Decrease Font Size Increase Font Size
Login

Military Photos



USS Penguin (1861-1865)

(199 total words in this text)
(1252 Reads)  Printer-friendly page
USS Penguin, a 389-ton (burden) screw steam gunboat, was built at Mystic, Connecticut, in 1859 as a commercial steamship. She was purchased by the Navy in May 1861, during the early stages of the Civil War expansion of Federal forces. Placed in commission in June, she intially operated with the Potomac Flotilla and off North Carolina, where in early August she chased a blockade runner until it ran aground and was wrecked.

In October 1861, Penguin was sent south to participate in the combined Army-Navy operation that captured Port Royal, South Carolina. She captured a sailing blockade runner in late November and took part in the seizure of positions along the northern Florida and Georgia coast during March-May 1862.

In 1863 Penguin was reassigned to the West Gulf Blockading Squadron, where she was active along the Texas coast. While there, she was involved in the destruction of the blockade running steamers Matagorda in July 1864 and Granite City in January 1865. USS Penguin was sold in August 1865, some months after the end of the Civil War. Soon returning to commercial service as the steamer Florida, she was converted to a sailing schooner in 1884.

Military History
Forum Posts

Military Polls

Should the U.S. be paying other countries to do their part in the war on terrorism?

[ Results | Polls ]

Votes: 195

This Day in History
1738: English parliament declares war on Spain.

1800: The USS Essex becomes first U.S. Navy vessel to pass the Cape of Good Hope.

1814: The HMS Phoebe and Cherub capture the USS Essex off Valparaiso, Chile.

1854: Britain and France declare war on Russia.

1862: Union forces stop the Confederate invasion of New Mexico territory when they turn the Rebels back at Glorieta Pass.

1864: A group of Copperheads attack Federal soldiers in Charleston, Illinois. Five are killed and twenty wounded.

1917: The Womens Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) is founded, Great Britains first official service women.

1939: The Spanish Civil War ends as Madrid falls to Francisco Franco.

1941: Andrew Browne Cunningham, Admiral of the British Fleet, commands the British Royal Navys destruction of three major Italian battleships and two destroyers in the Battle of Cape Matapan in the Mediterranean.

1942: A British ship, the HMS Capbeltown, a Lend-Lease American destroyer, which was specifically rammed into a German occupied dry-dock in France, explodes, knocking the area out of action for the German battleship Tirpitz.