One of our Bluejacket Zooniverse Community members recently flagged a very interesting sheet with us from USS Buckthorn. The June 1864 muster is unusual for the level of detail it provides on the nativity of the small crew aboard, which extends not just to their state/country of birth, but also the specific locality they hailed from. This is relatively unusual on naval sheets, and we thought it was worth another look. You can explore this sheet for yourself here:

@KaiserSnowse’s discovery got us thinking that the Buckthorn might make a nice mapping project. Her crew were quite diverse, with African Americans, West Indians, Europeans and native-born white Americans all represented among her crew. The Buckthorn is also an interesting vessel. Constructed in 1863 in East Haddam, Connecticut, she was commissioned in April 1864 and served through to the final months of the war. Assigned to the West Gulf Blockading Squadron, Buckthorn and her small crew of 22 men served mainly as a tender and dispatch vessel, most notably at the Battle of Mobile Bay, Alabama on 5 August 1864. (1)

With all that in mind we have taken to MapHub to begin plotting out some of the locations where these men were from. Despite her small compliment, the personnel on the vessel changed through her short wartime service, giving us quite a number of men to explore. So far, those with the easiest identifiable locations have been uploaded to the interactive map, where we will also also add brief details about each man as we uncover it in future research. Already, the extremely wide geographic spread of the men who served on her is readily apparent. If you are interested in exploring the map in further detail, you can do so by clicking on the image below or visiting this link. We will provide future updates on it as we add to the details we have on the men aboard, so be sure to check back regularly on it to see what is new!

References

Paul H. Silverstone, 1989. Warships of the Civil War Navies.