Capture By Union Navy Forces
Shortly after midnight, lookouts on screw steamer Stettin — herself an erstwhile blockade runner now, following capture, turned blockader — spotted Aries off Bull's Bay, South Carolina, attempting to slip through the blockade with a cargo of liquor. The Union screw gunboat immediately weighed anchor and gave chase. When the runner was within range, Stettin opened fire on Aries and continued the pursuit until shoal water forced her to anchor.
At daybreak, Stettin's commanding officer, Acting Master Edward F. Devens, saw that his quarry had run ashore on the south end of Petrel Bank. He immediately lowered two boats, and, "...taking command in person... went on board and took possession of her as a prize to the U.S. Government." Since the blockade runner was aground astern, Devens had her cargo shifted forward; and the stranded steamer floated free with the rising tide.
Devens took Aries via Charleston to Port Royal, South Carolina, where Rear Admiral Samuel Francis DuPont stated that she "...is the most perfect example of a blockade runner we have yet seen — her masts lower in a peculiar way, invented for this very purpose."
He ordered her north for adjudication in admiralty court and, since Devens was ill, detached him from Stettin and placed him in charge of the prize crew for the voyage to Boston, Massachusetts, where she was condemned and purchased there by the Navy on 20 May 1863.
Read more about this topic: USS Aries (1863)
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