USS Santiago de Cuba

USS Santiago de Cuba (1861)
History
United States Navy
Name	USS Santiago de Cuba
Builder	Jeremiah Simonson
Cost	$200,000
Launched	2 April 1861 at Brooklyn, New York
Acquired	6 September 1861
Commissioned	5 November 1861
Decommissioned	17 June 1865
Fate	sold, 21 September 1865
United States
Name	Santiago de Cuba
Cost	$108,000
Acquired	21 September 1865
Out of service	1886
Identification	Official Number 22825 Signal letters H.R.G.N
United States
Name	Marion
Owner	F. H. & A. H. Chappell Company
Acquired	1886
Out of service	1899
General characteristics
Displacement	1,567 tons
Length	229 ft (70 m)
Beam	38 ft (12 m)
Draft	16' 2" (max.)
Depth of hold	27'
Propulsion	sail and steam engine side wheel-propelled
Speed	14 knots
Complement	114 officers and enlisted
Armament	two 20-pounder Parrott rifles eight 32-pounder guns

USS Santiago de Cuba was a side-wheel steamship acquired by the Union Navy during the first year of the American Civil War. She was outfitted as a gunboat with powerful 20-pounder rifled guns and 32-pounder cannon and was assigned to the Union blockade of the Confederate States of America. She was notably successful in this role, capturing several blockade runners. Her last major action of the war was the assault on Fort Fisher, during which seven of her crew won the Medal of Honor.

After the war she was sold by the Navy and began a long career of commercial service as a passenger liner and freighter. It is evident from the string of short assignments with a variety of shipping lines that she was not ideally suited for this role. Her paddlewheel propulsion and wooden hull were already obsolescing at the time of the Civil War, when modern ships were constructed with propellers and iron hulls. By one account, she was the last paddlewheel steamer to cross the Atlantic. Finally, in 1886, her engine was removed and she was converted into a barge for transporting coal. She disappears from Federal records in 1899 and her ultimate fate is unknown.