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
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Tristram Shandy is listed as one of the co-founders of The League. A short story "Oh Most Cursed Addition Engine" by H. S. Donnelly was published in the Canadian Science Fiction magazine "On Spec" #86. In it, Walter Shandy attempts to build an Addition Engine, while Toby and Corporal Trim re-enact in miniature Wellington's great victory at Vitoria. Trim was the adventurous ship's cat of the explorer Matthew Flinders, named after Corporal Trim, and a minor (yet titular) character in Bryce Courtenay's novel "Matthew Flinders' Cat". In the 1976 film "The Missouri Breaks", with Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson, Braxton,