USS Camanche at San Francisco Bay 1866
As for the Union Navy's Pacific Squadron? The U.S. Navy maintained a small squadron patrolling the coastline from Panama to British Columbia. Their primary mission was to deter Confederate raiders from intercepting steamships transporting millions of dollars in gold to the U.S. Treasury and to safeguard what was the crucial Mare Island Naval Shipyard in San Francisco Bay.
To augment the defense of San Francisco Bay, the Union Navy sent what was described as "One of those new-fangled monitor-things" around the Horn to California. It's true, the ironclad vessel was the USS Camanche.
Because of incidents of Confederate warships and privateers operating in the Pacific that threatened gold shipments vital to the Union Cause, the ironclad monitor USS Camanche was the Union Navy's answer to military officials and residents of San
Francisco requesting the Navy Department in Washington D.C. to provide a "floating battery" for the defense of San Francisco Bay against Confederate warships.
That was a huge commitment from the U.S. Navy which in 1861 when the Civil War started only had seven older sloops-of-war to defend and patrol the Pacific Ocean from Panama to China. So, yes, besides Confederate agents taking note of the fact that the U.S. Navy dedicate a monitor ship to San Francisco Bay, it was something that was also noted by the large number of foreign nations who had their man-of-war ships visiting San Francisco.
In March of 1862, right after the battle between the Monitor and the Merrimack,
the Union authorized an ironclad monitor
for the Pacific Coast. For that, the U.S. Navy invited bids for constructing the vessel. The job of building the monitor was awarded at the cost of a half a
million dollars. That's a lot of money in 1862.
The proposal called for prefabricating
the vessel in sections on the East Coast and then shipping the pieces to San
Francisco's Union Navy Mare Island Naval Shipyard in San Francisco Bay for reassembly. The plan was carried out, but with tremendous difficulties.
The ironclad USS Camanche was
one of ten vessels of the monitor class ordered by the U.S. government. Using plans and specifications furnished by John Ericsson, designer of the
original Monitor. Ericsson named the California-bound craft Coman
che, but somehow the spelling was changed, and in the official Navy
records it always appears as Camanche.
USS Camanche was a Passaic-class monitor that was prefabricated at Jersey City, New Jersey by Donahue, Ryan and Secor for the sum of $613,164.98, which is about $9.68 million in present day dollars.
To get her to San Francisco Bay, she was disassembled and shipped around Cape Horn in the sailing ship Aquila to San Francisco, California. The Aquila arrived in San Francisco on November 10, 1863, and almost immediately sank at her wharf in 30 feet of water a few days later on November 14th. Why did she sink? It's said she sank as a result of storm damage and a collision with another ship.
The monitor's parts and pieces were salvaged and she was launched a year later on November 14th, 1864. She was commissioned "USS Camanche" in May 1865 with Lieutenant Commander Charles J. McDougal in command. So yes, she was commissioned just after the end of the Civil War. But, for more than a year. Camanche was the only U.S. ironclad ship on the Pacific coast. She was later relieved by the larger monitor USS Monadnock.
For the next 25 years, the Comanche was stationed at the Mare Island Navy Yard, in northern San Francisco Bay. She served as the California Naval Militia's training ship from 1896 to 1897, and then she was reactivated for service a few months in 1898 during the Spanish–American War for coastal defense purposes. After the Spanish-American War, she was sold for scrap and refitted as a coal hauler in 1899.
On March 5, 1937, the Sausalito News newspaper reported on her fate:
"So the old craft lay at her old home until a local coal concern bought her for a song, and converted her into a coal barge. She did duty until oil and gas took the place of coal and is now lying at the east end of the Bethlehem shipyard, a useless forgotten hulk. Her contract price was $400,000.00."
While that was her epitaph, how many people knew that the Union Navy was so concerned about the gold shipments leaving California safely that they stationed an Ironclad monitor in San Francisco Bay to take on Confederate raider ships on the West Coast. Because of that fact, instead of her being known as just an ironclad monitor ship that appeared jinxed from her start, a ship that sank before being assembled, and a ship that was pretty much obsolete before her commissioning, the USS Camanche really deserves to be remembered as the first Civil War Union ironclad monitor ship stationed in San Francisco Bay for the defense of the Pacific coast.
Tom Correa
