Dead Confederates, A Civil War Era Blog

One item from the Merseyside Maritime Museum exhibition, Ships built in Liverpool for the American Civil War:

Original caption: Curve book, Laird’s Shipyard, Birkenhead showing keel drawings for the blockade runners Lark and Wren, both built by Lairds for the Confederacy. Laird’s built a number of ships for Fraser, Trenhom and the Confederate government, including Lark, Wren, Albatross and Penguin. The Lark and the Wren both left the Mersey in December 1865 1864 and worked in the Gulf of Mexico, running the blockade to ports in Florida and Galveston carrying supplies of clothing, shoes and small arms. On 25 May 1865 the Lark was the last steam blockade runner to enter and leave a Confederate port. (Reference: SAS/25G/1/7)

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This cross-section is very similar to an earlier Laird-built paddle steamer, Denbigh. Around the outer edge of the hull are notations of plate thicknesses, and the column at right tallies up weights. The spacing of the frames at 21 inches is a bit more than the standard 18 inches, suggesting a willingness to trade structural strength for a saving of weight. We read recently about Wren‘s eventful arrival here in early February 1865; Lark‘s story will be told in due time.

The drawing above, rendered in three dimensions, would be something like this:

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