USS Vicksburg

USS Vicksburg was a wooden steamship built in 1863 at Mystic, Connecticut; purchased by the United States Navy at New York City on 20 October 1863; converted into a gunboat; and commissioned at the New York Navy Yard on 2 December, Lieutenant Commander L. Braine in command. Vicksburg was named in honor of the great victory that General Ulysses S. Grant had recently won at Vicksburg, Mississippi. Service history On 7 December, a group of 17 Confederate sympathizers masquerading as passengers seized the steamer Chesapeake off Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The panic caused by that daring Confederate exploit prompted the Navy to order Vicksburg on 21 December to take up station off Sandy Hook, N.J., and detain for inspection all commercial ships outbound from New York. She performed similar duty off Staten Island, N.Y., through January 1864 until she was finally relieved on 8 February and ordered to sail for Hampton Roads, Va., for duty with the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron. Vicksburg put into Hampton Roads two days later and was deployed with the blockade off Wilmington, North Carolina, on 18 February. In the spring, while on temporary duty off the coast of South Carolina, the gunboat seized the blockade-running British schooner Indian east of Charleston on 30 April. Returning to North Carolina, Vicksburg towed the stricken mortar schooner Oliver H. Lee to Beaufort, N.C., on 17 May and 18 May and chased a blockade runner on 31 May, recovering 79 bales of cotton thrown overboard by the vessel's crew. The gunboat put into Hampton Roads for repairs in June. On 11 July, Vicksburg received orders north to Annapolis, Maryland, to help protect Union emplacements there from Confederate raiders. She arrived off Annapolis in the Severn River on 13 July. Lt. Comdr. Braine found that the town was apprehensive over the proximity of Confederate forces and was mainly defended by 300 patients from the local hospital. Together with the gunboat , Lt. Comdr. Braine organized the town defenses and predicted that he would "give the rebels a warm reception." That day, he also sent a boat party up the South River under the command of Acting Ensign Francis G. Osborn. The two-day expedition destroyed all means of crossing the South River and thereby protected the rear of the Union forces at Annapolis.