CSS ''Livingston'' was constructed at

New Orleans New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...

, La., during 1861, a

ferry A ferry is a boat or ship that transports passengers, and occasionally vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A small passenger ferry with multiple stops, like those in Venice, Italy, is sometimes referred to as a water taxi or water bus ...

towboat A pusher, pusher craft, pusher boat, pusher tug, or towboat, is a boat designed for pushing barges or car floats. In the United States, the industries that use these vessels refer to them as towboats. These vessels are characterized by a squa ...

converted to a warship on the ways by John Hughes and Co. In January 1862 she was taken up the

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to Columbus, Ky., to be fitted for service and during much of that year operated in the vicinity of Island No. 10, with Comdr. R. F. Pinkney, CSN, in command. She formed part of the flotilla, at one time numbering 17 vessels, under command of Brig. Gen. M. Lovell, CSA. Secretary of the Navy S. R. Mallory wrote General Lovell on 23 January 1862: "The ''Livingston'' you will find to be, I think, a superior steamer, capable of doing capital service. Later she ascended the Yazoo River in Mississippi where she was burned by the Confederates on 26 June 1862 to prevent capture. An opinion of her somewhat divergent from Sec. Mallory's was expressed by Midshipman James M. Morgan, CSN, who served in her: "There had also been built (from designs by a locomotive roundhouse architect, I suppose) the most wonderful contraption that was ever seen afloat, called the ''Livingston;'' she carried 6 guns, 3 for'd and 3 abaft the paddle boxes, and she was almost circular in shape. She was so slow that her crew facetiously complained that when she was going downstream at full speed they could not sleep on account of the drift logs catching up with her and bumping against the

stern The stern is the back or aft-most part of a ship or boat, technically defined as the area built up over the sternpost, extending upwards from the counter rail to the taffrail. The stern lies opposite the bow, the foremost part of a ship. O ...

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Livingston Ships of the Confederate States Navy Gunboats of the Confederate States Navy Ships Shipwrecks of the Yazoo River