Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 25. Chapters: USS Anacostia, HMS Alert, Laurent Millaudon, King Philip shipwreck, CSS Selma, USS Western World, RMS Persia, CSS Curlew, USS Bloomer, USS Roebuck, USS Colorado, USS Essex, USS Two Sisters, USS Ceres, USS Choctaw, HMS Cordelia, CSS Savannah, HMS Surprise, HMS Sparrowhawk, Santiago, USS Braziliera, HMS Sepoy, Lammermuir, HMS Pioneer, CSS Webb, HMS Sandfly, CSS Grampus, List of ship launches in 1856, French frigate Audacieuse, HMS Fawn, French ship Eylau, Teutonia. Excerpt: USS Anacostia (1856) was a steamer, constructed as a tugboat, that was first chartered by the United States Navy for service during the Paraguay crisis of the 1850s and then commissioned as a U.S. Navy ship. She later served prominently in the Union Navy during the American Civil War. Anacostia -- a screw steamer built at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1856 as M. W. Chapin -- originally operated out of Middletown, Connecticut, as a merchant tug. During subsequent service as a canal boat, the vessel caught the eye of the Federal Government which chartered her sometime in September 1858-quite possibly on the 13th of that month-for its forthcoming expedition to South American waters. The historically cordial relations between Paraguay and the United States had soured in the summer and autumn of 1854 when the American consul, Edward A. Hopkins, fell out of the favor of Paraguay's Permanent President, Carlos Antonio Lopez. Their growing animosity prompted the dictator to turn against the continuation of surveying operations-which he had previously heartily endorsed-then being conducted in the tributaries of the Rio de la Plata by the American Navy's side-wheel steamer, USS Water Witch (1851). The hostility reached a climax on 1 February 1855 when Paraguayan batteries at Itapiru -- a brick fortress on the northern bank of the Upper Parana River -- opened...