Austin

 

(SwStr: t. 1,150 gr, 604 dw.; l. 200' bp.; b. 34'; dph. 10'; dr. 8'; s. 7-10 k.)

 

Austin was an iron sidewheeler, Harlan & Hollingsworth's Hull 65, built on the Delaware at Wilmington in 1859, sailing on the New Orleans-Galveston line of Southern S. S. Co. and similar to Arizona, with vertical beam engine. Seized at New Orleans by order of Secretary of War Benjamin, 14 January 1862, as one of 14 steamers belonging to the Charles Morgan interests, she apparently was intended for a gunboat by Maj. Gen. Mansfield Lovell, CSA, but ended as a Government owned blockade-runner under Master's Mate Charles Fowler, CSN, formerly commanding CSS Neptune. She was unarmed when captured by USS Metacomet off Mobile Bay, 6 June 1864, operating under British registry as Donegal, her name also in the U.S. Navy, where she finished out the war. She served the Morgans again from 1865 to 1876.