Sara and Caroline

Sarah and Caroline

(Sch.)

While on blockade duty on the afternoon of 11 December 1861, Union side wheel steamer, Bienville sighted two sails and immediately gave chase. She succeeded in driving one ship aground in the breakers at the mouth of the St. John's River, and she captured the other, a small pilot-boat schooner, named Sarah and Caroline.

The prize had slipped out of Jacksonville, Fla., and was bound for Nassau, New Providence, in the Bahamas, carrying 60 barrels of turpentine. The dangers of the Atlantic in winter precluded sending the frail schooner north for adjudication, so she was kept at Port Royal and-although no record of her service has been found-apparently served the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron as a tender. In any case, she was purchased by the Navy from the New York prize court on 1 August 1863.

After the war ended, she was sold at Port Royal on 8 August 1865.