Construction and Early Duties
Minnesota was laid down in May 1854 by the Washington Navy Yard in Washington, D.C.. She was launched on 1 December 1855, sponsored by Susan L. Mann, and commissioned on 21 May 1857 with Captain Samuel Francis Du Pont in command.
Minnesota was named for the Minnesota River. her sister ships were also named for rivers: the Wabash (first in class), Colorado, Merrimack (salvaged and renamed Virginia by the Confederate Navy), and the Roanoke (later converted to a monitor-type).
Minnesota, carrying William B. Reed, U.S. Minister to China, departed from Norfolk, Virginia, on 1 July 1857 for East Asia. During her service with the East India Squadron, she visited many of the principal ports of China and Japan before departing Hong Kong to bring Reed home with a newly negotiated commerce treaty, the Treaty of Tianjin, with China. Upon arrival in Boston, Massachusetts, on 2 June 1859, Minnesota was decommissioned at the Boston Navy Yard in Charlestown, Massachusetts, the same day and remained in ordinary until the outbreak of the American Civil War in April 1861.
Read more about this topic: USS Minnesota (1855)
Famous quotes containing the words construction, early and/or duties:
“The construction of life is at present in the power of facts far more than convictions.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“An early dew woos the half-opened flowers”
—Unknown. The Thousand and One Nights.
AWP. Anthology of World Poetry, An. Mark Van Doren, ed. (Rev. and enl. Ed., 1936)
“The duty of the State toward the citizen is the duty of the servant to its master.... One of the duties of the State is that of caring for those of its citizens who find themselves the victims of such adverse circumstances as makes them unable to obtain even the necessities for mere existence without the aid of others.... To these unfortunate citizens aid must be extended by government—not as a matter of charity but as a matter of social duty.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)