Construction Nightingale was designed and built at the Hanscom Shipyard in
Eliot, Maine in 1851
Tea races Passenger trade to Australia As a slaver This * is the Portuguese colony of São Tomé
Seizure About midnight on 20–21 April 1861, two boats from
sloop of war pulled silently toward a darkened ship anchored near the mouth of the
Congo River at
Cabinda, 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.
As a prize Saratogas skipper –
Commander Alfred Taylor – placed a
prize crew on
Nightingale, commanded by the leader of the boarding party, Lieutenant James J. Guthrie. The captured clipper got under way on the 23rd for
Liberia, a nation founded in 1822 by the
American Colonization Society as a refuge for freed slaves.
En route, a fever raged through the ship killing 160 of the passengers and one member of the crew. After arriving
Monrovia on 7 May,
Nightingale landed her passengers, fumigated living quarters, and sailed for home on 13 May. During the first part of the passage, fever seriously weakened the crew, at one point leaving only 7 of her 34-man crew fit for duty. Two more sailors died before the scourge began to subside, enabling the ship to reach New York on 15 June.
Purchase by US Navy Nightingale was condemned by the New York
prize court; purchased by the US Navy which was then expanding to blockade the
Confederate coast, and commissioned on 18 August 1861,
Brevet Master David B. Horne in command.
As a store ship Fitted out as a
collier and
store ship,
Nightingale got underway south laden with coal the same day, 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 Coast through the first years of the
American Civil War. She was with Union ships , , , and in the
Mississippi River near
Head of Passes when the Confederate
ironclad ram
Manassas – accompanied by steamers and – 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.
Nightingale returned to the Gulf late in the year with a cargo of coal and supplies for the Union Blockaders. During most of 1862, she served the
East Gulf Blockading Squadron operating out of Key West. Early in 1863, she became an ordnance ship at
Pensacola, Florida, and continued this duty until returning to
Boston, Massachusetts on 9 June 1864. Nightingale was decommissioned at the
Boston Navy Yard on 20 June 1864 and sold at
public auction there to D.E. Mayo on 11 February 1865.
Arctic exploration Nightingale served as the
flagship of the 1865–1867
Western Union Telegraph Expedition exploring British Columbia, Alaska, and Siberia toward the aim of laying telegraph cable across the
Bering Strait.
Loss After the arctic expedition,
Nightingale remained in merchant service until she foundered in the North Atlantic Ocean on 17 April 1893. ==Figurehead==