USS Adela
.jpg)
USS Adela (1863–1865) Drawing by George H. Rogers, depicting the ship "on blockading service off the coast of Florida, winter of 1863". The artist served on board Adela as a Pharmacist's Mate.
|
|
| History | |
|---|---|
 United States
|
|
| Name: | USS Adela |
| Laid down: | date unknown |
| Launched: | circa 1862 |
| Acquired: | 23 May 1863 |
| Commissioned: | circa 13 June 1863 |
| Decommissioned: | 1865 |
| Struck: | 1865 (est.) |
| Fate: | sold, 30 November 1865 |
| General characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 585 tons |
| Length: | 211 ft (64 m) |
| Beam: | 23 ft 6 in (7.16 m) |
| Draught: |
|
| Propulsion: |
|
| Speed: | 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph) |
| Complement: | 70 |
| Armament: |
|
| Armour: | iron-hulled |
USS Adela (1862) was a steamer captured by the Union Navy during the American Civil War. She was used by the Union Navy as a gunboat in support of the Union Navy blockade of Confederate waterways.
In the spring of 1862, when the American Civil War was about a year old, Adela – a fast, iron-hulled, sidewheel steamer which had been operating out of Belfast, Ireland, as a merchantman—was purchased by some now unidentified agent who planned to use her for carrying arms and other contraband cargo through the Union blockade to the Confederacy. She steamed in ballast via Glasgow to Liverpool in May and—toward the end of that month—cleared the latter port, bound for the Bahamas where she planned to fill her holds with ordnance for the Confederate forces.
After a stop en route at Bermuda, the ship got underway on 4 July and headed for the island of New Providence in the Bahamas to take on her forbidden cargo at Nassau and to prepare for a dash through the Union blockade. Shortly after dawn on the 7th, lookouts on Northern warships, USS Quaker City and USS Huntsville, spotted the would-be blockade runner northwest of Great Abaco Island, endeavoring to evade them. The blockaders immediately gave chase.
As the three speeding vessels approached New Providence, Quaker City hoisted the Stars and Stripes and fired a shell across Adela's bow, signaling her to heave to. After the fleeing steamer had ignored not only that round, but a second in the same direction and two more behind her stern, Quaker City sent a fifth shell directly into her stubborn quarry. Nevertheless, despite having taken a damaging direct hit, the sidewheeler continued her efforts to get away. Finally, a sixth shot into Adela's beam persuaded her commanding officer, James Walker—a former master of the Cunard Line's famed sidewheeler Great Eastern – to stop. A prize crew from Quaker City boarded the British steamer, and the Union warship towed the captured vessel to Key West, Florida, where she was turned over to the Admiralty court.
...
Wikipedia