From Wikipedia
The USS Port Royal a 209 foot-long, 805 ton steamboat, was commissioned April 26, 1863 and served with the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron until the spring of 1863 when it was operating off the Florida Panhandle coast.
While with NABS it participated in the bombardment of Darling Bluff in Virginia and the attack on Kinston, NC.
On April 20, 1863, a landing party raided Apalachicola, Florida and captured cotton and ordinance. On May 24, 1863, another expedition from the Port Royal went up the Apalachicola River and captured the blockade-runner Fancy with a load of cotton, burned a ship repair facility and destroyed a barge.
From Florida Civil War author Dale Cox's December 16, 2009, Civil War Florida Blog.
Forty-one officers and men from the USS Port Royal boarded small boats under the command of Acting Master Edgar Van Slyck, May 23, 1863, and proceeded up the Apalachicola River to capture the sloop Fashion which was reportedly taking on cotton and intending to run the blockade.
They rowed an estimated 45 miles up the river and slipped past the Confederate Fort Gadsden at night, but didn't find the Fashion. However, returning downstream, they did find and capture the vessel without resistance. and took it downstream. They fired a shot at Fort Gadsden but received no return fire.
This set the CSS Chattahoochee off in pursuit which is when the boiler explosion took place.
An Interesting and Little Part of the War. --B-R'er
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