Built as a wooden side-wheeler by J. Simonson at New York for Valiente & Co, New York.
02 April 1861 launched as the SANTIAGO DE CUBA.
Tonnage 1,567 gross, dim. 229 x 38 x 27ft, draught 16.2ft.
Brigantine rigged.
Powered by a beam steam engine, speed 14 knots, the engine was manufactured by the Neptune Iron Works at New York.
July delivered to the Cuba and New York Mail Steamship Company.
19th July 1861 made her maiden voyage from New York to Cuba, returning on 19 August in New York.
Purchased for US$ 200,000 by the Union Navy on 06 September 1861 and commissioned on 05 November 1861 at the New York Navy yard.
Fitted out as a warship: Armament 2 – 20 pdrs, 8 – 32 pdrs. guns.
Crew 114.
Used to blockade the Southern coast during the American Civil War.
03 December 1861 captured the British blockade runner, the schooner VICTORIA.
26 April 1862 captured the schooner MERSEY from Charleston S.C. and on 27 May the LUCY C HOLMES, 3 August the COLUMBIA and on 27 August de LAVINIA.
In September 1862 assigned to a newly organized flying squadron to seek and capture the Confederated commerce raiders ALABAMA and FLORIDA. The squadron caught many prizes, but never the Southern warships.
21 June 1863 she captured the British VICTORY off Palmetto Point after the vessel slipped through the blockade off Charleston, the VICTORY was loaded with cotton, tobacco and turpentine, on 25 June she took the steamer BRITANNIA in the same area. On 15 July she got the steamer LIZZIE and sent the prize to Key West.
Late 1863 she sailed north for repairs and was decommissioned on 30 December 1863.
Again recommissioned on 06 June 1864 after her repairs.
She captured the famous blockade runner A.D. VANCE and LUCY.
Thereafter was she assigned to the task force in which Rear Admiral David D. Porter attacked Fort Fisher on Christmas Day 1864.
She protected the troops during landing and fighting, the landing troops re-embarked the next day, but returned mid January 1865, and after a bloody fight of three days Fort Fisher fell on the 15th.
17 June 1865 after the war decommissioned at the Navy yard in Philadelphia and sold during a public auction in September 1865 for US$ 108,000 to M.O.Roberts (I believe the same owner as the GOLDEN RULE), New York for the Central America Transit Co. She received a new deckhouse and passengers quarters installed. The conversion took 7 weeks.
She was then used on the Atlantic side for the owner’s service from the East Coast to California.
The SANTIAGO DE CUBA was used in the service between New York and Nicaragua.
1867 WM H. Webb, New York was the owner, used in the North American S.S. Co.
The SANTIAGO DE CUBA made some round voyages across the North Atlantic, the first in charter for Ruger Bros, New York, she sailed from New York on 17 June 1869 to Bremen and Copenhagen.
Her first round voyage for the North American Steamship Company was when she sailed on 29 November 1869 from New Orleans via Bermuda to Le Havre where she arrived on 29 December. She sailed from this port on 16 January 1870 to New York. Her last voyage in this service was with arrival New York on 03 September 1870.
Then she made two round voyages from New York to Le Havre and Brouwershaven, Netherlands and she returned for her last voyage in New York on 21 November 1870. She was the last wooden paddlesteamer which made a round voyage across the North Atlantic.
1872 Sold to Wm P. Clyde & Co., Philadelphia for coastwise trade in the USA.
1878 Converted from paddle to screw..
1886 Renamed MARION, her engine removed and rerigged as a schooner, and cut down to a coal barge with homeport New London.
1897 She received a new deck.
She was last listed in American Bureau of Shipping in 1899
Subsequent fate unknown.
Nicaragua 1990 30,000 Cor sg ?, scott1786
Source: North Atlantic Seaway by N.R.P. Bonsor. Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. Wikipedia. American Steamships on the Atlantic by Cedric Ridgely-Nevitt.