Stonewall was a Southern
pilot boat captured by Union screw gunboat on, or sometime shortly before, 24 February 1863. She was placed in service as a tender to
Tahoma pending legal proceedings against her at
Key West, Florida. She was condemned there and formally purchased by the Navy from the Key West
prize court on 24 July 1863. She operated between
Tampa Bay and
Charlotte Harbor,
Florida, for over one and one-half years, serving as a ship’s tender for the various Union
warships assigned in turn to Tampa Bay. The highlight of her career came on 24 January 1864 when she captured Southern
sloop Josephine of
Tampa, Florida, bound for
Havana, Cuba, with seven bales of
cotton. In October 1864,
Stonewall was transferred to
blockade duty, still as a tender, between
St. Marks and
Cedar Keys, Florida, and she served in that area through the end of the Civil War. She was inactivated late in May 1865 and was sold at auction at Key West on 28 June 1865 to I. Silvery. == See also ==