Nyanza (Side-Wheel Gunboat)
1863-1865
The Navy retained the name carried by this vessel at the time of her acquisition.
(Side-wheel gunboat: tonnage 203; armament 6 24-pounder howitzers)
Nyanza, a wooden-hull side-wheel steamer built at Belle Vernon, Pa., in 1863, was purchased by the Navy at Cincinnati, Ohio, on 4 November 1863; and commissioned at Mound City, Illinois, on 21 December 1863, four days before Christmas, Acting Lt. Samuel B. Washburn in command.
During the Civil War, Nyanza patrolled the Mississippi and its tributaries protecting Union lines of communication and supply on that great inland waterway and preventing Confederate activity. She captured the schooner J. W. Wilder in the Atchafalaya River, La., on 15 March 1864; and took the schooner Mandoline, laden with cotton in Atchafalaya Bay, La., on 13 April 1864.
After hostilities ceased, Nyanza was decommissioned at New Orleans, La., on 21 July 1865 and was sold at public auction there to Owen Finnegan on 12 August 1865. Redocumented a fortnight later, on 26 August 1865, the side-wheeler remained in merchant service until 1873.
Updated, Robert J. Cressman
13 May 2022
