USS Abeona (1831)

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Career

United States Navy Jack

Ordered:

Laid down:

Launched:

Commissioned:

Decommissioned:

Fate:

Destroyed by fire

General Characteristics

Displacement:

206 tons

Length:

157 ft (48 m)

Beam:

31 ft (9 m)

Draft:

4 ft (1 m)

Speed:

Complement:

Armament:

2 × 30-pounder Parrott rifles,
2 × 74-pounder smoothbore cannon,
2 × 12-pounder rifled cannon

USS Abeona was a stern wheel steamer in the service of the United States Navy, named after the Roman goddess Abeona.

She was built in 1831 at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, purchased by the Navy on 21 December 1864, converted to a "tinclad" gunboat at Mound City, Illinois, and commissioned there on 10 April 1865 (one day after the surrender of Robert E. Lee) with Acting Master Samuel Hall in command.

From that day, the gunboat performed patrol and guard duty on the Mississippi River and its tributaries â€" primarily in the Mississippi Squadrons Fifth (the Mississippi between Natchez and Vicksburg) and the Tenth (the Cumberland River and upper Ohio River) Districts. After all organized Confederate resistance ceased and the South had begun its painful and uncertain return to a peaceful way of life, Abeona was decommissioned, at Mound City, on 4 August 1865.

She was sold there on 11 August 1865 to J. A. Williamson et al and was redocumented under the same name on 17 October 1865. The veteran stern wheeler operated on the Mississippi and its branches until she caught fire at Cincinnati on 7 March 1872 and was destroyed.

As of 2004, no other ships in the United States Navy have borne this name.

References