The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 35, July 1931 - April, 1932 Page: 110
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
Soon after his inauguration in March, 1861, President Lincoln
decided to transfer the Harriet Lane from the Treasury to the
Navy Department, and on April 8, she, in company with other
craft, sailed to relieve Fort Sumter. The Harriet Lane was the
first of the relieving squadron to arrive off the Charleston bar.
On April 11 she fired a shot at a strange ship. "The shot from
the 32-pounder of the Harriet Lane was the first gun fired from
on board a United States vessel in the Great Rebellion," says a
naval authority."
When the Harriet Lane put to sea to enter the War Between
the States her commissioned officers were Captain John Faunce,
Lieutenant-Commander Edward Lea, Paymaster J. J. Richard-
son, and Assistant Surgeon T. N. Penrose. Later Commander
J. M. Wainwright succeeded Captain Faunce."
After hovering about Charleston for some weeks the doughty
little vessel was found in June patrolling the Potomac, and, from
the records, remained about the Chesapeake neighborhood till
some time in February, 1862.7 Never idle, the Harriet Lane
appeared off Hatteras Inlet towing transports in an attack on
Fort Fisher. While so engaged she grounded on August 29, 1861.
A week later she was gotten off the bar and by September 8 was
being refitted at Philadelphia."
Always looking for trouble, the Harriet Lane was bombarded
by a battery off Shipping Point, Virginia, in February, 1862,
which parenthetical brush put her in the dock for two days.9
Before the month of February was out Flag Officer S. F. Dupont
at Port Royal Harbor, South Carolina, reported that the "Harriet
Lane is coming in with Captain [later Admiral] Porter of the
mortar fleet."'1
"Ibid., 56. Before her transfer to the Navy, the Harriet Lane's bat-
tery was changed to four 9-inch and one rifled 8-inch guns, and two
24-pounder howitzers. O. R., Navies, Series I, vol. 5, p. 704. There is a
cut of the vessel in Ibid., opposite p. 697, and also in J. Thomas Scharf,
History of the Confederate States Navy (Albany, N. Y., 1894), 508.
'Admiral David D. Porter, The Naval History of the Civil War (New
York, 1886), 280.
70. R., Navies, Series I, vol. 5, pp. 697-698.
lIbid., vol. 4, pp. 120-130; 172, 186. See also Porter, Naval History of
the Civil War, 44-46.
O. R., Navies, Series I, vol. 6, p. 651. Wainwright to Secretary Welles,
February 17, 1862.
"1Ibid., Series I, vol. 12, p. 567. Porter states that in November, 1861,110
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 35, July 1931 - April, 1932, periodical, 1932; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101092/m1/114/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.