USS Cumberland (1842)

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USS Cumberland
History
United States
Name	USS Cumberland
Laid down	1824
Launched	24 May 1842
Commissioned	9 November 1842
Fate	Sunk 8 March 1862
General characteristics
Class and type	Raritan-class frigate
Tonnage	1726
Length	175 ft (53 m)
Beam	45 ft (14 m)
Draft	21.1 ft (6.4 m)
Complement	400 officers and men
Armament	1842: 40 × 32 pdr (15 kg) guns, 10 × 42 pdr (19 kg) carronades 1843: 36 × 32 pdr (15 kg) guns, 10 × 42 pdr (19 kg) carronades, 4 × 8 in (200 mm) "shell" guns 1857: 2 x X-inch Dahlgren gun smoothbores on spar deck pivots, 20 IX-inch Dahlgren gun smoothbores 1861: 1 x X-inch Dahlgren smoothbore fore spar deck pivot, 1 × "70-pounder" rifle on aft spar deck pivot, 20 IX-inch Dahlgren smoothbores

The first USS Cumberland was a 50-gun sailing frigate of the United States Navy.^[1] She was the first ship sunk by the ironclad CSS Virginia.

Cumberland began in the pages of a Congressional Act. Congress passed in 1816 "An act for the gradual increase of the Navy of the United States." The act called for the U.S. to build several ships-of-the-line and several new frigates, of which Cumberland was to be one. Money issues, however, prevented Cumberland from being finished in a timely manner. It was not until Secretary of the Navy Abel Parker Upshur came to office that the ship was finished. A war scare with Britain led Upshur to order the completion of several wooden sailing ships and for the construction of new steam powered ships.

Designed by famed American designer William Doughty, Cumberland was one a series of frigates in a class called the Raritan-class. The design borrowed heavily from older American frigate designs such as Constitution and Chesapeake. Specifically, Doughty liked the idea of giving a frigate more guns than European designs called for. As a result, he called for Cumberland and her sister ships to have a fully armed spar deck, along with guns on the gun deck. The result was a heavily armed, 50-gun warship.