CSS General Polk

In 1852, the sidewheel steamer Ed Howard was launched at New Albany, Indiana. She was long and had a beam of , along with a draft of less than . She had a tonnage of 390 tons. She was a packet steamer between Nashville, Tennessee, and New Orleans, Louisiana. On March 7, 1856, she sank the steamboat Henry Lewis in an accidental collision. In a separate incident on January 26, 1853, she had collided with and sank the steamboat Swallow at Bonnet Carré, Louisiana. In 1860, her master was J. W. Fowler. With the formation of the Confederate States of America and the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, the Confederacy began the task of creating a navy from scratch. The Ed Howard was at New Orleans in 1861, and was purchased by the Confederate government, for $8,000 by Commodore George N. Hollins. Confederate general Leonidas Polk desired the vessel for use on the upper portion of Confederate control on the Mississippi River, and Ed Howard was in turned named General Polk after him. Polk requested and received the assignment of First Lieutenant Jonathan H. Carter to command of the vessel, which was a gunboat. The vessel was also known solely as Polk. Pickney ordered General Polk, General Earl Van Dorn, and Livingston burned at Liverpool Landing to prevent them from falling into Union hands. Arkansas was on a test run down the Yazoo River when the burning occurred, but by the time the ironclad arrived, the vessels had been destroyed. The wreck was removed by the United States Army Corps of Engineers in 1878 and 1879. ==Notes==