Naval Historical Center bottom left: “Battle of Port Hudson,” 1863, print by L. Top: Sketch of the USS Albatross off Mobile, Alabama, September 25, 1863. By 1863 Albatross had distinguished itself as a blockader as part of Farragut’s Mississippi River squadron. But the navy needed ships-any ships-at the start of the war, so the government purchased the heavy-timbered Albatross and quickly converted it into a gunboat. Before the war she ran regularly, carrying both cargo and passengers, between Providence and New York. The 445-ton Albatross was built three years before the war in Mystic, Connecticut at the shipyard of George Greenman and Company. Grant, who was then approaching Vicksburg from the north. It was 1863, and, after capturing New Orleans and Baton Rouge, the victorious admiral’s fleet was now attempting a risky nighttime passage of the formidable fortifications at Port Hudson in an effort to join forces with General Ulysses S. His powerful flagship, the steam frigate USS Hartford, was hard aground on a Mississippi River mud-bank one hundred fifty river miles south of Vicksburg, the Confederate “Gibraltar.” The much smaller steam gunboat Albatross was securely tied to its port side, and both were under severe enemy cannon fire emanating from the forts at Port Hudson, Louisiana, a strong Confederate bastion. “Back! Back on the Albatross!” shouted an anxious Admiral David G.
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