USRC Wayanda was a screw steam revenue cutter built for the United States Revenue Cutter Service during the American Civil War.
Commissioned in the closing months of the war, Wayanda briefly operated as a convoy escort before the close of hostilities. After the war, she was placed at the disposal of Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase for a tour of the defeated Confederacy. Chase recommended extending suffrage to the South's black population, but his recommendations were ignored by the Johnson administration.
In 1866–67, Wayanda made the long journey around Cape Horn to the West Coast, where she would spend the rest of her career. In 1868, Wayanda carried out an important survey of the newly acquired territory of Alaska. Her commander, John W. White's recommendation that a federal reserve be established in the Pribilof Islands to protect both the Northern fur seals and the Aleut people who hunted them, was quickly acted on by the government.
Wayanda was sold in 1873 and refitted for commercial service as a freight and passenger steamer named Los Angeles, continuing in this role for some twenty years. She was wrecked off Point Sur in April 1894 with the loss of six lives.
Construction and design
Wayanda was one of six Pawtuxet-class screw schooners ordered by the Treasury Department in 1863 for the United States Revenue Marine, and one of two of the class to be built in Baltimore, Maryland (the other being USRC Kewanee). Wayanda was launched on 31 August 1863 from the yard of her builder, John T. Fardy & Co., "on the south side of the basin near Federal Hill". Cost of the vessel was $103,000.
Wayanda was long, with a beam of and both hold depth and draft of around . Like the other ships of her class, her contract called for a hull of oak, locust and white oak, strengthened with diagonal iron bracing. Her two-cylinder oscillating engine drove a single 8-foot (2.4 m) diameter screw propeller. Wayandas speed is unrecorded but was probably similar to the 12 knots achieved by her sister ship . She was topsail schooner-rigged for auxiliary sail power.
Wayandas armament consisted of a single 30-pounder Parrott rifle, and five 24-pounder howitzers. She was crewed by a complement of 41 officers and enlisted men.
Service history
Civil War service, 1864–65
The first of the Pawtuxet-class cutters to be delivered, Wayanda, commanded by Captain J. W. White, arrived in New York City on 4 June 1864 via Newport, Rhode Island, having departed Washington, D.C., on 28 May. In February 1865, Wayanda, along with her sister ship Kewanee and , was assigned to escort a 21-ship convoy of cotton confiscated from the South. The convoy departed Port Royal, South Carolina on February 8 and arrived in New York on the 14th.
Southern States tour, 1865
Shortly after the end of the American Civil War, Wayanda, now under the command of Captain James H. Merryman, was placed at the disposal of Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase for a fact-finding mission to the defeated Southern States. Chase and his party, including his daughter Nettie and the young journalist Whitelaw Reid, joined Wayanda at Norfolk, Virginia, in early May for the commencement of the mission. In a later memoir of the trip, Reid described Wayanda as "a trim, beautifully modelled, ocean-going propeller, carrying six guns, and manned by a capital crew."
After departing Fort Monroe with Chase and his party aboard, Wayanda ran into some heavy weather, an experience described by Reid as follows:
We had started in the night, were well out on the ocean, a pretty heavy sea was running, and the mettlesome little Wayanda was giving us a taste of her qualities. Nothing could exceed the beauty of her plunges fore and aft, and lurches from port to starboard; but the party were sadly lacking in enthusiasm. Presently breakfast was announced, and we all went below very bravely and ranged ourselves about the table. Before the meal was half over, the Captain and the Doctor's were left in solitary state to finish it alone. For myself—although seasoned, as I had vainly imagined, by some experiences in tolerably heavy storms—I freely confess to the double enjoyment of the single cup of tea I managed to swallow. "For," said the Dominie, argumentatively, "you have the pleasure of enjoying it first as it goes down, and then a second time as it comes up."