Amazon (Bark)
1861
The Navy retained the name carried by this vessel at the time of her acquisition.
(Bark: tonnage 318)
Amazon—a bark-rigged, wooden-hulled whaler which had operated out of Fairhaven, Mass.— was purchased there by the Navy on 30 October 1861 to be laden with stone and sunk as an obstruction blocking the channel of Savannah, Georgia. She took on 325 tons of stone purchased from nearby farms and sailed south on 20 November with the first contingent of stone whalers.
Upon her arrival at Savannah early in December 1861, she found that the defenders of that port had themselves already blocked the channels of the harbor with sunken hulks in the hope of barring the approach of a Northern invasion fleet. Since the mission of the Yankee whalers at Savannah had already been carried out, albeit by Confederate forces, Amazon and her sister ships sailed to Charleston, S.C., where they were sunk across Charleston’s main channel on 19 and 20 December 1861.
James L. Mooney
20 July 1983
