USS Spuyten Duyvil

Type

Ironclad

Period

19th Century

Nation

United States

Overview: USS Spuyten Duyvil was an experimental Union Navy armored torpedo boat of the American Civil War, one of the first purpose-built torpedo vessels in U.S. naval history and a conceptual forerunner of later torpedo boats and destroyers. She was originally built under the name Stromboli and renamed Spuyten Duyvil in November 1864 after the Spuyten Duyvil area of New York City. Specifications: The vessel displaced about 207 long tons, was 84 ft 2 in long with a 20 ft 8 in beam and 7 ft 6 in draft, and was propelled by a single screw steam engine at roughly 5 knots. She carried iron armor over a wood backing (pilothouse, hull, and deck plating) and her sole armament was a reloadable spar torpedo mounted on a retractable spar; a notable design quirk was ballast tanks that let her trim herself lower in the water, similar in principle to a submarine. Service History: Designed by Chief Engineer William W. Wood and built by Samuel M. Pook at New Haven/Mystic, Connecticut, she joined the James River Flotilla late in 1864 and helped clear Confederate river obstructions and support the ironclad monitor USS Onondaga during the Battle of Trent's Reach in January 1865. After Richmond fell she used her torpedoes to finish clearing the James River, work that helped enable President Lincoln's steamboat visit to the captured Confederate capital. She was placed in ordinary at the New York Navy Yard in 1866, used afterward for experimental weapons trials, and was finally sold out of the Navy in 1880. Notable Facts: For scale modelers, her low-freeboard, iron-clad, monitor-like hull with a distinctive pilothouse and prominent spar torpedo apparatus makes for a visually unusual small Civil War subject quite different from typical wooden gunboats of the era. She never engaged a Confederate warship directly, and her sister effort against ironclads like CSS Albemarle came too late in the war to be tested in that role.