USS Nightingale

USS Nightingale

### Fate

Abandoned at sea in the North Atlantic, 1893, en route from Liverpool-Halifax, Nova Scotia

### Company

Davis & Co.; Sampson & Tappan’s Pioneer Line of Australian Packets

### Coordinates of Wreck

Unknown

Tea Races, Passengers, and Slavery

The Nightingale was designed and built at the Hanscom Shipyard in Eliot, Maine and received final fitting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Her maiden voyage was on the famous tea and silk trail between Shanghai and London. A tea race was arranged between the Nightingale and the clipper Challenger but the Nightingale was defeated. After this another race between the same boats was arranged. Her journey from London to Angier Point was her fastest, she made it back to the English Channel from Shanghai a week faster than the Challenger. In the spring of 1853, her speed and general record caused her to be chartered by the Australian Charter Lines to carry passengers, mail, and freights. The golden fever in Australia was at its peak and Nightingale's accombinations were speedily taken. In the fall of 1860 she arrived in England from New York, and soon it became known around the docks that she had become a slaver, although ostensibly she was loading for St. Thomas with a cargo of guns, powder, and cotton cloth. She sailed several times from Cabinda, Angola, to Cuba with a total of 2,000 Africans in irons. Nearing April 21st, 1861 at around midnight, two boats from sloop of war USS Saratoga came up slowly to a darkened ship anchored near the mouth of the Congo River in Angola. After clambering aboard *Nightingale*, a suspected slaver from Boston, Massachusetts, the American sailors and marines found 961 men, women, and children chained between decks. 160 would die en route to Liberia. At the point of capture, the prize was preparing to load more slaves before getting under way for America. En route, a fever raged through the ship and killed 160 passengers and one crew member. She was condemned by the New York prize court and bought by the United States Navy which expanded the blockade of the Confederate coast. She was then fitted as a store ship. She was also underway south laden with coal on the same day. She 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 Coastal through the first years of the American Civil War.

She was with Union ships USS Preble, USS Richmond, USS *Vincennes*, and USS *Water Witch* in the Missisippi River near Head of the Passes when the Confederate ironclad ram *Manassas* – accompanied by steamers CSS *Ivy* and CSS *James L. Day* – 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. She returned to the Gulf later on with coal and supplies. During most of 1862, she served in the East Gulf Blockading Squadron, operating out of the Key West. She was decommissioned at the Boston Navy Yard June 20th, 1864. She was then sold at a public auction on February 11th, 1865. She then served as a flagship in the 1865 - 1867 Western Union Telegraph Expedition exploring, Alaska, British Columbia, and Siberia toward the aim of laying a telegraph line across the Bering Strait. After the expedition, she stayed in merchant service until she foundering in the North Atlantic Ocean on April 17th, 1893.