USS Shubrick (1865)
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Shubrick
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| History | |
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 .png){kind=small} United States
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| Name: | Shubrick |
| Namesake: | William Bradford Shubrick |
| Builder: | Philadelphia Navy Yard, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Cost: | $60,000 appropriation; $75,000 (reported) |
| Commissioned: | 25 November 1857 (LHS) |
| Decommissioned: | 23 August 1861 |
| Recommissioned: | 15 October 1861 (RCS) |
| Decommissioned: | 24 December 1866 |
| Recommissioned: | 24 December 1866 (LHS) |
| Decommissioned: | January 1886 |
| Fate: | Sold, March 1886 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | Lighthouse tender |
| Displacement: | 305 long tons (310 t) |
| Length: | 140 ft 8 in (42.88 m) |
| Beam: | 22 ft 6 in (6.86 m) |
| Draft: | 9 ft (2.7 m) |
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USLHT Shubrick was the first lighthouse tender steamer constructed by the Lighthouse Board.
The ship was built at the Philadelphia Navy Yard of "Florida live oak and white oak," left over from the construction of the warship USS Wabash. She was "...topped by a flush deck fore and aft... To better withstand buoys scraping her sides, Shubrick's hull was painted black, topped with a white ribbon and waist. Red paddle wheels, white paddle boxes, and a black bowsprit, yards and gaffs added a saucy touch to her long and graceful cutwater, with six inches of bright copper shining above the waterline."
Completed on 25 November 1857, she was placed under the command of Captain T. A. Harris, and set sail for San Francisco, California, through the Strait of Magellan on 23 December 1857, arriving on 27 May 1858 after a voyage of 155 days. Shubrick spent the next three years setting buoys and carrying lighthouse supplies along the Pacific coast.
On 23 August 1861, on the outbreak of the Civil War, she was transferred to the Revenue Cutter Service. Commissioned on 15 October 1861 under the command of Revenue Captain William Cooke Pease, she served under Revenue Cutter Service orders for almost four years, performing customs and law enforcement duties, based first out of San Francisco, and then at Port Townsend from June 1862.
In the early part of August 1862, Victor Smith, collector of customs, arrived to take possession of the customhouse at Port Townsend. The Pacific coast had been was alarmed by the advances of the Confederates in New Mexico and Arizona, their secret negotiations to secure the cooperation of the governments of Sonora and Chihuahua and the belief that their secret organizations were thought to be ready to attempt the seizure of the West coast. For these reasons Lieutenant James H. Merryman, acting collector, fearing this was such an attempt declined to turn over the property unless presented with his papers of authorization. The customs collector declined to furnish them but went to the Shubrick, selected an armed guard, returned and demanded the customhouse be given up in fifteen minutes or it would be taken by force.
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Wikipedia