CSS Baltic

Contemporary engraving of the vessel. The accuracy of the image is not known.[1]
History
Confederate States
Name	Baltic
Launched	1860
Commissioned	May 1862
Decommissioned	July 1864
Captured	May 10, 1865
Fate	Sold, December 31, 1865
General characteristics (post-conversion)
Type	Casemate ironclad
Tonnage	624
Length	186 ft (56.7 m) (o/a)
Beam	38 ft (11.6 m)
Draft	6 to 7 ft (1.8 to 2.1 m)
Installed power	4 × horizontal return-flue boilers
Propulsion	2 × steam engines
Speed	5 knots (9.3 km/h; 5.8 mph)
Complement	86 officers and men
Armament	2 × Dahlgren guns, 2 × 32-pounders, 2 × smaller pieces
Armor	2.5 in (64 mm)

CSS^[a] Baltic was an ironclad warship that served in the Confederate States Navy during the American Civil War. A towboat before the war, she was purchased by the state of Alabama in December 1861 for conversion into an ironclad. After being transferred to the Confederate Navy in May 1862 as an ironclad, she served on Mobile Bay off the Gulf of Mexico. Baltic's condition in Confederate service was such that naval historian William N. Still Jr. has described her as "a nondescript vessel in many ways".^[3] Over the next two years, parts of the ship's wooden structure were affected by wood rot. Her armor was removed to be put onto the ironclad CSS Nashville in 1864. By that August, Baltic had been decommissioned. Near the end of the war, she was taken up the Tombigbee River, where she was captured by Union forces on May 10, 1865. An inspection of Baltic the next month found that her upper hull and deck were rotten and that her boilers were unsafe. She was sold on December 31, and was likely broken up in 1866.

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