USS Wyandotte (1853)

History

United States
Name:	Western Port / Wyandotte
Namesake:	Western Port was her previous name retained Wyandotte was for Wyandotte, Michigan
Launched:	1853
Acquired:	1858
Commissioned:	27 October 1858
Decommissioned:	28 May 1859
Renamed:	USS Wyandotte
Recommissioned:	19 September 1859
Decommissioned:	3 June 1865
Fate:	Sold 12 July 1865 Wrecked 26 January 1866 while in merchant service
General characteristics
Displacement:	464 tons
Propulsion:	Steam engine; one screw
Speed:	7 knots
Armament:	four 32-pounder (14.5-kg) guns one 24-pounder (10.9-kg) Dahlgren howitzer

USS Wyandotte, originally USS Western Port, was a steamer acquired by the Navy as a gunboat for the Paraguay Expedition in 1858. When the crisis of the American Civil War occurred, she operated in support of the Union Navy blockade of Confederate waterways.

Western Port – a former merchant steamer built at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1853 – was chartered by the United States Department of the Navy in the autumn of 1858 to participate in an American naval expedition up the Paraná River to Asunción, Paraguay. After the vessel had been fitted out as a gunboat, she was commissioned as USS Western Port on 27 October 1858, Commander Thomas T. Hunter in command.

Western Port soon sailed for South American waters and – at Montevideo, Uruguay, – joined the task force commanded by Flag Officer William Branford Shubrick, which had been assembled to support the negotiations of United States Commissioner to Paraguay, James Butler Bowlin. President of the United States James Buchanan had appointed Bowlin to seek redress for the shelling of the U.S. Navy sidewheel gunboat USS Water Witch in 1855, which had resulted in the death of the American ship's helmsman.