USS Tristram Shandy (1864) USS Tristram Shandy (1864) USS "Tristram Shandy" (1864) was a 444-ton steamer and blockade runner captured by the Union Navy during the American Civil War. With her Parrott rifle installed, she was used by the Navy as a gunboat to patrol navigable waterways of the Confederate States of America to prevent the South from trading with other countries. "Tristram Shandy" took her name from the hero—and the shortened title—of the novel, "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman", which was written by Laurence Sterne between the years 1759 and 1767. She was a schooner-rigged, iron-hulled sidewheel steamer completed in
Journal to Eliza 22 year old wife of an East India Company official and sister of Rawson Hart Boddam. Her husband had brought her over here to recuperate from illness. Given both parties were already married, the relationship was regarded as scandalous. The author adopts the pseudonym Parson Yorick, who previously appeared in his two best known novels, "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" and "A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy". In "Tristram Shandy" we are told that the parson is related to the famous, fictional jester Yorick whose skull is disinterred in Shakespeare’s "Hamlet:" "It has often come into