| The second Massachusetts, an iron screw steamer built at
Boston in 1860, was purchased by the Navy 3 May 1861 from the Boston &
Southern Steamship Co., and commissioned 4 May 1861 at Boston, Commander
Melancton Smith in command. |
| Assigned to the Gulf Blockading Squadron, Massachusetts
steamed south 10 May 1861 to anchor off Key West, departing there 8 June
for Pensacola. The next day she took her first prize, British ship
Perthshire, near Pensacola. She captured Achilles 17 June and
2 days later took Naham Stetson off Pass a l'Outre, Louisiana, and
on the 23rd captured Mexican schooner Brilliant and the Confederate
blockade - running schooners Trois Freres, Olive Branch,
Fanny and Basile in the Gulf of Mexico. While
Massachusetts was absent, the South had fortified Ship Island, and
the batteries fired on her when she returned from Pensacola. She engaged
the Confederate guns until she ran out of ammunition. On 13 July she seized
schooner Hiland near Ship Island, and next day engaged steamers
Arrow and
Oregon off
Chandeleur Island (in the vicinity of Ship Island Light) where they vainly
attempted to lure Massachusetts within range of shore batteries --
Massachusetts finally forced Arrow and Oregon to
withdraw. Massachusetts captured blockade - running sloop Charles
Henry near Ship Island 7 August and gained information on Fort Pike,
which guarded the entrance to Lake Pontchartrain for the South. |
| After repairs in early September, Massachusetts fortified
Chandeleur Island and set up a light there 13 September. A landing party
from the ship took possession of Ship Island 17 September, thereby providing
the Union Navy with a valuable shelter during storms and the base from which
Farragut would launch his attack on New Orleans. Returning to Ship Island
20 September, Massachusetts attacked, causing the South to burn the
barracks and desert Ship Island passage. |
| Massachusetts operated near strategically important Ship
Island through the remainder of the year. She thwarted Confederate efforts
to transport freight through the passage 2 December, captured a small fishing
boat 12 December, and turned back Oregon, Pamlico, Gray
Cloud, and
Florida at
Mississippi Sound 19 December, however, Florida tried out her gun
on USS Massachusetts and the havoc caused by one well-placed shot
from her rifled pivot gun is described by Commander Smith: "It entered the
starboard side abaft the engine five feet above the water line, cutting entirely
through 18 planks of the main deck, carried away the table, sofas, eight
sections of iron steam pipe, and exploded in the stateroom on the port side,
stripping the bulkheads of four rooms, and setting fire to the vessel
._._. 12 pieces of
the fragments have been collected and weigh 58 pounds." |
| The sortie by Florida caused consternation. Capt. L. M.
Powell, USN, in command at Ship Island -- soon to be main advance base for
the New Orleans campaign -- wrote to Flag Officer McKean, 22 October, "The
first of the reported gun steamers [Florida] made her experimental
trial trip on the Massachusetts, and, if she be a sample of the rest,
you may perhaps consider that Ship Island and the adjacent waters will require
a force of a special kind in order to hold them to our use
._._. the caliber and
long range of the rifled cannon from which the shell that exploded in the
Massachusetts was fired established the ability of these fast steam
gunboats to keep out of the range of all broadside guns, and enables them
to disregard the armament or magnitude of all ships thus armed, or indeed
any number of them, when sheltered by shoal water. |
| Early in 1862 Massachusetts steamed northward to decommission
at New York 28 February. Fitted out as a transport and supply ship, she
recommissioned 16 April and operated along the Atlantic coast until
decommissioning at New York 3 December. |
| Massachusetts recommissioned 10 March 1963 and but for
a brief period in ordinary late that summer served the South Atlantic Blockading
Squadron through the end of the war. She captured sloop Parsis in
Wassaw Sound 12 march and with Commodore Perry captured blockade runner
Caledonia 30 May 1864 south of Cape Fear after a 2-hour chase. In
August she aided steamers Gettysburg and Keystone State in
the capture of Confederate steamer Lilian. |
| On 19 March 1865 Massachusetts struck a torpedo (mine),
which failed to explode, in Charleston Harbor. She decommissioned 22 September
1865 at New York and was sold there at public auction 1 October 1867. Documented
11 February 1868 as Crescent City, she served American commerce until
1872. |
Tonnage, 1,515; Length, 210' 10"; Beam, 33'2"; Speed,
11 knots; Armament, one 22-pdr. 42 cwt. pivot, four 82 cwt. |
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