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DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY -- NAVAL HISTORICAL CENTER
805 KIDDER BREESE SE -- WASHINGTON NAVY YARD
WASHINGTON DC 20374-5060


Online Library of Selected Images:
-- CIVILIAN SHIPS --

Steamship Habana (launched 1857).
Also called Havana.
Later CSS Sumter and blockade runner Gibraltar

Habana (called Havana by some sources), a 437-ton steamship, was launched at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in December 1857. During the late 1850s and early 1860s she was employed in commercial trade between New Orleans, Louisiana, and Havana, Cuba. She was purchased by the Confederacy in April 1861 and converted at New Orleans into the cruiser CSS Sumter. Sold to private interests in December 1862, she was renamed Gibraltar and made two successful blockade running voyages during the remainder of the American Civil War. She was reportedly lost in a storm in the English Channel in 1867.

This page features our only view of the steamship Habana, also called Habana.

For views of this ship as a Confederate cruiser, see: CSS Sumter (1861-1862).


If you want higher resolution reproductions than the digital images presented here, see: "How to Obtain Photographic Reproductions."

Click on the small photograph to prompt a larger view of the same image.

Photo #: NH 63844

Steamship Havana
(or Habana)

Watercolor by Erik Heyl, 1951, painted for use in his book "Early American Steamers", Volume I.
Havana, of McConnel's New Orleans & Havana Line, became CSS Sumter in 1861 and the blockade runner Gibraltar in 1862.

Courtesy of Erik Heyl.

U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph.

Online Image: 68KB; 740 x 395 pixels

 

For views of this ship as a Confederate cruiser, see: CSS Sumter (1861-1862).


If you want higher resolution reproductions than the digital images presented here, see: "How to Obtain Photographic Reproductions."


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Page made 11 February 2001