USS Abeona (1831)

History
Name:	USS Abeona
Namesake:	Abeona
Launched:	1831
Acquired:	by purchase, 21 December 1864
Commissioned:	10 April 1865
Decommissioned:	4 August 1865
Fate:	Sold, 11 August 1865
General characteristics
Type:	Steam gunboat
Displacement:	206 long tons (209 t)
Length:	157 ft (48 m)
Beam:	31 ft (9.4 m)
Depth of hold:	4 ft (1.2 m)
Propulsion:	Steam engine
Speed:	8 kn (9.2 mph; 15 km/h)
Armament:	2 × 30-pounder Parrott rifles, 2 × 74-pounder smoothbore guns, 2 × 12-pounder rifled guns

USS Abeona was a mercantile stern wheel steamer that traded on the Mississippi between 1831 and her destruction by fire in 1872, except for two years between 1863 and 1865 when she served the United States Navy as a gunboat.

Career

She was built in 1831 at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the Navy purchased her on 21 December 1864. The navy converted her to a "tinclad" gunboat at Mound City, Illinois, and commissioned her there on 10 April 1865 (one day after the surrender of Robert E. Lee), with Acting Master Samuel Hall in command.

Abeona performed patrol and guard duty on the Mississippi River and its tributaries — primarily in the Mississippi Squadrons 5 (the Mississippi between Natchez and Vicksburg) and 10 (the Cumberland River and upper Ohio River) Districts. After all organized Confederate resistance ceased and the South had begun its painful and uncertain return to a peaceful way of life, Abeona was decommissioned at Mound City on 4 August 1865.

She was sold there on 11 August 1865 to J. A. Williamson et al. and was registered under the same name on 17 October 1865. The veteran stern wheeler operated on the Mississippi and its branches until she caught fire at Cincinnati on 7 March 1872 and was destroyed.

As of 2004, no other ships in the United States Navy have borne this name.

References

This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. The entry can be found here.