Named after the spouse of president Jefferson Davis. She was in March 1861 as the Richmond iron tug James Gray acquired by the South Californian governor Francis Wilkinson Pickers. She was armed with a 1-24pdr howitzer and 1-12pdr rifled gun and commissioned in the South Carolina Navy. The Confederates States acquired her on 7 May the same year paying 32,000 dollars and she became part of the Confederate Navy. Build in 1858 at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania she had a displacement of 250 tons. In the end of the next year were her engines removed while needed for the CSS Palmetto State. Decommissioned she became a rather successful blockade runner. She was captured in 1865 by Union forces at Charleston which handed her over to the Light House Board. At the moment of her capture she was again missing engines.
