Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/CSS Baltic/archive1
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CSS Baltic was a casemate ironclad that served in the Confederate States Navy during the American Civil War. A towboat and cotton lighter before the war, it was purchased by the state of Alabama in December 1861 for conversion into an ironclad. After being transferred to the Confederate Navy in May 1862, it served on Mobile Bay off the Gulf of Mexico. Its condition in Confederate service was such that naval historian William N. Still Jr. has described her as "a nondescript vessel in many ways" Over the next two years, parts of the ship's wooden structure had been affected by wood rot. Her armor was removed to be put onto the ironclad CSS Nashville in 1864. By that August, Baltic had been decommissioned. She was taken up the Tombigbee River near the end of the war, where she was captured by Union forces on May 10, 1865. An inspection the next month found that her upper hull and deck were rotten and that her boilers were unsafe. She was sold on December 31, and was likely broken up in 1866. (Full article...)