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 "grave and sober account" of Cicero's grief for the death of his daughter Tullia. His text is filled with allusions and references to the leading thinkers and writers of the 17th and 18th centuries. Pope and Swift were major influences on Sterne and "Tristram Shandy". Satires of Pope and Swift formed much of the humour of "Tristram Shandy", but Swift's sermons and Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" also contributed ideas and frameworks Sterne explored throughout the novel. Other major influences are Cervantes, and Montaigne's "Essays", as well as the significant inter-textual debt to "The Anatomy of Melancholy", Swift's "Battle of