АҚШ Әскери-теңіз күштерінің «Сан-Хасинто» фрегаты және «Трент» оқиғасы

Screw frigate in the US Navy famous for her role in the Trent Affair of 1861

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On 27 August 1861, shortly before San Jacinto sailed for home, Capt. Charles Wilkes assumed command of the ship. En route back to the United States for service in the Union Navy during the American Civil War, the warship searched for the Confederate cruiser, Sumter, which, under Capt. Raphael Semmes, CSN, was then preying upon Union shipping in the Atlantic. She visited the Windward Passage, Jamaica, Grand Cayman, and Boca Grande, Florida while seeking the Southern commerce raider. When the ship touched at Cienfuegos, Cuba, for coal, Wilkes learned that James M. Mason and John Slidell, former United States senators and new Confederate envoys to Britain and France, had escaped from Charleston, South Carolina, on 12 October in the speedy coastal packet, Theodora, and were at Havana awaiting transportation to Europe. Wilkes raced around the island to Havana, bent on intercepting Theodora on the blockade runner's return trip but arrived on the last day of the month, one day after his quarry had departed. However, he learned that the Southern diplomats were still at Havana and intended to sail for St. Thomas a week later in the British mail packet, Trent. They planned to board a British liner there to complete their journey to London. Wilkes proceeded in San Jacinto to a narrow part of the Old Bahama Channel, some 230 miles east of Havana, and waited there to waylay Trent. On 8 November, two shots across the mail packet's bow made her master heave to. A boarding party from San Jacinto seized the Confederate diplomats and their secretaries and then permitted the packet to resume her voyage. A week later, when San Jacinto reached Norfolk with the prisoners, the exultant North hailed the news as a great Union triumph. The incident strained United States relations with Britain almost to the breaking point and came to be known as the Trent Affair. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles ordered Wilkes to take the prisoners to Boston, Massachusetts in the San Jacinto. The Harbor Pilot, Captain Abel F. Hayden, anchored the San Jacinto in the Boston channel. They were held at Fort Warren until quietly released on New Year's Day, 1862, and taken to Provincetown, Massachusetts, to board for passage to London. The diplomatic crisis then subsided.

San Jacinto was decommissioned on 30 November 1861 for overhaul at the Boston Navy Yard and was prepared for service as flagship of the Gulf Blockading Squadron. Recommissioned on 1 March 1862,commanded by William Ronckendorff, the steamer departed Boston for Hampton Roads on the ninth, the day of the epic battle between Monitor and CSS Virginia, the former Merrimack. San Jacinto reached the Virginia Capes on the 15th and remained in the area temporarily assigned to the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron to bolster Union naval forces in Hampton Roads lest Virginia return to that strategic waterway and threaten General George McClellan's army which was then pushing up the peninsula between the James and York rivers toward Richmond, Virginia. On 11 April 1862, Virginia rounded Sewell's Point and entered Hampton Roads. Under the ironclad's protection, CSS Jamestown and CSS Raleigh approached the Hampton shore and captured three small Union Army transports. No major engagement developed and the Confederate ships retired upstream late in the afternoon. On 5 May, President Abraham Lincoln arrived in Hampton Roads on board the steamer, Miami, to take personal charge of the stalled Peninsula Campaign; and, for the next five days, acted as Commander in Chief in the field. At his orders three days later, San Jacinto joined other Union warships in bombarding Sewell's Point. Events moved fast thereafter. Confederate troops withdrew from Norfolk and Suffolk, Virginia and set fire to the Navy Yard at Portsmouth, Virginia. San Jacinto helped to provide naval support as U. S. troops occupied the evacuated area. In the early hours of 11 May, Virginia's crew set the dreaded Southern ironclad ablaze and she blew up before dawn. With the end of the principal Confederate naval threat to Union forces on the peninsula and its surrounding water, San Jacinto was free to resume her voyage south. She departed Hampton Roads on the 23rd, carrying Flag Officer James L. Lardner, and reached Key West, Florida, on 1 June. Three days later, Lardner relieved Flag Officer William McKean in command of the East Gulf Blockading Squadron, and San Jacinto became the squadron flagship. The ship's tour of duty as flagship was cut short. On 1 August, Lardner reported that yellow fever had broken out on the ship; and, the next day, she sailed north. She arrived at the quarantine area off Deer Island, near Boston, on the ninth. The health of her crew restored, San Jacinto was assigned to the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, departed Boston on 15 October and, four days later, joined the blockade off Wilmington, North Carolina. As she was taking station in the blockade, orders from Washington directed the ship to proceed immediately to Hampton Roads, fill her bunkers with coal, and steam at top speed to the coast of Nova Scotia in search of the Confederate cruiser, Alabama, with which the elusive Raphael Semmes had struck a series of rapid blows against American shipping and fishing and caused Northern merchants to clamor for protection. San Jacinto got under way on the 22nd and reached Hampton Roads on the morning of the 24th. While she was preparing for sea, reports reached Washington indicating that Alabama might have altered her course. Accordingly, when San Jacinto sailed on the morning of the 26th, she headed via Bermuda to the West Indies. In the weeks that followed, the frigate and Alabama played hide and seek in the Caribbean. On the morning of 19 November, the Federal warship finally caught up with Semmes when she reached Fort Royal, Martinique. Alabama had anchored there the previous morning and was enjoying sanctuary in the neutral port. San Jacinto waited at the entrance to the harbor just outside the three mile limit required by international law, but Alabama slipped by her to comparative safety at sea during the ensuing dark and rainy night. As neither ship saw the other during the escape, San Jacinto remained at Fort Royal until certain that Alabama was not hiding in some secluded spot within the bay, but had indeed escaped. On the 21st, San Jacinto got under way and searched for her slippery adversary until arriving at Key West on 15 January 1863.

On New Year's Day, 1865, the ship struck a reef near Great Abaco Island and filled with water. Her guns, along with some equipment and provisions, were saved; but efforts to salvage the ship were unsuccessful. The ship's hulk was sold at Nassau, New Providence, on 17 May 1871.