USS Vincennes (1826)
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| Missing image Vincennes.jpg USS Vincennes in Disappointment Bay, Antarctica, during the Wilkes expedition. | |
| Career | 
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| Ordered: | 3 March 1825 |
| Laid down: | 1825 |
| Launched: | 27 April 1826 |
| Commissioned: | 27 August 1826 |
| Decommissioned: | 28 August 1865 |
| Fate: | sold, 5 October 1867 |
| Struck: | |
| General Characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 700 tons |
| Length: | 127 ft (39 m) |
| Beam: | 33 ft 9 in (10.3 m) |
| Draft: | 16 ft 6 in |
| Propulsion: | Sail |
| Speed: | |
| Range: | |
| Complement: | 80 officers and enlisted |
| Armament: | 18 guns |
The first USS Vincennes was the first United States warship to circumnavigate the globe. The ship was named in honor of the Battle of Vincennes.
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1826-1833
Vincennes was one of 10 sloops-of-war whose construction was authorized by Congress on 3 March 1825. She was laid down at New York in 1825; launched on 27 April 1826; and commissioned on 27 August 1826, Master Commandant William Bolton Finch in command.
Vincennes first sailed on September 3, 1826 from New York into the Pacific, where she made her way to Macao by 1830. From Macao, she made three more stops before returning to New York on June 8, 1830. Two days later the ship was decommissioned.
Recommissioned again, Vincennes sailed for the West Indies and, after a long bout of yellow fever, was again decommissioned for a time in 1833 before sailing once more. She became the first American warship to call at Guam.
Wilkes Expedition
Decommissioned once again in 1836, while she underwent remodeling, she was declared the flagship for Lieutenant Charles Wilkes' South Sea Surveying and Exploring Expedition to the Antarctic region. The expedition sailed from Hampton Roads in August 1838 and made surveys along the South American coast before making a brief survey of Antarctica in early 1839. Entering into the South Pacific in August and September 1839, cartographers drafted charts that are still used today.
On January 30, 1840, land was sighted for the first time in the Antarctic region. The coast along which the ship sailed is today known as Wilkes Land, a name given on maps as early as 1841.
1842-1847
Vincennes was next assigned to the Home Squadron and placed under the command of Commander Franklin Buchanan, a distinguished officer destined to become the first Superintendant of the Naval Academy. She sailed to the West Indies and cruised off the Mexican coast until the summer of 1844. Though this duty proved relatively uneventful, Vincennes did rescue two grounded English brigs off the coast of Texas and received the thanks of the British government for this service. Buchanan was also ordered to prevent any attempted invasion by Mexico of the new Republic of Texas. Fortunately, this eventuality never materialized; and Vincennes returned to Hampton Roads on 15 August to enter dry dock.
On 4 June 1845, Vincennes sailed for the Far East under command of Captain Hiram Paulding. She was accompanied by the ship-of-the-line Columbus, under the command of Captain Thomas Wyman; and the two vessels formed a little squadron under the command of Commodore James Biddle, who carried a letter from Secretary of State John C. Calhoun to Caleb Gushing, American commissioner in China, authorizing Gushing to make the first official contact with the Japanese Government.
The squadron sailed for Macao by way of Rio de Janeiro and the Cape of Good Hope. Commodore Biddle arrived safely in Macao only to find that Gushing had already left for home and that his successor, Alexander H. Everett, was too ill to make the trip. Therefore, Biddle determined to conduct the negotiations himself. Accordingly, Vincennes and Columbus sailed for Japan on 7 July 1846 and anchored off Edo (Tokyo) on 19 July. The Japanese surrounded the vessels and allowed no one to land. Otherwise the visitors were treated with courtesy. However, Commodore Biddle's attempts to discuss the opening of feudal Japan to foreign trade were politely rebuffed, and the vessels weighed anchor on 29 July. Columbus returned to the United States by way of Cape Horn, but Vincennes remained on the China Station for another year before returning to New York on 1 April 1847. Here, she was decommissioned on the 9th, dry-docked, and laid up.
1849-1856
Vincennes remained in ordinary until 1849. Recommissioned on 12 November 1849, she sailed from New York exactly one month later, bound for Cape Horn and the west coast of South America. On 2 July 1850, while lying off Guayaquil, Ecuador, she harbored the Ecuadoran revolutionary General Elizalde for three days during one of that country's frequent civil disturbances. Sailing on to San Francisco, California, the vessel lost 36 members of her crew to the gold fever sweeping California at the time. Turning south, Vincennes cruised off South America until late 1851, closely monitoring the activities of revolutionaries ashore. She made a courtesy call to the Hawaiian Islands at the end of the year and proceeded thence to Puget Sound where she arrived on 2 February 1852. She anchored briefly there and returned via San Francisco and the Horn to New York where she arrived on 21 September and was decommissioned on the 24th.
Following repairs and a period in ordinary, Vincennes was recommissioned on 21 March 1853 and sailed into Norfolk, Virginia on 13 May to join her second exploratory expedition, serving as flagship to Commander Cadwallader Ringgold's survey of the China Seas, the North Pacific, and the Bering Strait. Comdr. Ringgold was a veteran of the Wilkes expedition. The squadron stood out of Norfolk on 11 June 1843, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and charted numerous islands and shoals in the Indian Ocean before arriving in China in March 1854. Here Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry relieved Ringgold for medical reasons and gave command of the expedition to Lt. John Rodgers. Vincennes sailed on to survey the Bonin and Ladrone Islands and returned to Hong Kong in February 1855. The expedition sailed again in March and surveyed the islands between the Ryukyu chain and Japan, and then the Kurils. Vincennes left the squadron at Petropavlovsk, Russia, and entered the Bering Strait, sailing through to the northwest towards Wrangel Island. Ice barriers prevented the vessel from reaching this destination, but she came closer than any other previous ship. Vincennes returned to San Francisco in early October and later sailed for the Horn and New York, where she arrived on 13 July 1856 to complete yet another circumnavigation of the globe.
American Civil War
After the outbreak of the American Civil War in April 1861, Vincennes was recommissioned on 29 June and assigned to duty in the Gulf Blockading Squadron. She arrived off Fort Pickens, Florida, on 3 September, and was ordered to assist in the occupation of Head of Passes, Mississippi River, and remain there on blockade duty. Though the Federal warships did successfuly deploy, on 12 October 1861 the Confederate metal-sheathed ram CSS Manassas and armed steamers Ivy and James L. Day drove the Union blockaders from Head of Passes, forcing Richmond and Vincennes aground. Vincennes was ordered abandoned and destroyed to prevent her capture, and a slow match was set to the vessel's magazine while her men took refuge on other ships. However, the magazine failed to explode; and, after the Confederate vessels withdrew early in the afternoon, Vincennes was refloated.
After the Confederate attack, the Union sloop-of-war continued on blockade duty off the Passes of the Mississippi, capturing the blockade-running British bark Empress, aground at North East Pass with a large cargo of coffee on 27 November. On 4 March 1862, she was ordered to proceed to Pensacola, Florida, to relieve Mississippi and spent the next six months shuttling between Pensacola and Mobile, Alabama, performing routine patrol and reconnaissance duty. On 4 October, she was ordered to assume command of the blockade off Ship Island, Mississippi, and to guard the pass out of Mississippi Sound. While so deployed, boat crews from the vessel and Clifton captured the barge H. McGuin in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, on 18 July 1863. Vincennes also reported the capture of two boats laden with food on 24 December.
Vincennes remained off Ship Island for the duration of the war and was laid up in ordinary at the Boston Navy Yard on 28 August 1865. The veteran world traveler was sold at public auction at Boston on 5 October 1867 for approximately $5,000.00.
See USS Vincennes for other ships of this name.
This article includes text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.