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 1,500 mi (2,400 km) 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 January 4. 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.
Read more about this topic: USS Saginaw (1859)
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