Service With The Confederate Navy
Magnolia, a wooden, seagoing, sidewheel steamer built by J. Simonson of Greenpoint, New York for Charles Morgan's Southern Steamship Company. Launched in 1854, the ship was impressed as a public vessel in New Orleans, Louisiana, 15 January 1862, by Maj. Gen. Mansfield Lovell, CSA, acting for the Confederacy's Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin. The South’s original plan to arm her as a ram was dropped in favor of turning her into a blockade runner.
In 1858 Floridian cattle man Captain James McKay Sr. of Tampa made a contract with the Morgan Line. This contract allowed McKay to use Magnolia twice a month at a price of $1,500 each run in order to ship cattle to Cuba, making Magnolia the first of many ships to be used in the same way. For this reason, the introduction of Spanish doubloons to Florida can be traced back to the trading trips made by Magnolia.
Magnolia made at least two successful runs to nearby British islands in 1861 carrying large cargoes. On 19 February 1862, while trying to escape from Pass a’ l’Outre in the Gulf of Mexico with a large cargo of cotton and rosin, in a very dense fog, she was captured by Union ships Brooklyn and South Carolina.
Read more about this topic: USS Magnolia (1854)
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