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
USS Tristram Shandy (1864) 1865, she captured blockade runner "Blenheim". The runner's captain and crew had not received the news of the fall of Fort Fisher and anchored off Mound Battery. He thus fell prey to Union sailors from the gunboat, who boarded "Blenheim", and captured her easily. On 31 January, "Tristram Shandy" joined the East Gulf Blockading Squadron and remained with that group into the spring. Returning north, she served as a dispatch vessel with Union forces operating in Hampton Roads, Virginia. Admiral Porter embarked in "Tristram Shandy" on 14 April, after the admiral had previously escorted President Abraham Lincoln on a tour