Build in 1861 at New Albany, Indiana as the Louisville. She was by the Northern (Union) gunboats Manitou and Rattler captured while being used as the Southern (Confederate) Army cargo ship Louisville in the Little Red River on 13 July 1863 and the same year purchased by the Union navy from the prize court at Cairo, Illinois. She was taken into service as the Ouachita on 18 January of the next year with the task preventing the Confederate States trading abroad. She was decommissioned on 3 July 1865 and during an auction at Mound City, Illinois on 25 September bought by Tait, Able and Gill.
With a displacement of 720 tons were her dimensions 227’6”x 38’0”x 7’0” and a depth of hold of 7’6”or 69,34 x 11,58 x 2,13 metres and 2,29 metres. She was armed with 4-30pdr Parrott rifles (4 x Army, 1 x Navy), 8-24pdr guns and 1-12pdr rifled gun. The two engines and 5 boilers allowed a speed of 7 (upstream)-8 knots.
Executive documents etc. p. 536: “The night was dark, and it was raining very hard, and the Manitou and Rattler succeeded in capturing the rebel steamer Louisville, one of the largest and perhaps the best steamers now in the western waters“.
Sources
Wikepedia
Executive documents printed by order of the House of Representatives during the first session of the thirty-eighth congress, 1863-'64. Washington, 1864
Paul H. Silverstone. Civil War Navies 1855-1883. Annapolis, 2011.
