Three Masted Schooner USS
SHARK (1861, Possible, Rendering)
The second USS Shark, most probably, was an 300-ton three-masted schooner built in Portsmouth, New Hampshire;
then copper-clad over oak in Mystic, Connecticut, November 1860. Shark sailed to Galveston, Texas, by her captain and owner G. Patterson. Soon after
the War between the States broke out she was captured by the US Gunboat
South Carolina, Commander Alden, while running supplies and ammunition
for the Confederacy. Once captured she was dispatched to New York or Boston
for service in the Union (from a letter of Rodney Baxter dated July 31, 1861).
There is also a reference to a Shark being sunk in 1865 with 17 souls lost.
There are some references about a Shark
participating in the blockade of New Orleans during the War Between the
States; but this may be confused by the
USS Carolina's taking a Shark of British registry during the
War of 1812 (1813, which may have been pressed into U.S. service).
A Mr. Burr Osborn, having sailed on the preceding Shark of 1821
and shipwrecked on her in 1846, may have sailed on the subsequent Shark
as he described it as "... a 300-ton schooner with three masts ..." in 1913,
at this time being 87 years old, and the schooner would have appeared as the picture
at the top.
Admittedly this "2nd" Shark still
evades my research and as time passes the sources become more elusive.
(Research on-going, and wanting for The Dictionary of
American Naval Fighting Ships Series 1 Volume 6.)
