USS Nightingale ( 1851 ) USS " Nightingale " ( 1851 ) was originally the tea clipper and slave ship " Nightingale " , launched in 1851 . She was captured in Africa in 1861 by , taken as a prize and purchased by the United States Navy . After serving as a supply ship and collier during the American Civil War supporting Union Navy ships blockading the Confederate States of America , Nightingale went on to a long career in Arctic exploration and merchant trading before foundering in the North Atlantic in 1893 . Sailing career . Nightingale was designed and built at the Hanscom Shipyard in Eliot , Maine in 1851 by Samuel Hanscomb , Jr . , receiving final fitting out in nearby Portsmouth , New Hampshire . Rescuing Africans . About midnight on 20 – 21 April 1861 , two boats from sloop of war pulled silently toward a darkened ship anchored near the mouth of the Congo River at Cabinda , Angola . After clambering aboard " Nightingale " , a suspected slaver from Boston , Massachusetts , the American sailors and marines found 961 negros – men , women , and children – chained between decks . The prize was preparing to load more slaves before getting under way for America . As a prize . " Saratoga " s skipper — Commander Alfred Taylor – placed a prize crew on " Nightingale " , commanded by the leader of the boarding party , Lieutenant James J . Guthrie . The captured clipper got under way on the 23rd for Liberia , a nation founded in 1822 by the American Colonization Society as a refuge for freed slaves . " En route " , a fever raged through the ship killing 160 negroes and one member of the crew . After arriving Monrovia on 7 May , " Nightingale " landed her passengers , fumigated living quarters , and sailed for home on 13 May . During the first part of the passage , fever seriously weakened the crew , at one point leaving only 7 of her 34 - man crew fit for duty . Two more sailors died before the scourge began to subside , enabling the ship to reach New York on 15 June . Purchase by US Navy . " Nightingale " was condemned by the New York prize court ; purchased by the US Navy which was then expanding to blockade the Confederate coast , and commissioned on 18 August 1861 , Brevet Master David B . Horne in command . As a store ship . Fitted out as a collier and store ship , " Nightingale " got underway south laden with coal the same day , stopped at Hampton Roads on the 21st , and pushed on toward Key West , Florida the following morning . But for occasional voyages north for coal and supplies , she served on the U . S . Gulf Coast through the first years of the American Civil War . She was with Union ships , , , and in the Mississippi River near Head of Passes when the Confederate ironclad ram " Manassas " — accompanied by steamers and — attacked on 12 October . During the action she ran aground , but the Southern ships did not press their advantage . " Nightingale " was refloated a few days later and she sailed to New York with prisoners of war , and booty . " Nightingale " returned to the Gulf late in the year with a cargo of coal and supplies for the Union Blockaders . During most of 1862 , she served the East Gulf Blockading Squadron operating out of Key West . Early in 1863 , she became an ordnance ship at Pensacola , Florida , and continued this duty until returning to Boston , Massachusetts on 9 June 1864 . Nightingale was decommissioned at the Boston Navy Yard on 20 June 1864 and sold at public auction there to D . E . Mayo on 11 February 1865 . Arctic exploration . " Nightingale " served as the flagship of the 1865 – 1867 Western Union Telegraph Expedition exploring British Columbia , Alaska , and Siberia toward the aim of laying telegraph cable across the Bering Strait . After the expedition , Nightingale remained in merchant service until she foundered in the North Atlantic Ocean on 17 April 1893 . Figurehead . " Nightingale " ' s Jenny Lind figurehead ended up in the hands of a Swedish antique dealer in 1994 . He spent 13 years researching its history .