USS Camanche (1864)
| The USS Camanche off Mare Island, during the Spanish-American War |
| | Career | |
|---|
| Launched: | 14 November 1864 |
| Commissioned: | May 1865 |
| Decommissioned: | 1898 |
| Fate: | sold, 22 March 1899 |
| General Characteristics |
|---|
| Displacement: | 1,335 tons |
| Length: | 200 ft (61 m) |
| Beam: | 46 ft (14 m) |
| Draft: | 11 ft 6 in (3.5 m) |
| Propulsion: | Screw Steamer |
| Speed: | 7 knots (13 km/h) |
| Complement: | 76 |
| Armament: | 2 × 15 in (380 mm) Dahlgren smoothbore guns |
| Armour: | • 11 in (28 cm) turret,
• 8 in (20 cm) pilothouse,
• 5 in (13 cm) hull,
• 1 in (3 cm) deck |
USS Camanche, a 1335-ton
Passaic-class monitor, was prefabricated at
Jersey City, N.J. by Secor Brothers, Co. Her materials were then disassembled and shipped around
Cape Horn in the sailing ship
Aquila to
San Francisco, Calif., where
Aquila sank on
14 November 1863. The monitor's parts were salvaged and assembled at San Francisco and she was launched
14 November 1864 Camanche went into commission in May 1865,
Lieutenant Commander C. J. McDougal in command.
Commissioned just after the end of the
Civil War, for more than a year, until the arrival of the larger twin-turret monitor
Monadnock,
Camanche was the
United States Navy's only
ironclad warship on the
Pacific coast, and she was one of but two stationed there for nearly two and a half decades.
Camanche's career was a quiet one, with the ship generally maintained in decommissioned status at the
Mare Island Navy Yard, in northern
San Francisco Bay. She was the
California Naval Militia's training ship in 1896â€"
97 and appears to have been reactivated for a few months in 1898, during the
Spanish-American War for coastal defense purposes. USS
Camanche was sold
22 March 1899, but photographic evidence indicates that she remained in the San Francisco area for several years after that.
|
The USS Albatross in San Francisco Bay, circa 1902. The USS Camanche is visible in the background. |
See
USS Camanche for other ships of this name.
*
This article contains text from the US Naval Historical Center.*
*
history.navy.mil: USS Camanche*
navsource.org: USS Sangamon *
hazegray.org: USS Sangamon 
