Blockade Runner Hero

[Ptarmigan]

Hero was built in 1861 by C & W Earles of Hull for Wilson sons & company a Baltic shipping firm. She was a three masted screw steamer 224ft x 20ft with a powerful 150 HP steam engine. In 1862 Hero was purchased by Colonel Whitworth on behalf of the Confederate Government to run the blockade between Nassau and Charleston. Hero first entered Charleston on 23rd June 1862 at around 3 a.m. in the morning but in the dark she ran aground off Moultrie House where she was spotted by USS Seneca the next day , the union gunboat tried to shell her but her shots dropped short and she could not get close enough to destroy the stranded runner as her smoothbore guns were outranged by the rifled artillery of Fort Sumpter and the battery at Cummings point. On the 25th July Hero attempted to enter Charleston for a second time, at 2 a.m. the tide was insufficient for her to cross the bar, she drew twelve and a half feet as she was loaded with a heavy cargo, her speed was reduced as the leadsman relayed the decreasing depth of water so she managed to run aground on the bar gently without causing damage. The ships lifeboats were lowered and the passengers and some of her crew got off leaving captain Peat, the engineer and all essential crew onboard to manage the ship. The crew set to work throwing about 40 tons of coal overboard plus some carboys of sulphuric acid that were to be used for the city's torpedo defences. In about an hour the ship was re-floated and she manged to enter the river, unfortunately Mr Miller the ships engineer became ill when he arrived onshore from what was described as a "Cerebral Congestion" and died, this may have come about from the stress caused by quietly unloading 40 tons of coal in less than an hour under the guns of the enemy. The Hero was ready to leave Charleston around the 11th August but waited until the new moon after the 26th August to depart, a passenger of a captured steamer told Union authorities that she was one of six steamers preparing to leave port on his departure. In September 1862, Hero returned and attempted to get into Charleston a third time but was fired upon by the blockading fleet, she escaped to seaward but managed to enter port later that night. It is likely that the Hero also ran into Charleston again for a fourth time in late October as in November 1862 it was reported that she was once more in Charleston with two other runners waiting for an opportunity to leave port. It is not known how many times the Hero ran past the blockade but I estimate it could have been as many as twelve times in her one year career. On 27th March 1863 Hero sailed home from Nassau arriving in Queenstown on the 14th April for coal. She was sold to a Liverpool company later that year who in turn sold her on to a company in Melbourne Australia as a mail steamer so she spent most of her career in Australia and New Zealand until foundering off New Caledonia in 1901. The picture below is not of Hero but another three masted vessel also built by the C W Earle's a few years earlier but it may give you an impression of what she looked like in her heyday