Etna

A volcano in eastern Sicily, whose name occasionally appears in period correspondence as Aetna (q.v.), an alternate spelling.

(Bomb Ketch: tonnage 139; length 83'6"; beam 24'; depth of hold 8'; complement 30; armament 1 13-inch mortar, 2 8-inch howitzers and 8 long 8-pdrs)

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The first Etna -- a bomb ketch designed by Jacob Coffin and Capt. Edward Preble and built in Portland, Maine, under a contract signed with William Moulton on 1 July 1805 -- was launched on 18 June 1806. Etna was commissioned on 19 July 1806, with Lt. Jacob Jones in command – Jones’ perhaps being so assigned in keeping with Capt. Preble’s sentiments (expressed in a 6 February 1806 letter to Secretary of the Navy Robert Smith) that that ship “certainly ought to have one of our ablest [lieutenants] for a commander.”

After fitting out at the Boston Navy Yard, receiving her armament and her full crew, Etna sailed for New Orleans, Louisiana, on 29 September 1806, arriving there on 6 November. She was employed at the New Orleans Station until April 1807, when she was placed in ordinary.

Etna was recommissioned soon after, Lt. Joseph Bainbridge in command, and sailed for Washington, D.C. on 8 July 1807 with a detachment of marines on board. From Washington, she proceeded thence to New York, and thence to New Orleans, where she was ultimately employed as a sheer-hulk.

On 19 August 1812, a devastating hurricane, that “both in violence and duration, exceeded any thing of the kind, within the recollections of the oldest inhabitant of the country…” struck the region. Capt. John Shaw, commanding the New Orleans Station, reported to Secretary of the Navy Paul Hamilton four days after the storm that Etna had been “driven from her position, by several large Merchant vessels, sunk, and had Two men drowned…”

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By Alma R. Lawrence, Emma Byrnes, and Robert J. Cressman