CSS Florida (cruiser)
CSS Florida
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| History | |
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| Name: | "C.S.S. Florida" |
| Launched: | 1862 |
| Commissioned: | August 17, 1862 |
| Decommissioned: | October 7, 1864 |
| Fate: | Captured by United States; sunk in collision November 28, 1864 |
| General characteristics | |
| Length: | 191 ft (58 m) |
| Beam: | 27 ft 2 in (8.28 m) |
| Draft: | 13 ft (4.0 m) |
| Propulsion: | Sails and steam engine |
| Speed: | 9.5 knots (17.6 km/h; 10.9 mph) under steam, 12 knots (22 km/h) under sail |
| Complement: | 146 officers and men |
| Armament: | 6 × 6 in (152 mm) rifled cannons, 2 × 7 in (178 mm) rifled cannons, 1 × 12 pounder (5 kg) cannon |
CSS Florida was a sloop-of-war in the Confederate States Navy.
Florida was built by the British firm of William C. Miller & Sons of Toxteth, Liverpool, and purchased by the Confederacy from Fawcett, Preston & Co., also of Liverpool, who engined her. Known in the shipyard as the Oreto and initially called CSS Manassas by the Confederates, the first of the foreign-built commerce raiders and naval warships was commissioned CSS Florida. The Union Navy's records long continued to refer to her as Oreto or to confuse her with CSS Alabama although, fitted with two funnels, she was readily distinguishable from single-stacked Alabama.
Florida departed England on March 22, 1862 for Nassau, Bahamas, to coal and contrived to fill her bunkers, although entitled only to enough to make the nearest Confederate port. She was the subject of much diplomatic correspondence. The governor of Nassau drew the line, however, at an attempted rendezvous with her tender in Nassau harbor; so she transferred stores and arms at isolated Green Cay. There she commissioned as "C.S.S. Florida" on August 17, with veteran Lieutenant John Newland Maffitt, in command. During her outfit, yellow fever raged among her crew, in 5 days reducing her effective force to one fireman and four deckhands. In desperate plight, she ran across to the Spanish island colony of Cuba. There in Cárdenas, Maffitt too was stricken with the dreaded disease.
In this condition, against all probability, the intrepid Maffitt sailed her from Cárdenas to Mobile, Alabama. In an audacious dash the "Prince of Privateers" braved a hail of projectiles from the Union blockaders and raced through them to anchor beneath the guns of Fort Morgan in Mobile Bay for a hero's welcome by the war-weary citizens of Mobile. Florida had been unable to fight back not only because of sickness but because rammers, sights, beds, locks and quoins had, inadvertently, not been loaded in the Bahamas. Having taken stores and gun accessories she lacked, along with added crew members, Florida escaped to sea on January 16, 1863 under Captain John Newland Maffitt.
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