Squando (Monitor)
1865–1874
(Monitor: displacement 1,175; 1ength 225'5"; beam 45'2"; draft 8'3"; speed 9 knots; complement 69; armament 2 11-inch Dahlgren smoothbores; class Casco)
Squando, a light-draft monitor, was laid down at East Boston, Mass., by McKay & Aldus in 1863.
While Squando was under construction, the launching of Chimo, a sister ship, on 5 May 1864 and subsequent trials revealed that the displacement of that monitor had been miscalculated; and that as a result, she possessed too little freeboard to be seaworthy. The Navy attempted to correct this defect in other Casco-class vessels by making various changes in the unfinished ships. In Squando’s case, on 24 June 1864, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles ordered the contractor to raise the monitor’s deck 22 inches to provide her sufficient freeboard for safe coastal operations.
The ship, her turret and pilot house installed as originally planned, was launched on 6 January 1865, and work on her was completed on 30 March. She was delivered to the Navy at the Boston [Mass.] Navy Yard on 5 April, where she was commissioned on 6 June 1865, Acting Master George H. Leinas in command.
After being fitted out at Boston and New York, Squando departed the latter port on 30 July 1865 and proceeded to Charleston, S.C., for service in the North Atlantic Squadron.
Following duty in that historic South Carolina harbor, encouraging the return of stability to the still uneasy birthplace of the Confederacy, Squando returned north in May 1866. She was decommissioned on 26 May 1866 and laid up at League Island, Pa.
While in reserve, the ship was renamed Erebus on 15 June 1869, but resumed the name Squando on 10 August of the same year. She was broken up at League Island in 1874.
Updated, Robert J. Cressman
2 December 2020
