Bienville, USS

[Mark Wadsworth]

USS Bienville (1861-1867).
Originally the civilian steamship Bienville (1860)

Bienville, a 1558-ton (Burden) wooden side-wheel steamship built at Brooklyn, New York in 1860, was purchased by the Navy in August 1861 as part of the great expansion that took place in the first months of the Civil War. She was commissioned in October 1861 and soon participated in the expedition that seized future Naval bases at Port Royal and Beaufort, South Carolina. Bienville operated off the Confederacy's Atlantic coast for more than a year, taking part in the capture of positions along the Georgia and Florida shore as well as ending the careers of several blockade runners, among them the steamers Stettin (taken on 24 May 1862) and Patras (27 May 1862).
In 1863, Bienville was transferred to the Gulf of Mexico, where she continued her blockading work. In addition, she supported the capture of the entrances to Mobile Bay, Alabama, on 5 August 1864. In an operation typical of the era's coastal warfare, she sent a boat party into Galveston Bay, Texas, on the night of 7 February 1865 and seized two schooners loaded with cotton. Bienville was decommissioned soon after the end of the Civil War. Following some two years in reserve, she was sold in October 1867. Operating under the same name as a commercial steamship, she lasted until 15 August 1872, when a fire destroyed her at Watling Island, Bahamas.


DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY -- NAVAL HISTORICAL CENTER