The Sumter running the blockade of Pass à l’Outre, by the enemy’s Ship Brooklyn, on the 30th June, 1861 (Library of Congress)
1869 Color lithograph by Kelly, Piet & Co., Baltimore
CSS Sumter, a 473-ton bark-rigged screw steam cruiser, was built as the merchant steamship Habana at Philadelphia in 1859 for McConnell’s New Orleans & Havana Line. She was later renamed Gibraltar or Gibraltar of Liverpool.
The merchant steamship Habana was purchased by the Confederate Government at New Orleans in April 1861; she was converted to a cruiser and placed under the command of Raphael Semmes. Renamed Sumter, she was commissioned in the Confederate Navy on 3 June 1861 and broke through the Federal blockade of the Mississippi River mouth late in that month.
Read much more about CSS Sumter. (Wikipedia)