Details dealing with this ship can be found in several books and on several websites. I used some to compile the small note.
The page on Wikepedia dealing with the Indianola supplies the net information. She was purchased by major General Le Wallace on 2 September 1862 from her builder Joseph Brown still unfinished lying at the yard at Cincinnati, Ohio, launched the 4th and commissioned the 27th. On 24 February 1863 captured by Confederate naval forces when she was stranded on the west bank of the Red River at the head of Palmyra Island. A day later tried the Confederates to blew her up. After the Union troops captured Vicksburg was she on 5 January 1865 salvaged, towed to Mound City, Illinois and there sold 12 days later to be broken up. With a displacement of 511 tons were her dimensions 53 x 15 x 1,5 metres or 174’x 50’x 5’. Her speed was 9 knots. The armament consisted of 2-11” Dahlgren smoothbore guns and 2-9” Dahlgren smoothbore guns.
The Hand-Book page 92, says that she measured 442 tons and was armed with 4 guns. The Confederates destroyed her armament afraid of an appearing Northern dummy ironclad send on 4 February 1863.
The Friend page 216 described her as “one of the most formidable gunboats belonging to the U.S. and was considered invulnerable.”
The website www. historynet.com described her as a powerful new ironclad with as building costs 183,662.56 dollars armed with 2-11” placed forward and 2-9” guns placed aft. This website referred to Appleton’s Cyclopedia for her description: “a new iron-clad gun-boat, one hundred and seventy-four feet long, fifty feet beam, ten feet from the top of her deck to the bottom of her keel. Her sides five feet down were thirty-two inches thick of oak. Outside of this was three-inch-thick plate iron. Her casemate stood at an incline of twenty-six and a half degrees, and was covered with three-inch iron. She had seven engines-two for working her side wheels, two of her propellers, two for her capstans, and one for supplying water and working the bilge and fire pumps.” Apparently was she build for the navy but seized by the Union army.
Sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Indianola_(1862)
http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-i/indanola.htm
Harper’s Weekly dated 28 March 1863 published on the website http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/1863/march/indianola.htm
USS Indianola: Union Ironclad in the American Civil War written by Robert Collins Suhr and published on the website http://www.historynet.com/uss-indianola-union-ironclad-in-the-american-civil-war.htm. The American Annual Cyclopaedia and register of important events of the year 1864, vol III to which this author referred to was published by D. Appleton&Co, at New York in 1869 and is readable through the website books.google.nl. According to the edition for 1863 was she a combination of a river ram-gunboat with a small draught and a high speed. The wooden sides were 3” thick and above a 3” thick armour of iron. The wheels, wheel house and roof were bomb free.
B.S. Osbon. Hand Book of the United States Navy. New York, 1864.
The Friend. Religious and literary journal. Vol XXXVI. Philadelphia, 1863.
