Atlantic

 

(SwStr: t. 623 or 660)

 

Atlantic was a wooden steamer, one of 14 belonging to Charles Morgan's Southern S. S. Co. seized for "public service" by order of Brig. Gen. Mansfield Lovell at New Orleans, 14 January 1862. Surprisingly, she became a Government-owned blockade runner instead of a gunboat : Her engines being low-pressure—easier to protect against shot and offering relative fuel economy—would have made her a logical choice for a cottonclad, but General Lovell the following day found her "small and poor" and asked for Galveston (q.v.) in her place. Apparently Secretary of War Benjamin honored his request, for Atlantic, under Captain Smith, turned up in Havana, 19 April, and again in May and September, with over 1,000 bales of cotton. The U.S. Consul in Havana mentions her again, in June 1863 as leaving for Nassau. It is not altogether clear when her name was changed to Elizabeth under British registry, Capt. Thomas J. Lockwood; owned by the Confederacy's secret office abroad, Fraser, Trenholm & Co., Liverpool. Her operations changed to Wilmington, N.C.; running in there 24 September 1863 she grounded and was burned to escape capture at Lockwood's Folly in the Cape Fear River, 12 miles from Fort Caswell.