USS Nightingale (1851)
Drawing of Nightingale, c. 1910 | |
| History | |
|---|---|
| United States | |
| Name | Nightingale |
| Owner | Davis & Co.; Sampson & Tappan’s Pioneer Line of Australian Packets |
| Route |
|
| Builder | Samuel Hanscomb, Eliot, Maine |
| Cost | $43,500 |
| Launched | 1851 |
| Fate | Sold to the Brazil, 1860 |
| Brazil | |
| Owner | Salem MA, then Rio de Janeiro (?) |
| Acquired | 1860 |
| Captured | 1861, by USS Saratoga, Africa Squadron, with slaves, off Kabenda, Africa |
| United States | |
| Acquired | 1861 |
| Commissioned | 18 August 1861, as coal and store ship |
| Decommissioned | 20 June 1864, Boston Navy Yard |
| Renamed | USS Nightingale |
| Refit | Fitted out as ordnance ship in Pensacola, 1863 |
| Stricken | 1865 |
| Fate | Sold into civilian service |
| United States | |
| Owner | Western Union Telegraph Co., San Francisco |
| Acquired | 1865 or 1866 |
| Notes | For use in laying telegraph cable across the Bering Straits |
| Owner | Samuel G. Reed & Co., Boston MA |
| Acquired | 1868 |
| Owner | George Howes, San Francisco |
| Route | San Francisco to New York with cargo of oil (?) |
| Acquired | 1876 |
| Fate | Sold to Norway |
| Norway | |
| Owner | S.P. Olsen, Kragerø, Norway |
| Acquired | 1876 or 1878 |
| Fate | Abandoned at sea in the North Atlantic, 1893, en route from Liverpool-Halifax, NS |
| General characteristics | |
| Type | Extreme clipper |
| Tonnage | 1066 |
| Length | 177 ft (54 m) |
| Beam | 36 ft (11 m) |
| Draft | 19 ft (5.8 m) |
| Propulsion | Sail |
| Sail plan | Rig reduced to barque, 1885–1886 |
| Speed | Unknown |
| Complement | 186 |
| Armament | 4 × 32 pounders (15 kg) |
USS Nightingale was originally the tea clipper and slave ship Nightingale, launched in 1851. USS Saratoga captured her off Africa in 1861; the United States Navy then purchased her.
During the American Civil War Nightingale served as a supply ship and collier supporting Union Navy ships blockading the Confederate States of America. After the war the Navy sold Nightingale, which went on to a long career in Arctic exploration and merchant trading before foundering in the North Atlantic in 1893.