The next day, she reached an anchorage just off the bar outside Port Royal harbor. While suffering varying amounts of damage as they battled the tempest, some vessels were forced to turn back two transports went to the bottom but most continued on toward their original objectives.Īs she proceeded south, Augusta, which had been steaming on the starboard flank of the transports, managed to weather the hurricane and the wind had abated by the time she passed Charleston on 3 November 1861. By 3:30 that afternoon, the wind had increased so greatly in violence that Du Pont signaled the commanding officers of the other vessels that they were free to leave the formation and to proceed in whatever manner seemed most conducive to safety. While the fleet of some 75 ships slowly sailed south, a storm arose in the wee hours of the 31st, shortly after Augusta passed Cape Hatteras.

When she sortied with them on the 29th, the captain of each ship carried sealed orders to be opened only in the event of the force’s separation. Augusta departed New York on 16 October 1861, reached Hampton Roads two days later, and remained there while the other warships of Du Pont’s fleet assembled. Du Pont’s newly established South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, Augusta received assignment to the force then being formed to capture a naval base on the Confederacy’s Atlantic coast somewhere within the new squadron’s jurisdiction which stretched from the Florida Keys to the border separating North and South Carolina. Parrott in command.Ī part of Flag Officer Samuel F.

Fitted out for naval service by the New York Navy Yard, Brooklyn, N.Y., Augusta was commissioned there on 28 September 1861, Cmdr. (Gunboat: tonnage 1,310 (gross register) length 220'0' beam 35'4' depth of hold 21'10' draft 14'3' speed 11.0 knots complement 157: armament 8 32-pounder smoothbores)ĭesigned and constructed by the noted American shipbuilder, William Henry Webb, the second Augusta was completed in 1853 at New York City and operated out of that port carrying passengers and freight for the New York & Savannah Steam Navigation Co., on runs to Savannah, Georgia, and New Orleans, Louisiana.Įarly in the Civil War, as the Union Navy was expanding its fleet for the Herculean task of blockading the Confederate coast, the Federal Government purchased the schooner-rigged side-wheeler at New York on 1 August 1861. The Navy retained the name carried by this ship at the time of her acquisition.

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