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In the 1850s, the Warrington Navy Yard, near Pensacola, Florida, had completed a large dry dock with connected railway. Therefore, the yard was ready for a shipbuilding project and Pensacolians’ faith in their economy’s future was encouraged by hope of becoming a big shipbuilding center for rhe Gulf Coast. Pensacola had a lumber industry sufficient to sustain shipbuilding, and the navy yard had the skilled men and capacity to construct a sailing ship. Unfortunately, the dry dock was not completed until the days of sailing ships, even the fast clipper ships, were waning. The Navy was ordering steam, or steam and sail, ships, but the Warrington Navy Yard was unprepared for this technological innovation. This fact did not, of course, deter the powerful champions from politically promoting Pensacola as a major shipbuilding center for the U. S. Navy. It certainly did not hinder the future Confederate Secretary' of the Navy, Stephen R. Mallory, biggest promoter of Pensacola shipbuilding.
In the late 1850s, U. S. Senator Mallory was chairman of the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs, and the other Florida senator, David Yulee, was also a committee member. Mallory' had been preceded from Pensacola by Jackson Morton, who had been a conspicuous exponent of naval expansion. Morton’s influence in urging more naval shipbuilding cleared the way and helped place Mallory and Yulee in a position to influence shipbuilding decisions. Authorizations were voted in 1857, and two ships were built and launched in 1859.
When rhe first of the two ships, the Seminole, was ready, the launching was a failure because the tallow on the ways congealed, and the ship would not slide into the water. However, in rhe next attempt, the Seminole was successfully launched and apparently had a "normal” career after that. Not so the Pensacola.
The launching of the steam-and-sail sloop Pensacola was a long awaited event and a cause for celebration. As one Navy lieutenant, John McIntosh Kell, wrote home to his w]fe, "On Sunday, the Sloop of War 'Pensacola’ is to be launched, when I suppose we will be visited by a steam-boat load of excurtionists [sic] from Mobile to witness the sight, and all the people from the country around: what would I not give to have you see it. It would be a novel sight to you and a grand one too, to see so noble a specimen of naval architecture launched from terra-firma, into her native climent [sic].” The launching was held, and the sponsor was Senator Mallory’s daughter. The sloop must have been a beautiful sight as she slipped down the ways, a truly "noble specimen of naval architecture.”
But the ignoble part of the sloop’s history' began the moment she hit the water. When she was launched, she could go nowhere on her own! Pensacola couldn’t provide her with any engines, so only the hull had been built at the navy yard. She had to be hauled at great expense to the Washington (D.C.) Navy Yard to be outfitted with steam machinery.
Senator Mallory’s influence did not end with construction of a machine-less hull. He intervened further, and, in spite of objections from the Secretary of the Navy and supposedly every Navy engineer, contracts for
rhe ship’s machinery were given out to "novices in Marine engineering” who had never before built a mar>ne engine. The machinery for the Pensacola was built by E. N. Nickerson, who was, according to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, "intimately connected, socially and politically, with the Hon. Mr. Mallory, of Florida, the then chairman of the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs, and the Hon. D. L. Yulee, of Florida, also at that time an influential member of the same committee.” When Nickerson finally placed the engine ln the hull, it had to be redesigned before it could be used. After the hull left Pensacola, it cost $328,460.00 t° get the ship in working order for her trial run, or two and one half times the cost of comparable vessels. Nallory had created the slowest ship of her class, the °ne that used the most fuel, and the most expensive. It bad taken two years and nine months to get the ship somewhat in working order. Abraham Lincoln was on board for her quirksome trial run, at which time an open door was discovered to be more effective than the sbip’s blowers in the attempt to keep the engines from overheating.
After once again being repaired and retested, the sloop departed Washington to join Admiral Farragut’s beet at New Orleans. It took from 27 January to 20 April 1862, almost three months, to arrive at her destination, a trip that might ordinarily take about three Weeks. She had to stop at almost every port for repairs and to await a favorable wind because the engines could n°t propel the ship through some coastal waters. As the second assistant engineer, John T. Hawkins, stated the problem, "Here was a steamship—claimed to be one of
In light of what happened to the USS Pensacofa, seen eluding rebel batteries in the Potomac 11 January 1862, the building of naval ships could be considered too important to be left to the politicians. ,
the most perfect specimens of the kind afloat—waiting for a fair wind before she could proceed on a journey.”
It had taken the sloop a mere three years after launching in Pensacola to arrive battle ready in New Orleans. Admiral Farragut considered her so untrustworthy and unsafe that he would not order her up the Mississippi River. Instead, the Pensacola stayed at anchor by New Orleans during the Civil War, used as a stationary battery. In the meantime, Nickerson had to come from Washington to try to make the engines run long enough to keep the muddy Mississippi pumped out of the hull. Neither he nor the best New Orleans engineering talent could make a trustworthy ship out of Mallory’s mishap. As Gideon Welles severely stated, the sloop "has the slowest speed of any in the navy.” The hull was never criticized, but the engines were well characterized by Mr. Hawkins as "the very greatest abortion yet produced.”
Perhaps Mallory gained some valuable experience in abortive shipbuilding which stood him in good stead when he became Confederate Secretary of the Navy. As for the sloop Pensacola, she had new engines installed in 1865 and went on to enjoy a long and honorable career. And as for now, the story of the U. S. sloop Pensacola may have present meaning as a reminder of how not to build a Navy ship.