front row seat at --
and conceivably a role in -- the most historic single naval action of the
Civil War. On 9 March, as she passed between the Virginia capes and started
up Chesapeake Bay, all on board could hear the guns of Monitor and
Merrimac -- the latter reborn as CSS Virginia -- as they fought
the first duel between ironclad warships. Davis later recalled the skirmish,
upon his asking the master of a passing river steamer the meaning of the
sound, he had been told"... that it was target practice ... with the great
guns on the Rip-Raps." |
| The ship reached Baltimore the next day, and Davis went on by
train to Washington where he delivered Du Pont's report and visited the White
House to give Lincoln a detailed personal account of the Florida operations.
Meanwhile, Alabama began nine days in port undergoing replenishment
and repairs. She stood down Chesapeake Bay on 19 March and, four days later,
arrived off Port Royal and resumed duty with her squadron. |
| Early in April, she took station in St. Simon's Bay, Georgia,
and found on St. Simon's Island a recently established and growing colony
of blacks that had escaped from their masters. The 26 men, 6 women and 9
children in the group were "busy" planting potatoes, corn, etc. . ." but
were short on food so Lanier visited a plantation on Jekyll Island and obtained
a large supply of sweet potatoes to feed the former slaves until their labors
bore fruit. By the time Alabama left St. Simons on the 18th, the size
of the community of "contrabands" on St. Simons had increased to 89. Thus,
the rapid growth of this colony of former slaves illustrated the erosive
effect of the war on the South's "peculiar institution" throughout the
Confederacy and especially in areas controlled, or close to, Union
forces. |
| Florida arrived in St. Simon's Bay on 18 April relieving
Alabama who got underway the next morning. She joined the blockading
forces off Charleston on the 20th. While on duty there on the night of 7
May, she sighted, chased, and fired at an incoming schooner which escaped
in the darkness. At dawn, she sighted the elusive vessel aground off Light-House
Inlet. She promptly stood in toward the stranded ship as far as the depth
of water allowed and fired two rounds at the blockade-runner. Both fell short.
Later that morning, local people joined the schooner's crew in a race to
unload this stranger's cargo before she bilged. |
| An even better day for Alabama began about three hours
before dawn on 20 June when she assisted Keystone State in capturing
Sarah as that British schooner was attempting to escape from Charleston
harbor to carry 156 bales of cotton to Nassau. Alabama scored again
at daybreak, when she caught Catalina after that Charleston schooner
had slipped out of her homeport laden with more cotton. Lanier sent that
prize to Philadelphia where she was condemned by the admiralty court. |
| A frustrating action for Alabama began about 90 minutes
after midnight on the morning of 26 July when her sister blockader
Crusader sighted, fired upon, and chased a steamer which was attempting
to sneak into Charleston. The Union vessel's shells forced the blockade runner
back out to sea, but Crusaders limited speed -- slowed even more by
ailing engines -- made her no match for the fleet stranger. Alabama
joined in the pursuit and followed in the stranger's wake for about 25 miles
before her quarry disappeared over the horizon. |
| Four days later, Crusader's engines broke down completely,
necessitating Alabama's towing her to Port Royal. That mission came
at a fortuitous time since Comdr. Lanier had become sick several weeks before
and his condition had steadily worsened. His illness prompted Du Pont to
order Lt. Comdr. James H. Gillis to relieve Lanier in command of
Alabama, freeing the stricken officer to return north to recuperate.
However, the assignment was brief for Gillis for, on 12 August, Lt. Comdr.
William T. Truxtun took command of the ship. |
| During ensuing weeks, Alabama operated primarily in the
shallow waters of the bays and rivers along the coast of Georgia. The highlight
of her duty during this period was her capture of the English schooner
Nellie, from Nassau, purporting to be bound for Baltimore. Truxtun
sent the prize to Philadelphia for adjudication. |
| However, her first year of service in the Navy had taken a heavy
toll on Alabama, and she needed repairs, which could not be made at
Port Royal. On 26 September, to return her to fighting trim, Du Pont ordered
her to Philadelphia. On the voyage north, she carried "... William H. Cladding,
a pilot, taken in a schooner attempting to pass the blockade at Sapelo, and
reported him as too dangerous a man to be allowed to be adrift." The ship
sailed on the 29th, reached Philadelphia on 3 October, but headed further
north three days later, and arrived at Boston on the 9th and was decommissioned
there on the 15th. |
| The steamer underwent repairs in the navy yard there for about
six weeks. The exact date of her recommissioning is unknown since no logs
for her between 15 October 1862 and 17 May 1864 seem to have survived. In
any case, from other records, we know that Alabama -- then commanded
by Comdr. Edward T. Nichols -- departed Boston on New Year's Day 1863, bound
for the Virgin Islands to stop, or at least to gather information about,
the Confederate privateer Retribution. She reached St. Thomas on the
9th where Nichols found "... much excitement among the masters of American
vessels in the harbor in consequence of the appearance off the port of a
Confederate privateer schooner, and the chasing by her of two American vessels
back into the harbor ... " The next morning, Alabama got underway and cruised
in the waters between St. Thomas and Puerto Rico vainly seeking the Southern
raider. This cruise typified most of her subsequent operations during ensuing
months in the special squadron which was established to counter the commerce
destroying action of Confederate raiders and privateers. Her efforts to protect
Union shipping -- which were primarily devoted to catching the Southern cruisers
Alabama and Florida -- were ended in the summer by an outbreak
of yellow fever on board. On 27 July, she was ordered to Boston in the hope
that cooler weather would help to restore her crew to good health. She departed
Cape Haitien, Haiti, later that day; but the growing list of deaths which
occurred after she got underway and the deteriorating condition of her chief
engineer and one other member of her crew forced her to put into New York
where she was apparently decommissioned before transferring her entire crew
to the receiving ship Magnolia. She was then towed to Portsmouth,
New Hampshire, and placed in quarantine. |
| Recommissioned on 17 May 1864, Acting Vol. Lt. Frank Smith in
command, she stood down the Piscataqua River and headed out to sea on the
30th. After stopping at New York for 10 days, she resumed her voyage south,
joined the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron at Newport News, Virginia,
on 11 June and served in its waters through the end of the war. Highlights
of her remaining year in naval service were her participation in the capture
of Annie off New Inlet, North Carolina, as that British steamer attempted
to slip out of Wilmington with a cargo of cotton, tobacco, and turpentine;
and her shelling of Fort Fisher during the two attacks on that Confederate
stronghold which protected Wilmington, in late-December 1864 and in mid January
1865. |
| On 26 March of the latter year, she ascended the James River
to City Point, Virginia., and remained there during the final days of Grant's
drive on Richmond. After the fall of Richmond and Lee's surrender, she headed
downstream on 10 April and remained in the Newport News-Hampton Roads area
during the first 10 days of uncertainty, fear and anger following Lincoln's
assassination. |
| Alabama stood out to sea on the 24th and, two days later,
entered the New York Navy Yard for repairs. Somewhat refurbished, she headed
south again on 22 May and operated between Atlantic ports from Hampton Roads
to the Delaware River for almost two months. She was decommissioned at
Philadelphia on 14 July 1865, sold at auction there to Samuel C. Cook on
10 August 1865 and re-documented under her original name on 3 October 1865.
She operated along the Atlantic coast between New York and Florida under
a series of owners. In 1872, her engines were removed and on 12 September
of that year, she was reregistered as a schooner. The veteran ship was destroyed
by fire -- probably sometime in 1878 -- but the details of her destruction
are not known. |
Tonnage: 1,261; Length: 214'4"; Beam: 35'2"; Depth of hold: 22';
Draft: 14'6"; Speed: 13 knots; Complement: 175; Armament: (8) 32-pdr. smooth
bore |
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