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courtesy of Dr. Chris E. Fonvielle Jr.
oats cruising through Masonboro Inlet
pass over a piece of Wrightsville Beach history. Buried underneath
15 feet of sand near the inlet’s mouth are the remains of
the US Columbia, a gunboat that ran aground accidentally while
on blockade duty in mid-January 1863. She is one of more than
80 Civil War shipwrecks along the Cape Fear coast, the highest
concentration of such derelicts in the country, including four off
of Wrightsville Beach. Most of the ships were blockade-runners
chased ashore by Union blockaders while attempting to smuggle
supplies into the Confederacy by way of Wilmington. Only a few
Union vessels were lost off of the southeastern North Carolina
coast, and the wreck of the Columbia is largely unknown today.
The Columbia began her career as a Confederate blockade-
runner. Built by Archibald Denny in Dumbarton, Scotland, in
July 1862, she was a 503-ton iron-hulled, screw steamer that
measured 168 feet long and 25 feet wide, with a 14-foot draft.
The US Santiago de Cuba captured the Columbia on her
maiden voyage as she attempted to run the blockade of Florida
on August 3, 1862. The US government purchased the Columbia
from a prize court at Key West the following November and
assigned her to the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron. Fitted
out as a cruiser at Hampton Roads, Virginia, in the autumn of
1862, her armament comprised six 24-pounder smoothbore
cannons and one 30-pounder rifled cannon. The crew totaled 100
officers and sailors commanded by Lieutenant James P. Couthouy.
The Columbia headed southward in late December 1862 to take
up station with the Union’s blockading force off of Wilmington,
North Carolina. The squadron desperately needed her services, as
the blockade of the Tar Heel seaport had been largely ineffective.
The Columbia’s duty was to cruise along the coast and intercept
www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM
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Only one image of the US Columbia is known to exist (shown on pages 14 -15) — an engraving completed
shortly after its capture as a Confederate blockade-runner while trying to run the blockade of Florida in
early August 1862. The US Monticello (above) was a similar looking screw steamer that also served with the
Wilmington blockading squadron. She helped capture Fort Fisher and Wilmington in the winter of 1865.