USS Maria J. Carlton (1861)

Maria J. Carlton was purchased by the U.S. Navy at Middletown, Connecticut, from a Mr. Warner of Haddam, Connecticut, on 15 October 1861. She was converted into mortar schooner at the New York Navy Yard in Brooklyn, New York, and commissioned on 29 January 1862 with Acting Master Charles E. Jack in command.

Assigned to the Mortar Flotilla, which under the command of Commander David Dixon Porter and organized by the U.S. Navy to neutralize Confederate forts guarding the sea approach to New Orleans, Louisiana, the schooner got underway for the mouth of the Mississippi River in mid-February 1862. Despite a heavy gale off Cape Hatteras. North Carolina, which carried away her mainmast, rigging, and sails, she crossed the bar at Pass a l’Outre on 18 March 1862 and anchored in the waters of the Mississippi River Delta.

After preparing for the assault, the mortar schooners moved upstream to carefully selected positions and opened fire on Fort St. Philip and Fort Jackson, which stood between Flag Officer David Farragut’s invasion fleet and New Orleans, the Confederacy’s largest and wealthiest city. Maria J. Carlton operated with the 2nd Division of the Mortar Flotilla in the cannonade.

In the thick of action on 19 April 1862, [1] the second day of the bombardment, a Confederate shot struck Maria J. Carlton′s magazine deck and tore a large hole in her bottom, wounding two crewmen. The schooner quickly sank. On 25 April 1862, Union forces destroyed the remains of Maria J. Carlton.[1]

This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. The entry can be found here.

• United States Navy
• American Civil War