USS Fulton (1837)
{{short description|Gunboat of the United States Navy}}
{{other ships|USS Fulton}}
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{{Infobox ship image |Ship image= 300px |Ship caption= Drawing of Fulton as originally built in 1837 }} {{Infobox ship career |Hide header= |Ship country=United States |Ship flag={{USN flag|1837}} |Ship name= |Ship namesake=Robert Fulton |Ship ordered= |Ship awarded= |Ship builder=U.S. Government at Brooklyn Navy Yard{{cite web |title=Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, U.S.S. G. W. Blunt. |url=https://archive.org/details/cu31924080777489/page/n97/mode/1up?view=theater|work=United States Naval Records Office |place=Washington|date=1921 |access-date=23 Aug 2021}} |Ship original cost=$509,998.52 |Ship laid down=1835 |Ship launched=18 May 1837 |Ship sponsor= |Ship christened= |Ship completed= |Ship acquired= |Ship commissioned=13 December 1837 |Ship recommissioned= |Ship decommissioned=23 November 1842 |Ship maiden voyage= |Ship in service=25 January 1852 |Ship out of service=1862 |Ship struck=1862 |Ship motto= |Ship nickname= |Ship honors= |Ship captured=*by Confederate forces,
|Ship fate=Destroyed, 10 May 1862 |Ship notes= |Ship badge= }} {{Infobox ship characteristics |Hide header= |Header caption= |Ship class=Side-wheel steamer |Ship type= |Ship tonnage=720 |Ship displacement |Ship tons burthen= |Ship length={{convert|180|ft|m|abbr=on}} |Ship beam={{convert|34|ft|8|in|m|abbr=on}} |Ship draft={{convert|13|ft|m|abbr=on}} |Ship depth= |Ship hold depth= |Ship decks= |Ship propulsion=steam engine, side wheel |Ship sail plan= |Ship speed=10 knots |Ship complement=130 |Ship armament=four 32-pounder guns |Ship armor= |Ship notes= }} |
USS Fulton was a steamer that served the U.S. Navy prior to the American Civil War, and was recommissioned in time to see service in that war. However, her participation was limited to being captured by Confederate forces in the port of Pensacola, Florida, at the outbreak of war.
The second ship to be named Fulton by the Navy, a side wheel steamer, her build commenced in 1835, and she was launched 18 May 1837 by Brooklyn Navy Yard;{{cite news |title=Fleet of Fifty Warships Built in the Brooklyn Navy Yard |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/55387548/ |access-date=16 August 2018 |publisher=The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Brooklyn, New York) |date=12 May 1910 |pages=21–22 }} and commissioned 13 December 1837, Captain M. C. Perry in command. She was often called Fulton II. Fulton I was the renamed floating battery Demologos.
Service in the North Atlantic
File:Fulton II (steam frigate) 01.jpg
Fulton cruised the Atlantic coast, aiding ships in distress, conducting ordnance experiments, and training officers in gunnery. A major event of her early service came on 23 November 1838, when she bested the British steamer {{SS|Great Western}} in a speed contest off New York.
In 1841, Captain John T. Newton was in command of Fulton. Experiments in gunnery and projectiles were conducted aboard under the direction of Captain M. C. Perry; during one such experiment, a gun burst, killing several men and wounding others.{{cite web |url=https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/a/secnav-reports/annual-reports-secretary-navy-1841.html |title=Annual Report of the Secretary of the Navy - 1841 |date=4 December 1841 |publisher=Naval History and Heritage Command}} Newton had been aboard with Commodore Isaac Chauncey, who was inspecting the ship, and the two had left "only 10 or 15 minutes before the explosion"."Dreadful Explosion of the Steam Frigate Fulton", The Lancaster Gazette (July 11, 1829), p. 3.
Decommissioned at New York 23 November 1842, Fulton lay in ordinary until 1851, when she was rebuilt and her machinery completely replaced.
1851 rebuild
File:USS Fulton (1837) after 1851 reconstruction.jpg
The third Fulton rebuild commenced in 1850, was launched on 30 August 1851, at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Fulton was essentially a harbor defense ship and was unsuitable for the cruising missions then emphasized by Navy policy. Accordingly, the New York Navy Yard rebuilt her in 1851 as a much more conventional warship. Fulton was recommissioned 25 January 1852 for duty in the Home Squadron, and sailed from New York 22 February for the West Indies. After the rebuild she was commonly referred to as Fulton III.{{cite journal |last1=Stanton |first1=Samuel Ward |title=American Steam Vessels |journal=Journal of the American Society for Naval Engineers |volume=7 |issue=3 |date=1895 |page=62 |ref=ASIN: B00086O80Y|doi=10.1111/j.1559-3584.1895.tb01098.x }}
File:The Paraguay Squadron.jpg (Harper's Weekly, New York, October 16, 1858).]]
During the next six years, aside from necessary repair periods in the yards at Washington, D.C., Norfolk, Virginia, and Boston, Massachusetts, Fulton ranged from the Caribbean to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, transporting Government officials, protecting merchantmen against search on the high seas, and joining in the search for {{USS|Albany|1846|6}} (January through May 1855) and the expedition to Nicaragua in 1857 to break up William Walker's filibustering activities. The next year Fulton{{'}}s commanding officer obtained the release of five American merchant ships held at Tampico, Mexico, by revolutionary forces.
From October 1858 to May 1859 Fulton joined in operations commanded by Commodore W. B. Shubrick during his negotiations to improve relations with Paraguay, sailing the La Plata and the Parana and Paraguay Rivers.
After lying out of commission at Norfolk, Virginia, from 7 May 1859 to 30 July 1859, Fulton cruised off Cuba to suppress the slave trade until laid up at Pensacola, Florida, in mid-October 1859.
The Times reported that she had been wrecked on Santa Rosa Island, off Pensacola, Florida.{{Cite newspaper The Times |title=America |date=4 October 1859 |page=7 |issue=23428 |column=A }}
Civil War capture
Captured by the Confederates when they took the Pensacola yard on 12 January 1861, Fulton was considered for use in the Confederate States Navy, but was never fitted out. She was destroyed in the evacuation of the yard by the Confederates upon Federal reoccupation 10 May 1862.
References
- {{DANFS|http://www.history.navy.mil/danfs/f5/fulton-ii.htm}}
External links
{{Commons category|USS Fulton (ship, 1837)}}
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20051204062758/http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-f/fulton2.htm USS Fulton (1837–1861)]
{{1859 shipwrecks}}
{{1862 shipwrecks}}
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Category:Ships built in Brooklyn
Category:Steamships of the United States Navy
Category:Ships of the Union Navy
Category:Gunboats of the United States Navy
Category:Vessels captured from the United States Navy
Category:Maritime incidents in September 1859
Category:Shipwrecks of the American Civil War