USS Saginaw (1859)

See USS Saginaw for other ships of this name.

The first USS Saginaw was a sidewheel sloop-of-war in the United States Navy during the American Civil War.

History
The first vessel built by the Mare Island Navy Yard, Saginaw was laid down on 16 September 1858; launched as Toucey on 3 March 1859; sponsored by Miss Cunningham, daughter of the commandant of the Navy Yard; renamed Saginaw; and commissioned on 5 January 1860, Commander James F. Schenck in command.

The new side-wheel ship sailed from San Francisco Bay on 8 March 1860, headed for the western Pacific, and reached Shanghai, China on 12 May. She then served in the East India Squadron, for the most part cruising along the Chinese coast to protect American citizens and to suppress pirates. She visited Japan in November but soon returned to Chinese waters. On 30 June 1861, she silenced a battery at the entrance to Qui Nhon Bay, Cochin China, which had fired upon her while she was searching for the missing boat and crew of American bark, Myrtle.

On 3 January 1862, Saginaw was decommissioned at Hong Kong and returned to Mare Island on 3 July for repairs.

Relaunched on 3 December 1862 and recommissioned on 23 March 1863, the side-wheeler was attached to the Pacific Squadron and operated along the western seaboard to prevent Confederate activity. She visited Puget Sound that spring to investigate reports that Southern privateers were being outfitted in British Columbia, but returned after learning that the scheme had no chance of success.

Her cruises in 1864 took Saginaw to ports in Mexico and Central America to protect the interests of the U.S. endangered by Confederate activity and by European interference in Mexico. During the closing months of the year, she escorted steamers of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company carrying rich cargoes of bullion from the California gold fields. In the spring of 1865, the ship was assigned to the Revenue Service but was returned to the Navy on 2 June. She spent the remainder of the year protecting American citizens at Guaymas and other Mexican ports during the unrest and disorder which beset Mexico during the struggle between Maximilian and Benito Juárez.

In March 1866, Saginaw returned to Mare Island. She sailed in August for Puget Sound to support settlers in the northwest. While there, she aided the Western Union Company in laying a cable which first brought telegraphic service to the region. After returning to Mare Island in December, the ship remained at the navy yard through 1867.

In April 1868, a year after Alaska was purchased from Russia, Saginaw got underway for Alaska and, with the exception of a run home late in the year for replenishment, spent the next year exploring and charting the coast of that vast, newly acquired territory. In February 1869 a conflict erupted between the U.S. Army and the Tlingit in the Kake region. After the Indians refused a command in Sitka not to leave, one Indian was killed. In reprisal, two innocent miners were killed by the Indians in a place on Admiralty Island called Murder Cove.

In reprisal, the U.S. Army deployed the gunboat USS Saginaw from Sitka which attacked, shelled, and burned three Tlingit villages on Kiku Island near what is today called Saginaw Bay. The villages had been evacuated. The Tlingit of the Kake area did not rebuild these three destroyed villages, but many relocated and settled around 1890 at the present site of Kake.

There were numerous outbreaks of violence by the Indians prior to this incident near Saginaw Bay. The crew of a British trader, Royal Charlie, were killed by Indians in the early 1860s while Russian still owned Alaska according to George Davidson who was the first coastal survey for the United States in Alaska. Alaska Coast Pilot (1869). In 1862, the Labouchere, a Hudson's Bay trading steamer was boarded by hundreds of Indians who seized the captain and the head of the Hudson's Bay operation in Alaska. The armed crew negotiated a release. Also in the 1860s, Indians paddled almost 800 miles from the Kiku Island region to Puget Sound where they beheaded the custom's inspector. General Davis in Sitka considered all these events when crafting a strategy to maintain law and order in the territory.

After steaming back to San Francisco Bay in April 1869, the ship departed her home port on 28 July and operated along the coast of Mexico until arriving back at Mare Island on 11 November.

Fate
Saginaw's next assignment took her to Midway Island to support dredging operations to deepen the entrance to the harbor. She reached Midway on 24 March 1870 and completed her task on 21 October. A week later, she sailed for San Francisco, intending to touch at Kure Atoll en route home to rescue any shipwrecked sailors who might be stranded there. The next day, 29 October, as she neared this rarely visited island, Saginaw struck an outlying reef and grounded. Before the surf battered the ship to pieces, her crew managed to transfer much of her gear and provisions to the island. On 18 November, a party of five men, headed by Lieutenant John G. Talbot, the executive officer, set out for Honolulu in a small boat to get relief for their stranded shipmates. As they neared Kauai, 31 days and some 1500 mi later, their boat was upset by breakers. Only Coxswain William Halford survived to obtain help. He was brought to Oahu and the U.S. Consul there. The king Kamehameha V subsequently sent his steamer the "Kilauea" to rescue the shipwrecked sailors, which arrived 4 January. All of them survived.

The ship's gig that they sailed in is on display at the Saginaw History Museum in Saginaw, Michigan.

The wreck was discovered in 2003 and remains under the jurisdiction of the Naval Historical Center.

The book, A Civil War Gunboat in Pacific Waters: Life on Board USS Saginaw (by Hans Van Tilburg, University Press of Florida, 2010) covers the ship's construction, her ten years of service in the Pacific, and loss at Kure Atoll. Van Tilburg led the team which discovered the wreck site in 2003.