USS Yantic (1864)
USS Yantic
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| Name: | USS Yantic |
| Namesake: | Yantic River, CT |
| Builder: | Philadelphia Navy Yard |
| Launched: | 19 March 1864 |
| Commissioned: | 12 August 1864 |
| Reclassified: | IX-32, 15 May 1921 |
| Struck: | 9 May 1930 |
| Fate: | Sunk, 22 October 1929 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | Gunboat |
| Displacement: | 836 long tons (849 t) |
| Length: | 179 ft (55 m) p/p |
| Beam: | 30 ft (9.1 m) |
| Draft: | 13 ft 9 in (4.19 m) |
| Speed: | 9.5 knots (17.6 km/h; 10.9 mph) |
| Complement: | 154 |
| Armament: |
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USS Yantic (IX-32), a wooden-hulled screw gunboat built at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, was launched on 19 March 1864 and commissioned on 12 August 1864, Lieutenant Commander Thomas C. Harris in command. She was named after the Yantic River.
The day after her commissioning, 13 August 1864, Yantic — in company with the tugs USS Aster and USS Moccasin — sailed in pursuit of the Confederate privateer CSS Tallahassee. The gunboat went to the northward and eastward of Nantucket during her cruise but, as her commanding officer reported, "obtained no information to justify a longer search for the piratical vessel." Consequently, after a week at sea, Yantic returned to the Philadelphia Navy Yard and commenced her post-trial repairs.
Meanwhile, CSS Tallahassee had left Halifax, Nova Scotia, at 13:00 on 20 August, before any Federal warships could arrive, setting in motion a search. Agitation in Washington over Tallahassee resulted in Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles' sending identical telegrams to the commandants of the navy yards at New York and Philadelphia on the 20th, each asking what vessels were ready for sea.
Yantic subsequently received orders directing her to proceed to Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where she was to await further orders. She arrived there at 10:00 on 13 September. Yantic later operated off the eastern seaboard between Hampton Roads and New York and, on 1 November, visited Halifax — a port swarming with "secessionists and other sympathizers" — to obtain information on the activities of CSS Olustee (as the Confederates had renamed Tallahassee).
After the Confederate ship had managed to elude her pursuers, Yantic joined the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron off Wilmington, North Carolina. During the Union's first attempt to take Fort Fisher, N.C., on Christmas Eve 1864, the screw gunboat suffered her first casualties. At 15:00 that afternoon, during the bombardment phase of the action, the ship's 100-pounder rifled gun burst, mortally wounding the division officer, the gun captain, and four men. On his own initiative, Commander Harris — thinking his ship "badly shattered" and not knowing the extent of the damage — ordered his ship hauled out of line. After obtaining medical assistance from the steamer USS Fort Jackson and reporting the assessed damage to the flagship USS Malvern, Harris took Yantic back into action, opening fire with his remaining effective guns, the 30-pounder rifle and a 9-inch Dahlgren gun.
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