USS Berberry (1864)
| History | |
|---|---|
 United States
|
|
| Name: | USS Berberry |
| Ordered: | as Columbia |
| Laid down: | 1864 |
| Launched: | 1864 |
| Acquired: | August 13, 1864 |
| Commissioned: | September 12, 1864 |
| Decommissioned: | June 10, 1865 |
| Struck: | 1865 (est.) |
| Fate: | sold, July 12, 1865 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | Tugboat |
| Displacement: | 163 long tons (166 t) |
| Length: | 99 ft (30 m) |
| Beam: | 20 ft (6.1 m) |
| Draft: | 8 ft 6 in (2.59 m) |
| Depth of hold: | 9 ft (2.7 m) |
| Propulsion: | Steam engine, screw |
| Speed: | 10 kn (12 mph; 19 km/h) |
| Complement: | 35 |
| Armament: | 2 × heavy 12-pounder smoothbore guns, 2 × 24-pounder smoothbore guns |
USS Berberry (1864) was a steam-powered tugboat acquired by the Union Navy during the American Civil War. She was used by the Navy to patrol navigable waterways of the Confederacy to prevent the South from trading with other countries.
On August 13, 1864 at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Navy purchased Columbia, a wooden-hulled screw steamer built there earlier that year. The Navy renamed her Berberry, and she was placed in commission at the Philadelphia Navy Yard on September 12, 1864, Acting Ensign Milton Griffith in command.
After about a fortnight’s towing duty that took her to Fort Monroe and Baltimore, Maryland, Berberry departed Philadelphia on September 29 and reached Beaufort, North Carolina, on October 1 for duty in the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron. Two days later, she took station off the New Inlet entrance to North Carolina’s Cape Fear River where she labored to help tighten the blockade of Wilmington, North Carolina.
At 03:00 on the morning of October 4, while patrolling east of Mount Light, the tug observed a steamer heading for New Inlet and gave chase. Although she fired two shots at the stranger, that blockade runner managed to cross Berberry's bow and escaped into New Inlet. At 21:45 on the following evening, a lookout in the tug sighted a long, low, two stack steamer standing out to sea from New Inlet. Later that night, Griffith reported that the blockade runner "...stood for us within 400 yards; then kept off to the southward." Berberry immediately attempted to cut off the steamer by getting between her and the bar. Meanwhile, she opened fire on the stranger and sent up "...rockets in the direction in which she was steering." Despite the fact that fellow blockaders Niphon and Daylight joined the chase, the runner's speed enabled her to steam out of sight of her pursuers; and she apparently made her way safely to the open sea.
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