USS Kearsarge (1861)
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| History | |
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| Name: | USS Kearsarge |
| Namesake: | Mount Kearsarge |
| Ordered: | 1861 |
| Builder: | Portsmouth Navy Yard, Kittery, Maine |
| Laid down: | 1861 |
| Launched: | 11 September 1861 |
| Commissioned: | 24 January 1862 |
| Struck: | 1894 |
| Fate: | Wrecked, 2 February 1894 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | Sloop-of-war |
| Displacement: | 1,550 long tons (1,570 t) |
| Length: | 201 ft 3 in (61.34 m) |
| Beam: | 33 ft 8 in (10.26 m) |
| Draft: | 14 ft 3 in (4.34 m) |
| Propulsion: | Steam engine/Sails |
| Speed: | 11 kn (13 mph; 20 km/h) |
| Armament: | 2 × 11 in (280 mm) smoothbore Dahlgren guns, 4 × 32-pounder guns, 1 × 30-pounder Parrott rifle |
USS Kearsarge, a Mohican-class sloop-of-war, is best known for her defeat of the Confederate commerce raider CSS Alabama during the American Civil War. The Kearsarge was the only ship of the United States Navy named for Mount Kearsarge in New Hampshire. Subsequent ships were later named Kearsarge in honor of the ship.
Kearsarge was built at Portsmouth Navy Yard in Kittery, Maine, under the 1861 American Civil War emergency shipbuilding program. The new 1,550 long tons (1,570 t) steam sloop-of-war was launched on 11 September 1861; she was sponsored by "Mrs. McFarland," the wife of the editor of the Concord Statement, and was commissioned on 24 January 1862, with Captain Charles W. Pickering in command. Soon after, she was hunting for Confederate raiders in European waters.
Kearsarge departed Portsmouth on 5 February 1862 for the coast of Spain. She then sailed to Gibraltar to join the blockade of Confederate raider CSS Sumter, forcing the ship's abandonment there in December of 1862. However, Sumter's commanding Captain, Raphael Semmes, having returned to England for reassignment, was soon recommissioning off the Azores, in international waters, the newly built British sloop Enrica as CSS Alabama. From there, Alabama went on to become the most successful commerce raider in naval history.
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