USS Wyoming (1859)
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| History | |
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| Name: | USS Wyoming |
| Laid down: | July 1858 |
| Launched: | 19 January 1859 |
| Commissioned: | October 1859 |
| Decommissioned: | 30 October 1882 |
| Fate: | Sold, 9 May 1892 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | Screw sloop |
| Displacement: | 1,457 long tons (1,480 t) |
| Length: | 198 ft 6 in (60.50 m) |
| Beam: | 33 ft 2 in (10.11 m) |
| Draft: | 14 ft 10 in (4.52 m) |
| Propulsion: | Steam engine |
| Speed: | 11 knots (20 km/h; 13 mph) |
| Complement: | 198 officers and enlisted |
| Armament: |
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The first USS Wyoming of the United States Navy was a wooden-hulled screw sloop that fought on the Union side during the American Civil War. Sent to the Pacific Ocean to search for the CSS Alabama, Wyoming eventually came upon the shores of Japan and engaged Japanese land and sea forces. On 16 July 1863, Wyoming won the first-ever United States naval victory over Japan in the Naval battle of Shimonoseki.
The ship was laid down at the Philadelphia Navy Yard in July 1858, launched on 19 January 1859, sponsored by Mary Florida Grice, and commissioned in October 1859, Commander John K. Mitchell in command. She was named for the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania, not the state of Wyoming which did not yet exist.
Wyoming soon sailed via Cape Horn for the Pacific and arrived off the coast of Nicaragua in April 1860. There, she relieved Levant and operated along the Pacific coast of the United States and Central America into the spring of 1861. During that time, she participated in the search for Levant when that warship disappeared in the late autumn of 1860.
The outbreak of the Civil War found Wyoming at San Francisco, California, preparing for another cruise. She was instructed to remain in the vicinity of the Golden Gate to protect mail steamers operating off the California coast, but CDR Mitchell — a naval officer of Southern origin and persuasion — defied his orders and took his ship to Panama instead.
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Wikipedia