Built as a ice-breaker tug by James O. Curtis, Medford, Massachusetts for ?
Launched as the ENOCH TRAIN.
Tonnage 385 ton burden, dim. 128 x 28 x 12.5 ft.
Two masted single decked.
Powered by a steam engine, manufactured by Harrison Loring. Twin shafts.
1855 completed.
She was strongly built with a power-full engine she was brought to New Orleans to work as a tugboat in 1859.
1861 Acquired by Captain John A. Stevenson and she was fitted out as a privateer in the dockyard of J. Hughes at Algiers, Louisiana.
Her upper works were cut away and on the deck a convex deck was constructed of oak 12 inches thick, and sheathed with 1.5 inch thick iron plates.
The bow was filled in solidly with timbers to form a massive cleaver 20 feet long
Displacement 381 ton, dim. 43.6 x 10 x 5.18m.
Armed with a single nine inch Dahlgren smoothbore, fired through a porthole in the bow, the porthole could be closed with iron shutters, when the gun was run in. Only two hatches made entry in the hull possible.
When boarded she could eject scalding water and steam to repel the boarders.
She was renamed MANASSAS.
After completing Stevenson applied for a letter of marquee, and acquired a crew of 38 men.
When the MANASSAS was ready to sail in the evening of 11 September 1861 she was seized by the Confederated Navy.
Stevenson was removed and relief by the navy officer Lieutenant Alexander F. Warley.
12 September 1861 commissioned as CSS MANASAS
Commissioned as a Confederate privateer on September 12, 1861, MANASSAS was seized soon afterwards by Flag Officer G. N. Rollins, CSN, for use in the lower Mississippi River. With Lieutenant A. F. Warley, CSN, in command she participated in Flag Officer Rollins' surprise attack on the Federal blockading squadron at Head of Passes, the action being known as the Battle of the Head of Passes, on October 12, 1861. In the action MANASSAS violently rammed USS RICHMOND damaging her severely below the water line. MANASSAS, however, suffered the loss of her prow and smokestack and had her engines temporarily thrown out of gear from the impact. She managed to retire under heavy fire from USS PREBLE and RICHMOND whose shells glanced off her armor. Two months after this engagement, MANASSAS was purchased for direct ownership by the Confederate Government.
Under Lieutenant Warley, MANASSAS joined the force of Captain John K. Mitchell, CSN, commanding Confederate naval forces in the lower Mississippi. She participated in the Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip, during which Commodore David Farragut, USN, on his way to New Orleans, ran his fleet past the Confederate forts of Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip. In the action MANASSAS attempted to ram USS PENSACOLA which turned in time to avoid the blow and deliver a broadside at close range. MANASSAS then ran into murderous fire from the whole line of the Union fleet. She then charged USS MISSISSIPPI and delivered a long glancing blow on her hull, firing her only gun as she rammed. Next she rammed USS BROOKLYN, again firing her gun, and injuring her rather deeply, but not quite enough to be fatal.
After this action MANASSAS followed the Union fleet quietly for a while, but as she drew closer MISSISSIPPI furiously turned on her. MANASSAS managed to dodge the blow but was run aground. Her crew escaped as MISSISSIPPI poured her heavy broadsides into the stranded Confederate vessel. Later MANASSAS slipped off the bank and drifted down the river in flames past the Union mortar flotilla. Commander David Dixon Porter, USN, in command of the mortar boats, tried to save her as an engineering curiosity, but MANASSAS exploded and immediately plunged under water.
Years after the war In "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War" there was a claim that a MANASSAS crewman was knocked off the ironclad by a Union sailor; however the CSS MANASSAS Captain Lt. A. F. Warley reported no casualties among his crew in an official report of August 13, 1863.
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Source: Wikipedia. The Confederate Privateers by Robinson.