USS San Jacinto (1850)

On 27 August 1861, shortly before San Jacinto sailed for home, Capt. Charles Wilkes assumed command of the ship. En route back to the United States for service in the Union Navy during the American Civil War, the warship searched for the Confederate cruiser, Sumter, which, under Capt. Raphael Semmes, CSN, was then preying upon Union shipping in the Atlantic. She visited the Windward Passage, Jamaica, Grand Cayman, and Boca Grande, Florida while seeking the Southern commerce raider. When the ship touched at Cienfuegos, Cuba, for coal, Wilkes learned that James M. Mason and John Slidell, former United States senators and new Confederate envoys to Britain and France, had escaped from Charleston, South Carolina, on 12 October in the speedy coastal packet, Theodora, and were at Havana awaiting transportation to Europe.

Wilkes raced around the island to Havana, bent on intercepting Theodora on the blockade runner's return trip but arrived on the last day of the month, one day after his quarry had departed.

However, he learned that the Southern diplomats were still at Havana and intended to sail for St. Thomas a week later in the British mail packet, Trent. They planned to board a British liner there to complete their journey to London.

Wilkes proceeded in San Jacinto to a narrow part of the Old Bahama Channel, some 230 miles east of Havana, and waited there to waylay Trent. On 8 November, two shots across the mail packet's bow made her master heave to. A boarding party from San Jacinto seized the Confederate diplomats and their secretaries and then permitted the packet to resume her voyage. A week later, when San Jacinto reached Norfolk with the prisoners, the exultant North hailed the news as a great Union triumph. The incident strained United States relations with Britain almost to the breaking point and came to be known as the Trent Affair.

Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles ordered Wilkes to take the prisoners to Boston, Massachusetts in the San Jacinto. The Harbor Pilot, Captain Abel F. Hayden, anchored the San Jacinto in the Boston channel.[2] They were held at Fort Warren until quietly released on New Year's Day, 1862, and taken to Provincetown, Massachusetts, to board HMS Rinaldo for passage to London. The diplomatic crisis then subsided.

San Jacinto was decommissioned on 30 November 1861 for overhaul at the Boston Navy Yard and was prepared for service as flagship of the Gulf Blockading Squadron. Recommissioned on 1 March 1862,commanded by William Ronckendorff, the steamer departed Boston for Hampton Roads on the ninth, the day of the epic battle between USS Monitor and CSS Virginia, the former Merrimack. San Jacinto reached the Virginia Capes on the 15th and remained in the area temporarily assigned to the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron to bolster Union naval forces in Hampton Roads lest Virginia return to that strategic waterway and threaten General George McClellan's army which was then pushing up the peninsula between the James and York rivers toward Richmond, Virginia.

On 11 April 1862, Virginia rounded Sewell's Point and entered Hampton Roads. Under the ironclad's protection, CSS Jamestown and CSS Raleigh approached the Hampton shore and captured three small Union Army transports. No major engagement developed and the Confederate ships retired upstream late in the afternoon.

On 5 May, President Abraham Lincoln arrived in Hampton Roads on board the steamer, Miami, to take personal charge of the stalled Peninsula Campaign; and, for the next five days, acted as Commander in Chief in the field. At his orders three days later, San Jacinto joined other Union warships in bombarding Sewell's Point.

Events moved fast thereafter. Confederate troops withdrew from Norfolk and Suffolk, Virginia and set fire to the Navy Yard at Portsmouth, Virginia. San Jacinto helped to provide naval support as U.S. troops occupied the evacuated area. In the early hours of 11 May, Virginia's crew set the dreaded Southern ironclad ablaze and she blew up before dawn.

With the end of the principal Confederate naval threat to Union forces on the peninsula and its surrounding water, San Jacinto was free to resume her voyage south. She departed Hampton Roads on the 23rd, carrying Flag Officer James L. Lardner, and reached Key West, Florida, on 1 June. Three days later, Lardner relieved Flag Officer William McKean in command of the East Gulf Blockading Squadron, and San Jacinto became the squadron flagship.

The ship's tour of duty as flagship was cut short. On 1 August, Lardner reported that yellow fever had broken out on the ship; and, the next day, she sailed north. She arrived at the quarantine area off Deer Island, near Boston, on the ninth.

The health of her crew restored, San Jacinto was assigned to the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, departed Boston on 15 October and, four days later, joined the blockade off Wilmington, North Carolina. As she was taking station in the blockade, orders from Washington directed the ship to proceed immediately to Hampton Roads, fill her bunkers with coal, and steam at top speed to the coast of Nova Scotia in search of the Confederate cruiser, Alabama, with which the elusive Raphael Semmes had struck a series of rapid blows against American shipping and fishing and caused Northern merchants to clamor for protection.

San Jacinto got under way on the 22nd and reached Hampton Roads on the morning of the 24th. While she was preparing for sea, reports reached Washington indicating that Alabama might have altered her course. Accordingly, when San Jacinto sailed on the morning of the 26th, she headed via Bermuda to the West Indies. In the weeks that followed, the frigate and Alabama played hide-and-seek in the Caribbean. On the morning of 19 November, the Federal warship finally caught up with Semmes when she reached Fort Royal, Martinique. Alabama had anchored there the previous morning and was enjoying sanctuary in the neutral port. San Jacinto waited at the entrance to the harbor just outside the three-mile limit required by international law, but Alabama slipped by her to comparative safety at sea during the ensuing dark and rainy night. As neither ship saw the other during the escape, San Jacinto remained at Fort Royal until certain that Alabama was not hiding in some secluded spot within the bay, but had indeed escaped. On the 21st, San Jacinto got under way and searched for her slippery adversary until arriving at Key West on 15 January 1863.

There she was attached to the East Gulf Blockading Squadron as flagship. However, soon after she began this duty, word reached Key West that CSS Florida had escaped through the blockade from Mobile and was at Havana. On 22 January, Rear Admiral Theodorus Bailey ordered San Jacinto to sail for Cuba and blockade the Confederate cruiser if she were in port or to chase and capture or destroy her if the commerce raider had departed. The Union frigate quickly put to sea but found little trace of Florida. She broke her shaft on 30 January; sailed north on 4 February; and reached the New York Navy Yard on the 16th for repairs.

Again ready for action, San Jacinto departed New York on 24 June and returned to Key West on 1 July. She celebrated Independence Day by becoming Rear Admiral Bailey's flagship, and she performed that duty until relieved by USS Dale on 5 September.

The ship then took up blockade duty off Mobile, Alabama. On the afternoon of the 11th, her masthead lookout reported "black smoke bearing about south", and San Jacinto set out in pursuit of the steamer. During the chase, the lookout spotted the blockade runner Fox, aground and burning. About dusk, San Jacinto changed course for Mobile, hoping to intercept the fleeing vessel if she attempted to dash into that port. This strategy proved sound for, early the next morning, the Union steam frigate found that her quarry was again within sight; and the chase began again. Near the Chandeleur Islands, San Jacinto anchored in shoal water and sent her first cutter after the steamer. That evening shortly before twilight, the blockade runner—which happened to bear the name of the frigate's old adversary, Alabama—ran ashore and was abandoned. Before San Jacinto's cutter could reach the prize, the Union blockader Eugenie arrived upon the scene and took possession of the blockade runner.

On the 16th, San Jacinto captured the steamer Lizzie Davis after a two-hour chase. This blockade runner had departed from Havana laden with lead and was endeavoring to dash into Mobile. On 6 October, San Jacinto was within signal distance when the schooner USS Beauregard took possession of Last Trial, after heavy weather had forced that Southern sloop to seek shelter near Key West. On 16 December, USS Ariel, a tender to San Jacinto, captured the Confederate sloop Magnolia; and, on the 24th, the schooner USS Fox, another of San Jacinto's tenders, took the British schooner Edward, which was trying to carry salt and lead from Havana to the Suwannee River, notwithstanding Britain's de jure neutrality.

On the morning of 7 January 1864, San Jacinto overtook the schooner Roebuck after a two-hour chase, and deprived the Confederacy of a general cargo including much clothing and lead. In another two-hour chase on 11 March, San Jacinto ran an unnamed schooner (formerly called Lealtad) aground. She then took possession of this prize which was laden with cotton and turpentine for export.

Yellow fever again struck the veteran warship the following summer; and San Jacinto—carrying Rear Admiral Bailey, now dangerously ill with the disease—departed Key West on 7 August and sailed north hoping for a quick restoration of the crew to good health. She reached the quarantine area at New York Harbor on the 13th; but, the next day was ordered to fill up with coal and set out in pursuit of the Confederate cruiser Tallahassee. The ship sailed on the 19th and raced as far north as Halifax, Nova Scotia, without finding the Southern commerce raider.

After the ship put in at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, she received long-overdue repairs. She returned to Key West on 3 December and resumed her role as squadron flagship a week later. Toward the end of the month, she was relieved of this duty and sailed for the Bahamas.

On New Year's Day, 1865, the ship struck a reef near Great Abaco Island and filled with water. Her guns, along with some equipment and provisions, were saved; but efforts to salvage the ship were unsuccessful. The ship's hulk was sold at Nassau, New Providence, on 17 May 1871.