Harvest Moon Historical Society

Civil War Steamship Research Group

The Harvest Moon Historical Society is an informal social group with an interest in the history of the civil war side-wheel steamer U. S. S. Harvest Moon, Flagship of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron.

• I first became interested in the Harvest Moon when I came upon a letter from my great grandfather while going through some old family documents. The letter was written by William Elliott Todd to his brother-in-law in 1865. He had recently been assigned to the Harvest Moon as a young engineering officer and in the letter described his assignment and the sinking of the ship. Being unfamiliar with the Harvest Moon, I consulted my son Walter, a civil war buff, who found several references to this ship in his library. My curiosity was particularly stimulated when we discovered that the remains of the ship still rest where it sank and the smokestack is visible above the water. As with any research project, one answer leads to another question and we soon were contacting museums, libraries, archives, etc. to discover as much as we could about the ship, it's career and the personnel who manned it. The ship had a relatively short life spanning not much more than three years. Most of this time was in naval service as Admiral Dahlgren's Flagship and her service records are readily available as are crew lists and pension files. An initial goal in our research was to obtain sufficient data about the ship to enable construction of a scale model. Such a model was built based primarily on a side view photograph, logbook notations and other contemporary sources. Questions on configuration still exist however which, hopefully, may someday be answered by a comprehensive archaeological survey of the remains buried under the mud of Winyah Bay.
• Elliott P. Smith

  ---

  ASSOCIATE MEMBERS

   

  Betty and Elliott Smith Elliott is a retired engineer with an interest in modeling R/C ships and aircraft. Betty is an Executive Assistant at AstraZeneca, Inc. They reside in Wilmington Delaware. HarvestMoon@comcast.net   photographed onboard the yacht Spindrift in Chesapeake Bay Owner: Captain Robert P. Mason of Bozman, MD

Walt E. Smith Engineer with NCR Corp. Interested in Civil War history and family genealogy. Resides in Gaithersburg, MD.

WESLEY H. SMITH Retail Manager. Avid golfer and sports enthusiast. Resides in Gaithersburg, MD

Pamela Smith Welliver Hotel Executive. Enjoys social events and sporty cars. Resides in Centreville, VA

RETURN TO HOME PAGE

revised: March 2006