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 fact that "the number of days in all time is no greater than the number of years". A historic site in Geneva, Ohio, called Shandy Hall, is part of the Western Reserve Historical Society. The home was named after the house described in "Tristram Shandy". The "Perry Mason" episode "The Case of the Bogus Books" involves a bookseller selling stolen copies of rare books, in particular a first edition of "Tristram Shandy". In Anthony Trollope's novel "Barchester Towers", the narrator speculates that the scheming clergyman, Mr Slope, is descended from Dr Slop in "Tristram Shandy" (the extra letter having been