With a iron build hull and a schooner rigging.. Measured 624 tons with as dimensions 283‘x 20‘x 10‘. Speed 13,5 knots. Built as the British merchant side wheeler Giraffe in August 1860 at Glasgow, Scotland (Silverstone launched 16 May 1860 at Thomson, Glasgow) to serve on the line Glasgow-Belfast. Bought by the company Alexander Collie&Co to be used as blockade-runner but sold by them to the Confederate States and commissioned as the blockade runner Robert E. Lee. On 9 November 1863 captured by the USS James Adger and Iron Age. She was acquired by the USN in January of the next year and rebuild into a gunboat and commissioned in June the same year as the USS Fort Donelson. In August of the next year decommissioned while she was at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and sold in October to become the merchant ship Isabella until she was purchased by the Chilean government and commissioned into the Chilean navy as the Concepción. Wikepedia said that she was in 1866 bought by Chile for 85,000 American dollars and again sold on 1 May 1868 (history said that Chile bought he rin 1869).
Sources
http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-f/ft-dnlsn.htm
http://users.wowway.com/~jenkins/ironclads/famous.htm
Paul H. Silverstone. Civil war navies 1855-1883.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSS_Robert_E._Lee
Joseph McKenna. British ships in the Confederate Navy, p. 245 said that she was bought by the merchant company Alexander Collie&Co of Manchester owing several blockade-runners with a weight of 900 tons and as dimensions 260’x 20’ x 10’ and a speed of 13 knots.
