USS Contoocook (1864)
USS Contoocook was the lead Contoocook-class sloop of the United States Navy. She was laid down during the American Civil War to deter British intervention in 1864, although timber shortages and a rushed construction delayed progress. Launched in 1864 and commissioned in 1868, her design was criticized and green wood limited her service life. While build as a sloop, modifications in 1869 enlarged her armament and converted her into a frigate. That year, she was renamed Albany as part of a new Navy-wide naming standard. She preformed two sailings to the East Indies between 1868 and 1869 as part of a mission to protect American interests. In 1870, she was decommissioned and used as a quarantine ship in New York City. Redundant after new quarantine sites were finished, she was sold off in late 1872.
Development
During the American Civil War, the Confederate States used British-built privateers to hamper Union trade; one such privateer, CSS Alabama, was responsible for destroying 65 merchant vessels. The disruption of Union trade routes drove up domestic prices, damaged the economy, and forced the reassignment of ships from blockade duties against the South. The United States feared that the United Kingdom would directly intervene to support the Confederacya scenario that would have left the Union Navy outmatched by the Royal Navy. In response, the Union Navy began planning for a possible war. While the American fleet could not match the British in conventional battles, the plan called for employing tactics similar to those used by the Confederacy: commerce raiding. By using cruisers to launch hit-and-run attacks on British ports and merchant shipping, the Union hoped to make a war too costly for Britain to justify, ultimately forcing it back into neutrality.For the new role, the Navy developed "commerce destroyers" that had the range and speed to intercept enemy ships at sea. Twenty-seven such ships were ordered by Congress in 1863, split into three classes varying in size, speed, and armament. The smallest of these designs became known as the Contoocook-class sloop. By 1864, the new ships were built according to a new doctrine of the Navy for the post-war era. Congress was only interested in a Navy that could directly protect the United States, not one that could rival the Royal or French Navies. Instead of large, costly, ocean-going ironclads such as USS Dunderburg, the legislator wanted the Navy to only consist of coastal ironclads that would protect the shoreline and the commerce destroyers to operate out at sea and deter aggression from foreign nations.
Design
The Contoocook-class hulls were long, narrow, and shallow in an attempt to achieve high speeds. The class had a beam of, depth of, a length along the waterline of, had a displacement of, and a complement of 350. Contoocook was equipped with four main boilers and two superheating boilers, which provided steam to two horizontal back action steam stroke engines, which turned a single propeller. The ship was considered a sloop by the US Navy and a corvette by foreign standards. Her armament consisted of a broadside of eight Dahlgren cannons and a Parrott rifled muzzle-loading gun on the foredeck at her commissioning.Service history
In 1863, her keel was laid down at the Portsmouth Navy Yard, and she was launched on 3 December 1864. Like many other shipbuilding projects during the war, construction was rushed to get ships into service as soon as possible. A shortage of seasoned timber led to the class built out of heterogeneous green timber, which shortened the ships' service lives. As shortages continued after the war ended, ships were left half-built in the yards for years in an attempt to season the wood. Green, or undried, timber was undesirable as it had a tendency to shrink, rot, and leave a ship in need of uneconomic repair.She was finally commissioned on 14 March 1868, and her first assignment was to serve as the flagship of the North Atlantic Squadron. Throughout 1868 and 1869, she patrolled the West Indies to protect American interests. While the sloop was initially named Contoocook, after the river and town in New Hampshire, Secretary of the Navy Adolph Borie disapproved of warships with Native American-sounding names and the unclear conventions used across the fleet. As a result, he ordered a systematic renaming of vessels. The ship was renamed Albany, after Albany, New York, on 15 May 1869. That year, a post-war audit inspected her sister ship Severn; the design was criticized as being too narrow and having an unnecessary amount of machinery. While a spar deck was added and the rigging altered on each ship, neither issue was ultimately addressed. The addition of the deck allowed an additional six cannons added to the broadside. After the modifications, the ships were considered frigates by the Navy.
She again operated in the West Indies later that year, and was decommissioned on 7 January 1870. Back in the United States, the vessel was used as a quarantine ship in New York. After a mob burned down the New York Marine Hospital in 1858, ships in New York Bay were used as an interim replacement. She was sold off 12 December 1872, after dedicated quarantine facilities on Swinburne and Hoffman Island opened.