USS KEARSARGE, Steam Sloop

 

  The Ship

 

Commissioned in 1862, USS Kearsarge is most famous for destroying the Confederate raider CSS Alabama in 1863.  She had participated in a blockade of CSS Sumter at Gilbraltar.  Sumter’s famous Captain Raphael Semmes abandoned her in 1862 and soon commissioned CSS Alabama on the high seas off the Azores.  In 1863, Kearsarge patrolled the coasts of Europe and the Western Islands.  She located Alabama in port at Cherbourg, France, and took up station at the harbor’s entrance to await Semmes’ next move.  Semmes stood out of port on 19 June, and Kearsarge, careful of French neutrality, stood out to sea and then turned to engage.  Alabama fired first, but one hour after her first salvo, she was a total wreck.

 

Kearsarge continued to patrol the European and African coasts, looking for Confederate raiders, until 1864.  After a re-fit, she joined the Pacific Fleet, operating out of Valparaiso, Chile, and on the Asiatic station.  She was wrecked on Roncador Reef, about a hundred miles north of the Solomon Islands, in 1894.

 

The Model

Solid construction by an unknown builder

H  18”  L 30”  W 8”

On indefinite loan from J. Bellah