On October 12, 1861, the Union ironclad gunboat St. Louis was launched at James B. Eads’s shipyard in Carondelet, near St. Louis, Missouri. Designed by naval architect Samuel Pook and built under Eads’s direction, she was the first of the City-class ironclads to enter the water—a major milestone in Union river-warfare construction. Her wide beam, shallow draft, stern-wheel propulsion, and armored casemate were tailored to the shifting channels and confined river networks of the Western Theater.
The vessel was renamed Baron De Kalb on September 8, 1862, and transferred from the Army’s Western Gunboat Flotilla to the U.S. Navy on October 1, 1862. Under her new name, she compiled an impressive combat record, taking part in the captures of Forts Henry and Donelson, Arkansas Post (Fort Hindman), and numerous operations on the Mississippi, White, and Yazoo rivers.
Her career ended on July 13, 1863, when Baron De Kalb struck a Confederate river mine—then commonly called a “torpedo”—about a mile below Yazoo City, Mississippi. She sank within roughly fifteen minutes; Union authorities reported no fatalities, though there were minor injuries among the crew.
