USS Antona (1863) - Blockade Runner Antona Captured By Gunboat Pocahontas

Blockade Runner Antona Captured By Gunboat Pocahontas

On the morning of 6 January 1863, the Union screw steamer Pocahontas sighted a ship in the Gulf of Mexico, steaming westward close to the Alabama shore and headed toward the entrance to Mobile Bay.

Soon after the blockader had turned to intercept the stranger lest she reach the protection of the Southern guns at Fort Morgan—then some nine miles away—the unidentified steamer altered her own course in an effort to escape.

Both vessels pushed their engines to their limits and broke out all possible sails. Pocahontas slowly gained on her quarry but the sun was close to the horizon before she was near enough to fire a shot at the fleeing ship. The round fell short of its target which then hoisted English colors as she continued her flight. About an hour before midnight, the Union ship had closed to about half a mile and fired two more rounds in quick succession which promptly brought the vessel to about 30 miles south southeast of Cape San Blas, Florida.

She proved to be Antona, an iron-hulled British screw steamer recently built at Glasgow, Scotland. She had departed Liverpool and had proceeded via St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, to Havana, Cuba. There, she took on a contraband cargo of gunpowder, rifles, tea, and brandy before sailing for Mobile, Alabama, on New Year's Day 1863.