When the British-owned and newly built side-wheel steamer Lady Sterling proceeded down the River Thames on 12 August 1864, her ultimate destination was the Confederate port of Wilmington, North Carolina. She was built for speed, and her owner anticipated huge profits by running cargoes past the well-armed Union vessels blockading that port.
On the dark night of 28 October, after several attempts to pass the Confederacy’s soft sands, she cleared Western Bar Inlet of the Cape Fear River. Encountering Union shellfire, she caught fire and was captured—her smuggling career thwarted at the outset. But much more lay in store for her, and no one would have anticipated that the Lady Sterling, a Union prize, would be modified for the “special accommodation” of none other than Abraham Lincoln. Even so, the 16th President would never set foot on her.
Thames-Built and Dixie-Bound
The Lady Sterling began her career at the Thames shipyard of James Ash at Millwall, just east of London.1 Her design emphasized a shallow draft, a low profile, generous cargo capacity, and powerful engines—qualities essential for running the Union blockade. Launched in June 1864, she joined the Albion Trading Company in late summer and, along with several other vessels, was operated by Englishman Thomas Sterling Begbie.
Running war supplies to the Confederacy and bringing cotton bales out supported the Southern cause and provided cotton to Britain’s floundering textile industry. It was risky business, but profits from just one successful round-trip often paid the cost of the vessel and all expenses. Blockade-runners like the Lady Sterling generally exchanged cargoes at several commonly used transshipment ports such as Nassau, Bermuda, and Halifax.
As Union blockaders successively rolled up Confederate ports from Gulf Coast to Atlantic Coast and from south to north, traffic had become increasingly concentrated at Wilmington by the autumn of 1864. The U.S. consul in Halifax monitored that port’s blockade-runner arrivals and departures and promptly updated the U.S. State Department, which passed the information to the U.S. Navy. One of many missives from the consul was that of 18 September 1864 to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, forwarded to Acting Rear Admiral Samuel P. Lee, commander of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron at Beaufort, North Carolina. Eight “blockade running steamers” at Halifax, including the Lady Sterling, would steam for Wilmington “as soon as moon changes and nights become dark.”2
On 24 September, the consul updated Welles and Lee by telegram: “Lady Sterling, heretofore reported, cleared to-day with cargo of provisions and merchandise for Nassau; ultimate destination Wilmington.” After grounding once, the Lady Sterling successfully crossed the Cape Fear River’s New Inlet Bar on 26 September, and, after several days in quarantine, moored to a wharf at Wilmington on 30 September.3 By that time, with seven Union blockaders off New Inlet (the river’s eastern entrance) alone, running the blockade was increasingly problematic. The steamer Lynx “was struck eight times while running out” and had to be beached to save her. On the next night, 30 September, another vessel “was much cut up” and also beached.4 As blockade-runners were captured, some were quickly armed and used as blockaders—the fast chasing the fast.
On 28 October, Captain Donald Cruikshank, skipper of the Lady Sterling, with 980 bales of cotton and three tons of tobacco on board, made his play for the open sea via Western Bar Inlet, across from New Inlet, on the western side of Smith’s Island. At 1830 signal rockets rose from Union ships, indicating the presence of an unidentified vessel. Gunfire was heard, but there were no replies to the blockaders’ challenges. Heavy black smoke spotted by three blockaders helped confirm the vessel’s identity as a blockade-runner. President Lincoln, acting on Welles’s recommendation, had previously banned the export of clean-burning anthracite coal, so dark smoke thus indicated an approacher of dubious intent.5
An early round struck the Lady Sterling’s bow, setting cotton afire; more hits followed. Chased in a running engagement lasting several hours over 34 miles, Cruikshank finally surrendered; it was only the Lady Sterling’s first run out. As for the victors, the U.S. Navy steamers Eolus, Calypso, and Aries, the latter two were previous captures converted to blockaders.6
Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter inspected the Lady Sterling on 8 November and reported the following day, “She is a beautiful vessel, and no expense spared on her,” and that she “made thirteen knots with one engine.” Although acknowledged to be a fast ship, “thirteen knots with one engine” was somewhat off the mark. According to the vessel’s log, the splitting of the starboard engine’s bottom cylinder-head was caused by the “different Iron not expanding to the same extent.” By blocking the cylinder’s bottom steam-ports, the crew, working day and night from 8 to 26 October, had been able to use that engine’s downstroke. Call it one-and-a-half engines.7
Escorted by the U.S. Navy steam sloop-of-war Mohican and towed by the Calypso, the Lady Sterling arrived off the Battery at New York on Friday evening, 11 November, and languished awaiting a prize court’s decision. On 10 December, she was the third blockade-runner, following the steamers A.D. Vance and Annie, to be considered by Judge Samuel Rossiter Betts. The case of the Lady Sterling, like that of the A.D. Vance and Annie, was straightforward. Court records revealed Captain Cruikshank was a repeat offender. Two years prior he had been master of another English vessel condemned for violation of the blockade at Charleston. Typically, no papers of “ownership, voyage, or employment were found aboard.” Judge Betts’ decision was simple: “Vessel and cargo condemned as prize.”8
A Lady Gets a Makeover
Early on, Navy Secretary Welles had recognized the utility of captured blockaders for the Union. A 17 November 1864 telegram from Welles directed New York Navy Yard Superintendent Admiral Hiram A. Paulding: “Examine all prize Steamers which arrive without orders [from me].” The same day, U.S. District Attorney at New York E. Delafield Smith also received a Welles telegram: “The Department desires to have the prize Lady Sterling for public service as early as practicable. Be pleased to arrange the matter.” On 22 November, Judge Betts ordered that the “Lady Sterling, her engines, boilers, tackle, apparel and furniture, be delivered by the Marshall” to Paulding “for the use of the government, at the appraised value.”9 The Navy Department thus purchased the Lady Sterling—835 tons, 242 feet long, 26½ feet wide, 13 feet deep, 3/8-inch iron plate—for $135,000.
The first order of business was to repair her hull and damaged engines; other modifications would follow. However, though well suited, she would not simply become another blockader.
The Lady Sterling was placed in the hands of a marine contractor, but responsibility for all work remained with the general superintendent of ironclads at the New York Navy Yard, Rear Admiral Francis H. Gregory. He and his assistant, Commodore Cadwalader Ringgold, general inspector of ironclads, managed the construction and equipping of gunboats, including ironclads and monitors. Whether in the hands of the yard or in those of contractors, Gregory, and especially Ringgold, oversaw work on a dozen or more vessels a month.
A Marylander, Ringgold had become a midshipman at age 16 and been third in command of the U.S. Exploring Expedition, at sea from 1838 to 1842. After several weeks of survey work in 1841 in San Francisco Bay, Ringgold returned to the Bay area in 1849 for definitive marine surveys during the Gold Rush. In 1853, he commanded the North Pacific Exploring and Surveying Expedition until illness forced his return home in 1854. As commander of the U.S. frigate Sabine from 1861 to 1863, he served as a blockader off South Carolina and later cruised the North and South Atlantic in search of the notorious Confederate raider Alabama.10
Ringgold was a stickler for costs, time, and quality. He queried the contractor, C. W. Copeland, for labor rates for “Carpenters, Caulkers, Joiners, Fasteners, Sawyers, Plumbers, Helpers Laborers and Painters” for work on the Lady Sterling. The project was then in the estimating and planning stage. A month later, Ringgold wrote another contractor, “[I] will not sign your bill for plumbers since your rate is higher than other contractors, please alter the bill.” On 17 November 1864, Ringgold reported to Gregory, “I have repeatedly impressed upon the contractors the necessity to finish these vessels in the time specified.” He also wrote, “the final inspection of vessels preparatory to their acceptance at the Navy Yard is very rigidly made.”11
There was no dearth of vessels awaiting maintenance and repairs. During the Civil War, only 14 vessels were constructed at the yard, while approximately 400 were “equipped and supplied.”12 In December 1864, nine vessels passed Gregory and Ringgold’s purview. As the yard was still operating on a wartime footing, the Lady Sterling likely remained in the queue; she is not mentioned again for several months.
Then, in mid-March, a flurry of correspondence appeared relating to the Lady Sterling and something new: urgency. Her mission changed dramatically, as work on her was ramped to a “course of rapid completion for the special accommodation of the President . . . . It is necessary to have her in Washington by the 1st of April.”13 A letter from Ringgold simultaneously went out to “Mr. C. W. Copeland, Engineer.” Charles W. Copeland was more than just an engineer; he was a founding member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He designed the machinery for the Fulton, the Navy’s “first steam war-vessel” launched in 1837 at the New York Navy Yard. “His experience as a marine engineer was used by the government in the adaptation of merchant steamers for service in the Southern blockade.”14
On 18 March Ringgold submitted a lengthy plan of the accommodations to be fitted out on board the Lady Sterling. The planned layout was commodious, and contained a surprise: Without question, no other Navy ship had two water closets to be “used for ladies . . . with curtains fitted, to cut off entrance to them, from the rest of the Cabin.”15
Acting Volunteer Lieutenant Commander Pierre Giraud, was assigned command of the Lady Sterling on 22 March.16 Giraud, a New Yorker, had joined the Navy in August 1861 and was no stranger to blockade-runners. He was praised by Rear Admiral David Farragut for heroic conduct in the 5 August 1864 Battle of Mobile Bay. In October Giraud served with the Western Gulf Blockading Squadron, and, in command of the steamer Mobile (formerly the Confederate blockade runner Tennessee), he captured the schooner Annie Virden south of Velasco, Texas, on 5 October and the three-masted schooner Emily off San Luis Pass, also Texas, on 19 October.
As Giraud was about to assume his new command, Ringgold updated Admiral Gregory: “Arrangements have been made to put the ‘Lady Sterling’ on the ways at Green Point tomorrow. All work upon her is advancing rapidly.” By telegram on 28 March, Secretary Welles instructed Admiral Paulding to send the Lady Sterling to Washington when ready.17 Regrettably, the pace of the project unexpectedly slowed.
In addition to delays at the hands of contractors, there was a weeks-long strike in April, and the yard became nearly deserted. The Navy Department had imposed a 50 cents-per-diem wage reduction, embracing 4,000 workmen. Several vessels sat waiting for overhauls.18 The Lady Sterling was a lady in waiting—postwar austerity had begun.
A Presidential Hornet
On Friday, 14 April—the day of President Lincoln’s assassination—Ringgold informed Paulding that the Lady Sterling would be ready for delivery “on Monday next.”19 Having not made her 1 April completion date, the ship obviously had missed the chance to serve Lincoln.
The question becomes: Was the Lady Sterling a presidential yacht? If so, can she claim to be the first? Some give that distinction to the 1873 Navy steamer Despatch, which served in the role for Grover Cleveland. Still others would ascribe “first” honors to a vessel preceding the Lady Sterling, the River Queen. After all, she had hosted Lincoln for his meeting with Confederate peace commissioners on 3 February 1865 in Hampton Roads, Virginia. And except for several nights on board Admiral Porter’s flagship, the Malvern, Lincoln was on board the River Queen from her departure from Washington on 23 March for City Point, Virginia, to her return to the Capital on 9 April.
Being removed from Washington’s politics, critics, press, and daily demands likely contributed to Lincoln’s satisfaction with the River Queen. However, there are still distinctions. She was leased to the quartermaster general, was not government property, and was assigned for the use of General Ulysses S. Grant. In contrast, the Lady Sterling was owned and commissioned by the Navy, modified for the “special accommodation of the President,” captained by a naval officer, and manned by a Navy crew—the Naval History and Heritage Command’s criteria for “presidential yacht.”
At any rate, though President Andrew Johnson would (briefly) sail on her, the Lady Sterling never got to fulfill her intended role for Lincoln. On 24 April, nine days after his death, “The yacht of our lamented President Lincoln, the U.S. steamer Lady Sterling, one of the best appointed vessels in our Navy, was put in commission,” noted The New York Times. With no little irony, the Times also recorded news from across the Atlantic: “Advices from London announce the failure of one Thomas Sterling Begbie, for the sum of half a million dollars or thereabouts . . . the failure of this innocent charterer . . . is reported to have been caused by heavy losses in blockade-running.”20 The newspaper must have been tongue-in-cheek: charterer, yes, innocent, no.
On the day of the Lady Sterling’s commissioning, Lincoln’s body arrived for viewing at City Hall in New York City. The following day, Admiral Paulding ordered “all business . . . this day suspended and all officers [who] could be spared from duty on shipboard report at New York to take part in the funeral pageant of our late President.”21 They were among the half-million mourners who witnessed Lincoln’s funeral procession.
After a trial of the Lady Sterling’s engines a few days prior, the crew got up steam on 3 May, loaded the guns—several Confederate cruisers remained on the loose—and proceeded down the East River. Steaming past Cape Charles and entering the Chesapeake Bay, she anchored off the Washington Navy Yard on 6 May. Having moved to the wharf to board “a party of Ladies and Gentlemen,” she departed on 11 May, destination Richmond. The following day found the Lady Sterling and her guests anchored below the “Rockets” (Rocketts Landing) at Richmond. After a stop at Mount Vernon, the party returned to Washington on the 16th.
A day trip followed on 22 May, anchoring at Alexandria across the Potomac, landing passengers and “discharging” Army Major General Henry Slocum before returning to the Washington Navy Yard. Sailing next on 31 May to Newport, Rhode Island, she received Vice Admiral David Farragut, Rear Admiral Porter, and a retinue of unnamed officers. She returned to Washington on 16 June, never to be quite the same: Orders came down renaming her the Hornet, the fifth Navy ship of that name.
She steamed on her first presidential cruise on 22 July. Engineers lit the fires at 1215 and departed from the Navy yard a few hours later. The New York Times reported on “The President on a Pleasure Trip.” At 1830 “Andrew Johnson, President of the U.S., Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy, and his assistant, Gustavas V. Fox, the Hon. Preston King, and a party of other gentlemen came on board.”22 The presidential party stopped at Point Lookout, Maryland, before returning to the Navy yard on 24 July.
Three months later, on 22 October, the Hornet departed for Havana, Cuba, carrying men and supplies to facilitate the return of the surrendered Confederate ram Stonewall. The Hornet uneventfully returned to the Washington Navy Yard on 24 November 1865. On 15 December, now at the New York Navy Yard, the crew transferred “all stores and ammunition,” and at 1430 “hauled down the colors and put the ship out of Commission.”23
In addition to her purchase price of $135,000, her cost for alterations and repairs “while in the Naval Service was $60,989.38.” When captured, vessel and cargo had an estimated value of $800,000. Ultimately, the ship and cargo sold for $509,355, half to the government for the naval pension fund, and half to officers and crew. Acting ensigns netted $9,590 and seamen about $2,000. After decommissioning, she languished yet again. Sold out of the naval service at League Island (Philadelphia) Navy Yard on 26 June 1869 for $33,000, she was still referred to “as a yacht for the late President Lincoln.”24
Evidence suggests that President Johnson sealed the fate of the first presidential yacht. The Lady Sterling/Hornet bore a taint of royalty, and Johnson thoroughly despised aristocrats and aristocracy. According to a biographer, “He did not attend theaters, he was not fond of society, and with difficulty was prevailed upon by his associates to go on week-end excursions down the Potomac.” He opposed appropriations for monuments, funeral expenses, books free for congressmen, and even politely declined the gift of a horse-drawn carriage from 40 prominent New Yorkers on 22 May 1865.25
The press, too, raised criticism of the 242-foot “yacht.” One characteristic newspaper rant inveighed against “people dragged by force from their labors and firesides to fill up a depleted army, ostensibly to save the Republic, while their plebeian Chief Magistrate is converting public property to private use—fitting up in royal splendor a steamer for a pleasure boat for himself and family at the public expense.”26 And the Troy (NY) Daily Times reported:
The captured blockade-runner, Lady Sterling, was splendidly fitted up last Spring, at New York, as a President’s yacht, and was rechristened the Hornet. But Mr. Johnson’s republican ideas have prompted him to decline this expensive and illegal luxury, so the Hornet is to be . . . sold at auction.27
Shady Lady of the Caribbean
The Lady Sterling/Hornet, had yet another career: Her new owner was the merchant Fernando Macias, a naturalized U.S. citizen living in New York. After refitting, she hastily sailed from Philadelphia on 15 August 1869. Federal marshals, suspecting her rebirth as a Cuban privateer, ordered her intercepted. (The first Cuban war for independence, the Ten Years’ War, had begun on 10 October 1868.) Returned to Philadelphia, she was scrutinized for violating U.S. neutrality laws; the formal report found “no appearance of anything illegal.”28 Released, the Hornet proceeded to Halifax where she was again seized, examined, and released by equally suspicious British authorities.
Steaming south, she lurked for several days off eastern Long Island, acquiring additional officers and crew (some ex-Confederates and Cubans), supplies, munitions, and coal. She then steamed to Smithville (present-day Southport), North Carolina, where her officers went upriver to Wilmington, hurriedly seeking coal from a David Worth, who, at the time, was seated in church. Worth denied their “urgent request,” since “he did not sell coal on Sunday.”29 The delay in coaling gave authorities time as telegraph wires hummed between Wilmington and Washington. The order came to seize the Hornet, now the privateer Cuba, and revenue cutters steamed to prevent her escape from Wilmington, where she was seized.
The United States had not recognized the Cuban insurrectionists or Cuban Republic, nor had it granted belligerent status. The Lady Sterling, alias Hornet, alias Cuba, would languish again while President Ulysses S. Grant, his cabinet, and the courts determined her fate. After her seizure, she sailed for New York in late June 1870 under the command of Captain J. N. Maffitt, erstwhile blockade-runner and commander of the Confederate cruiser Florida. The reason for her sailing soon became apparent. Fernando Macias, in a letter dated 1 June 1870, wrote the President requesting release of the vessel “for commercial purposes,” and swore there would be no violations of the law or hostilities against Spain.30
On 6 October 1870, Secretary of State Hamilton Fish telegraphed U.S. Attorney for New York Noah Davis, “The Spanish minister alleges that the steamer Hornet is about to sail . . . on an unlawful and piratical cruise.” It was another catch and release; she eventually sailed in December to Nassau, Port au Prince, and Aspinwall. At the latter port, she allegedly boarded a filibustering expedition, and landed her cargo at Punta Brava on the coast of Cuba. The New York Times reported that Spanish troops “arrived shortly afterward and captured her entire cargo” and “killed several of the expeditionists . . . . The officers of the Hornet, seeing the state of affairs on the shore, immediately went to sea.” Returning to Port au Prince, the Hornet/Cuba endured a several-month blockade by Spanish gunboats. Finally, the U.S. Navy screw sloop Congress returned her “to the United States, where . . . proceedings were taken for punishing any violation of the neutrality laws.”31 It was déjà vu all over again.
The Lady Sterling, aka Hornet, aka Cuba, morphed yet once more, becoming the Marco Aurelio. In the early 1890s the vessel appeared in Lloyd’s Register of Shipping as “exHornet, exLady Stirling [sic],” owned by R. Sais & Co., flying the Spanish flag, with port of registry, Havana. Her demise is somewhat obscure; after an ever-shifting, multifaceted career, she was finally broken up sometime around 1894.32
1. The (Washington, DC) Daily National Republican and Evening Star, 5 November 1864.
2. Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion (hereinafter ORN), ser. I, vol. 10: “The Operation of the Cruisers (April 1, 1864–December 30, 1865),” 468.
3. ORN, ser. I, vol. 10, 476. Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685–2004, Civil War Prize Case Files, compiled 1861–1865, ARC Identifier 5954450, Lady Sterling log (prior to capture): 12 August–28 October 1864, Record Group (RG) 21, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), New York City. (The files are not indexed.)
4. ORN, ser. I, vol. 3, 710.
5. The New York Times, 15 April 1862. Stephen R. Wise, Lifeline of the Confederacy (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988), 201.
6. Prize Case Files, RG 21, NARA. The Prize Court ruled that only the Calypso and Eolus would share in the prize money.
7. ORN, ser. I, vol. 11, 9. Lady Sterling log, 25 October 1864.
8. The New York Times, 11 December 1864.
9. Records Collection of the Office of Naval Records and Library, “Records of Shore Establishments, 1814–1919,” Letters Received from the Secretary of the Navy, 13 November 1826–8 June 1875, E 447, vol. 36, 236, RG 45, NARA, College Park, MD. Prize Case Files, copy of Welles telegram, RG 21, NARA.
10. Alan Fraser Houston, “Cadwalader Ringgold, U.S. Navy, Gold Rush Surveyor of San Francisco Bay and Waters to Sacramento, 1849–1850,” California History, Winter 2000–2001, 208–221, 234–35.
11. Records of the Bureau of Ships, Records of the General Superintendent of Ironclads, “Letters Sent by Commodore Cadwalader Ringgold, May 1864–1866, Ringgold letter to Gregory, 10 December 1864; Ringgold letter to Gregory, 17 November 1864; Ringgold letter to T. F. Rowland, Continental Works, 9 November 1864, RG 19, NARA, College Park, MD.
12. Index to Records of the New York (Brooklyn) Navy Yard, 107,
RG 45, NARA.
13. Ringgold letter to James Nicholson, 16 March 1865, RG 19, NARA.
14. Allen Johnson & Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937), vol. 4, 423.
15. Ringgold letter to Gregory, March 18, 1865, RG 19, NARA.
16. Henry Coppée, “Volunteer Navy, Orders, &c.,” United States Service Magazine, vol. 3 (May 1865), 489.
17. Ringgold letter to Gregory, 20 March 1865, RG 19, NARA. Letters Received from the Secretary of the Navy, 13 November 1826–8 June 1875, E 447, vol. 37, 43, RG 45, NARA.
18. The New York Times, 27 April 1865, 13 April 1865.
19. Ringgold letter to Gregory, 14 April 1865, RG 19, NARA.
20. The New York Times, 27 April 1865, 1 April 1865.
21. Ship’s Log entries for 24–25 April 1865, RG 24, NARA.
22. The New York Times, 23 July 1865. NARA RG 24, Ship’s Log entry for 22 July 1865.
23. Ship’s Log entry for 15 December 1865, RG 24, NARA.
24. Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, vol. 42, no. 247 (December 1870), 108. Papers relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 2 December 1872; Papers Relating to the Treaty of Washington; Geneva Arbitration, Containing the Case of the United States; the Case of Great Britain; the Counter Case of the United States; and a Portion of the Additional Documents; “Correspondence relative to the Hornet,” House of Representatives, 42nd Congress, 3rd Session, Ex. Doc. 1 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1872), 835–6.
25. Robert W. Winston, Andrew Johnson Plebian and Patriot (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1969, reprint of 1928), 270. The New York Times, 25 May 1865.
26. Oswego Daily Palladium, 25 March 1865.
27. Troy (NY) Daily Times, 4 December 1865.
28. Treaty of Washington, 832, 854.
29. Emma Martin Maffitt, Life and Services of John Newland Maffitt (New York: Neale Publishing Company, 1905), 364.
30. New York Tribune, 22 June 1870. Treaty of Washington, 856.
31. The New York Times, 16 January 1871. Treaty of Washington, 856.
32. Paul H. Silverstone, Civil War Navies, 1855–1883 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2001), 50.