Banshee (ship)
 The Banshee on a painting reproduction
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The 1863 Banshee was a British cargo ship and blockade breaker during the Civil War .
The paddle steamer Banshee was named after the Banshees , female figures from Celtic mythology.
She left Liverpool on March 2, 1863 and was the first steel ship to cross the Atlantic .
The Banshee , designed solely for high speed, was built to operate from Nassau , Bahamas and to break the Union Navy blockade on the Confederate ports . She sailed under the British flag. On the way to the southern states it transported finished goods and ammunition, on the way back cotton.
On November 21, 1863, while en route to Wilmington , the banshee was seized by the United States Navy's Grand Gulf near Cape Hatteras . At this point she had already successfully made eight trips. She was incorporated into the US Navy as a gunboat .
After the end of the war, she carried fruit and cattle to and from Cuba as a merchant ship .
literature
- Tony Gibbons et al .: The world of ships , Bassermann Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-8094-2186-3 , p. 137.
