PSLelia was a steamship built in 1864, [1] during the American Civil War for use as a blockade runner for the Confederate States of America. She sank in Liverpool Bay in 1865 in an incident that caused 46 fatalities.
PSLelia was a steamship built in 1864, [1] during the American Civil War for use as a blockade runner for the Confederate States of America. She sank in Liverpool Bay in 1865 in an incident that caused 46 fatalities.
Lelia was built by William C Miller & Company of Toxteth as one of a trio of blockade running sister ships ordered for the Anglo-Confederate concern, William G. Crenshaw & Company. She was a 252-foot (77 m) paddle steamship of 640 BRT. Her hull was built of steel, an unusual and expensive material for shipbuilding at the time. The engines and other machinery were built by Fawcett Preston & Company and rated at 300 nhp. (The Confederate States Navy warship, CSS Florida, had also been built at Miller's yard.)
She left the River Mersey, with a largely Liverpool-based crew, and several prominent Confederate naval officers, on her maiden voyage on 14 January 1865 bound for Wilmington, North Carolina, via Bermuda, aiming to run the Union blockade.
Lelia was heavily laden, and when she hit bad weather off the coast of North Wales, large waves knocked her anchors loose and through the deck, swamping her. She sank near the lightship Prince off the Great Orme.
Two boats were able to leave the stricken ship, but one capsized and only twelve survivors (out of fifty-one on board) reached the safety of the lightship.
The next day the Liverpool No 1 Lifeboat went to the scene under tow by the steam tug Blazer, but was itself swamped by waves, with the loss of seven out of its 11 crew. [2]
The wreck of Lelia was discovered in the early 1990s when a diver recovered a bell from the seabed inscribed 'Lelia 1864'. [3] It lies 10 miles north west off Hilbre Point, Wirral. The remains include one of the paddle wheels, the engine and boiler rooms, as well as less well-preserved cargo areas and a steam winch. The wreck was given protected status when it was added to the National Heritage list for England by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport in August 2019. [4]
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The Confederate States Navy (CSN) was the naval branch of the Confederate States Armed Forces, established by an act of the Confederate States Congress on February 21, 1861. It was responsible for Confederate naval operations during the American Civil War against the United States's Union Navy.
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The blockade runner Mary Bowers, Captain Jesse DeHorsey, bound from Bermuda to Charleston, South Carolina with an assorted cargo, struck the submerged wreck of the SS Georgiana in fourteen feet of water a mile off of Long Island on August 31, 1864. She "went on with such force as to make immense openings in her bottom," and she sank in a "few minutes, most of the officers and men saving only what they stood in." The steamer's passengers and crew escaped with the exception of a boy, Richard Jackson, who was left on the wreck and later taken off by the Federals.
Throughout the American Civil War, blockade runners were seagoing steam ships that were used to get through the Union blockade that extended some 3,500 miles (5,600 km) along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coastlines and the lower Mississippi River. The Confederate states were largely without industrial capability and could not provide the quantity of arms and other supplies needed to fight against the industrial North. To meet this need blockade runners were built in Scotland and England and were used to import the guns, ordnance and other supplies that the Confederacy desperately needed, in exchange for cotton that the British textile industry needed greatly. To penetrate the blockade, these relatively lightweight shallow draft ships, mostly built in British shipyards and specially designed for speed, but not suited for transporting large quantities of cotton, had to cruise undetected, usually at night, through the Union blockade. The typical blockade runners were privately owned vessels often operating with a letter of marque issued by the Confederate States of America. If spotted, the blockade runners would attempt to outmaneuver or simply outrun any Union ships on blockade patrol, often successfully.
The remains of the ship were discovered in the Liverpool bay area in the 1990s when a bell marked 'Lelia 1864' was found by a local diver.