USS Arthur (1855)

History
United States
Laid down:	date unknown
Launched:	1855
Acquired:	1 August 1861
Commissioned:	11 December 1861
Decommissioned:	date not known
Struck:	not known
Fate:	not known
General characteristics
Tonnage:	554
Length:	133 ft (41 m)
Beam:	31 ft 2 in (9.50 m)
Draft:	14 ft 1 in (4.29 m)
Depth of hold:	7 ft 3 in (2.21 m)
Propulsion:	sail
Speed:	10 knots
Complement:	86
Armament:	six 32-pounder smoothbore guns

USS Arthur (1855) was a bark acquired by the Union Navy during the American Civil War. She was used by the Union Navy as a gunboat in support of the Union Navy blockade of Confederate waterways.

On 1 August 1861, Arthur—a bark built at Amesbury, Massachusetts, in 1855—was purchased at New York City by the Union Navy. Fitted out at the New York Navy Yard, she was commissioned there on 11 December 1861, Acting Volunteer Lieutenant John W. Kittredge in command.

Arthur sailed south on Christmas Eve, 1861, joined the Gulf Blockading Squadron at Key West, Florida, and then proceeded to the coast of Texas to patrol the waters between Matagorda and Corpus Christi, Texas. This was familiar territory for Kittredge, who had spent several years trading along the Texas seaboard before the Civil War. Arthur reached station off Matagorda on the morning of 25 January.

Later that day, some 17 miles northeast of the bar at Pass Cavallo, she sighted a schooner sailing toward shore. Kittredge called the crew to quarters and sent two cutters in pursuit of the stranger which was attempting to run aground. A shot from the bark brought the quarry to. A boarding party from the cutters took possession of the schooner, which proved to be the Confederate blockade runner J.J. McNeil. The prize—which had left Veracruz, Mexico, with a cargo of coffee and tobacco—was sent to Ship Island, Mississippi, and on to New York City for adjudication.

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Wikipedia