CSS Oregon was a wooden sidewheel steamer that served as a gunboat in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. Built in 1846 for the Mobile Mail Line, she transported mail between New Orleans, Louisiana, and Mobile, Alabama, before the war. In 1861, she was seized by the Governor of Louisiana, Thomas Overton Moore, and served as a blockade runner before being selected for use by the Confederate Army. After transferring men and supplies to Ship Island, she was formally converted into a gunboat and armed with four cannon. Remaining behind on Lake Pontchartrain when many Confederate warships were transferred up the Mississippi River, Oregon served in the Mississippi Sound and Pass Christian areas. She took part in several minor actions involving USS New London, two of which resulted in the Confederates moving into shallow water to avoid close-range action, and the third ending when the Confederate ships abandoned the Pass Christian area. In April 1862, Union pressure confined her and other Confederate ships to Lake Pontchartrain. Later that month, with Union forces closing in on New Orleans, Oregon was sank as a blockship. Her wreck was removed and destroyed in the early 1870s. Construction and pre-war career Oregon was built at New York City in 1846. A sidewheel steamer, she also had a single mast. With a hull that was made from wood, she had one deck and a billethead. She was long, had a beam of , weighed 532 tons, and had a draft of . Oregon is reported by the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships to have resembled the steamer California. Built for the Mobile Mail Line, Oregon was used to transport mail between Mobile, Alabama, and New Orleans, Louisiana. As of April 1861, the Geddes family of New Orleans and Cincinnati had a 60 percent ownership stake in the vessel, with the remainder being in the hands of two Mobile residents: R. A. Heirn and Samuel Wolff. Heirn had been listed as the ship's master in 1854. American Civil War After the outbreak of the American Civil War in April 1861, Governor of Louisiana Thomas Overton Moore had the ship seized. While the United States Navy had a number of vessels at the beginning of the war, the Confederates had to build a navy from nothing with limited infrastructure and manufacturing. At a decided disadvantage in the naval sphere, the Confederates relied heavily