USS Antelope (1861)
| History | |
|---|---|
 United States
|
|
| Ordered: | as Lavinia Logan |
| Laid down: | date unknown |
| Launched: | 1861 |
| Commissioned: | 1861 |
| Decommissioned: | 1964 |
| In service: | 1864 |
| Out of service: | 1864 |
| Struck: | c1964 |
| Fate: | fate unknown |
| General characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 145 tons |
| Length: | unknown |
| Beam: | unknown |
| Draught: | unknown |
| Propulsion: |
|
| Speed: | unknown |
| Complement: | unknown |
| Armament: | two 30-pounder (rifled barrel) guns, and four 24-pounder (smooth bore) guns |
USS Antelope (1861) was a stern-wheel steamer acquired by the Union Navy for service during the American Civil War.
During the first years of the Civil War, the Federal War Department used Lavinia Logan—a chartered stern-wheel steamer built in 1861 at Parkersburg, Virginia (now West Virginia) -- to support operations of the Union Army along the streams of the Mississippi River drainage system, especially Major General Ulysses S. Grant's efforts to capture Vicksburg, Mississippi.
Following the fall of that Confederate river fortress in the summer of 1863, Lavinia Logan seems to have returned to private hands for a time. In any case, the Union Navy acquired the vessel at Louisville, Kentucky, in the spring of 1864; and, on 26 May of that year, Rear Admiral David D. Porter wrote to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles reporting the purchase and recommending that her name be changed to Antelope. Apparently, he had acquired the ship to meet Rear Admiral Farragut's need for light-draft gunboats and had her hull covered with iron plates by naval shipfitters at Mound City, Illinois.
Antelope first appears on the list of vessels composing the West Gulf Blockading Squadron on 15 August 1864 with the notation that she was then at New Orleans, Louisiana.
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