USS Niagara (1855)
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| History | |
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| Name: | USS Niagara |
| Builder: | New York Navy Yard |
| Launched: | 23 February 1855 |
| Commissioned: | 6 April 1857 |
| Decommissioned: | 28 September 1864 |
| Fate: | Sold 6 May 1885 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | Steam frigate |
| Displacement: | 5,540 long tons (5,629 t) |
| Length: | 328 ft 10 in (100.23 m) |
| Beam: | 55 ft 4 in (16.87 m) |
| Draft: | 24 ft 5 in (7.44 m) |
| Propulsion: | Sails / Steam engine |
| Complement: | 251 |
| Armament: | 12 × 11 in (280 mm) Dahlgren smoothbore guns |
The second USS Niagara was a screw frigate in the United States Navy.
Niagara was launched by New York Navy Yard on 23 February 1855; sponsored by Miss Annie C. O'Donnell; and commissioned on 6 April 1857, Captain William L. Hudson in command.
Niagara sailed from New York on 22 April 1857 for England, arriving Gravesend on 14 May. A log of the ship's voyage across the Atlantic was kept by the correspondent of the New York Daily Times, where it was published on Thursday, 14 May 1857. On arrival in England Niagara was equipped to lay cable for the first transatlantic telegraph, which was to follow the shallow tableland discovered between Newfoundland and Ireland by Matthew F. Maury. By 11 August, when a break in the cable defied recovery, she had laid several hundred miles westward from Valentia Island, Ireland. She returned to New York 20 November and decommissioned 2 December to prepare for a second essay at cable-laying. Recommissioning 24 February 1858, Captain William L. Hudson in command, she sailed 8 March, arrived Plymouth, England, 28 March, and experimented with HMS Agamemnon. The ships returned to Plymouth to fit out, then made a mid-ocean rendezvous on 29 July, spliced their cable ends, and each sailed toward her own continent. On 5 August, Niagara's boats carried the end of the cable ashore at Bay Bulls Arm , Newfoundland, and the same day Agamemnon landed her end of the cable. The first message flashed across 16 August, when Queen Victoria sent a cable to President James Buchanan. This first cable operated for three weeks; ultimate success came in 1866.
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