USS Coeur de Lion

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Coeur de Lion p1
Ship data
flag United StatesUnited States United States
Ship type Gunboat
Owner US Navy
Launch 1853
Whereabouts In civilian use since 1865, retired around 1873
Ship dimensions and crew
length
30 m ( Lüa )
width 6.25 m
Draft Max. 1.37 m
displacement 110  t
 
crew 29
Machine system
machine Steam engine , side wheel drive
Coeur de Lion as a barge with a balloon on a leash

The USS Coeur de Lion ( Eng. "Lionheart"; correct French actually Cœur de lion , but it is unclear which spelling was actually used at the time) was a ship of the United States Navy .

history

It was built in 1853 in Coxsackie on the Hudson River as a civilian steamboat with a load capacity of 100 tons and side-wheel drive . It was later used by the Lighthouse Board as a lighthouse supplier. With the outbreak of the American Civil War , she was loaned to the Navy and equipped with a rifled 30-pounder (caliber 10.7 cm) and one rifled and one smooth- barreled 12-pounder as a gunboat. In June 1865 it was returned to the lighthouse authorities and sold by them in 1867. Until about 1873 she served as a merchant ship under the name Alice . Then she was removed from the register of ships.

Military activities

In 1861 she towed barges from which the observation balloons of the Union Army Balloon Corps were launched under chief pilot Thaddeus SC Lowe . In the area of Chesapeake Bay , on the Potomac River and on other rivers in Virginia, she disrupted the activities of the Confederate blockade breakers from 1862–1864 under the command of William G. Morris and captured or sunk eight of their sailing ships. In April 1863 they bombarded enemy batteries on the Nansemond River until they surrendered.

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