(SwTug: t. 59)
Seaboard was a wooden towboat built at Philadelphia in 1859 and first owned in Norfolk, Va. Confederate military authorities acquired her in 1861 and turned her over to the Engineer Corps, CSA, for operation most of the war. She was captured by the Federal army and USS Lilac at the upper or Tree Hill bridge over the James below Richmond, 4 April 1865.
As a prize of war, passing the obstructions at Drewry's Bluff, Seaboard hit a snag and had to be run aground to prevent her sinking in deep water. By July the little tug came to be remembered as the storm center of interservice acrimony when Col. J. B. Howard, local Army Quartermaster, raised and sent her to Norfolk for repairs; Admiral William Radford, USN, claimed her as "original captor."
