C.S.S. Hope, 1864

Description

Owner: The Confederate Government of the United States, Richmond, VA, USA;
Builder: Jones, Quiggin & Co, Liverpool, UK;
Built: 1864;
3871 GRTons;  Leingth: 400 ft (120 m); Beam: 47 ft (14 m);

One of the successful Confederate Navy’s blockade runners built in 1864 by Jones, Quiggin & Company, Liverpool, a sister-ship to the famous Colonel Lamb. The shipbuilder, William Quiggin, registered these in his name then quietly transferred them to Confederate agent J. B. Lafitte in Nassau, where she fitted out. Hope measured 281’6″ with a beam of 35′ and draft of 8′ or 11′, crew 66 with a speed of 16 knots. She was a large and very strong iron and steel paddle-wheeler, called the “finest and fastest steamer in the trade”. Hope was better equipped so better able to run the high seas often encountered on the eastern seaboard of America. She was procured in Britain for the Confederate Government shortly before or after she left the Liverpool yard of Jones, Quiggin & Co. As a sister to the ‘Colonel Lamb‘, she was almost identical except for the presence of the turtleback fairing, forward. She could carry over 1,800 cotton bales and possessed the safety factor of five watertight compartments. Two fore-and-aft engines of 350 nominal horsepower, supplied by 4 boilers, gave ‘Hope’ power to outrun most of her contemporaries. Yet she was cornered on 22 October 1864 by USS Eolus, trying to enter Cape Fear River after a sixty-five-mile chase off Wilmington. The capture netted more than a thousand dollars in prize money for each member of the blockader’s crew.