USS Saranac-- Part 1: Pursuer of the CSS Shenandoah

From Wikipedia.

On Saturday, I wrote about the CSS Shenandoah barely avoiding a mysterious ship which its commander Waddell believed to be the USS Saranac.  I'd never heard of this ship before, so had to do some research.  The Shenandoah at the time was returning to England to surrender to the British instead of doing so to the United Sates where its crew might likely be considered to be pirates as they were destroying Union ships after the war was over even though they didn't know it was over for quite some time.  Surrendering to a U.S. vessel might mean execution as such.

The USS Saranac (1848) was a sloop of war laid down during the Mexican War but that war was over by the time the vessel underwent sea trials.  It was finally commissioned in 1850 and served in both the Atlantic and Pacific.  It was decommissioned and recommissioned many times and patrolled the U.S. West Coast during the Civil War.

It continued service on the West Coast after the war until it was wrecked on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, in 1875.

--Old B-Runner