USS Westfield (1861)
| History | |
|---|---|
 
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| Name: | USS Westfield |
| Acquired: | by purchase, 22 November 1861 |
| Commissioned: | January 1862 |
| Fate: | Destroyed to prevent capture, 1 January 1863 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | Steam gunboat |
| Displacement: | 822 long tons (835 t) |
| Length: | 215 ft (66 m) |
| Beam: | 35 ft (11 m) |
| Draft: | 13 ft 6 in (4.11 m) |
| Propulsion: | Steam engine |
| Armament: |
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USS Westfield was a sidewheel steam ferryboat in the United States Navy during the American Civil War.
Westfield was purchased by the Navy from Cornelius Vanderbilt on 22 November 1861; outfitted at Jacob Aaron Westervelts shipyard in New York City; and commissioned in January 1862, Commander William B. Renshaw in command.
Westfield departed New York on 22 February 1862, bound for Key West, Florida, to join Comdr. David Dixon Porter's Mortar Flotilla. That unit, however, departed Key West on 3 March before Westfield's arrival. She, therefore, did not join the flotilla until her arrival at the Passes of the Mississippi River on 18 March. For the next three weeks, she assisted Mississippi and Pensacola in their efforts to cross the bar at Pass an Outre and enter the Mississippi River.
That mission finally succeeded on 8 April, and Westfield began duty covering a coastal survey party developing more precise maps of the lower Mississippi for the assault on Forts Jackson and St. Philip. On 13 April, she received orders to proceed upriver and engage two Confederate gunboats. After two shots from her Parrott rifle, the two Southern ships retired to the protection of the guns of Fort Jackson where they joined six other Confederate gunboats. Undaunted, Westfield closed range and opened fire once more. That brief cannonade broke the shaft of CSS Defiance and damaged her so severely that her crew later had to abandon and sink her.
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