Mary Bowers (ship)

The blockade runner Mary Bowers, Captain Jesse DeHorsey (or Horsey), bound from Bermuda to Charleston, South Carolina with an assorted cargo, struck the submerged wreck of the in fourteen feet of water a mile off of Long Island (the present day Isle of Palms, South Carolina) on August 31, 1864. She “went on with such force as to make immense openings in her bottom,” and she sank in a “few minutes, most of the officers and men saving only what they stood in.” The steamer’s passengers and crew escaped with the exception of a boy, Richard Jackson, who was left on the wreck and later taken off by the Federals. The Mary Bowers was a large, shallow draft, sidewheel steamer of approximately 680 tons (also shown as 750 tons burden and 220 tons register). She measured 226'x25'x10'6" and was built by Simons and Company of Renfrew, Scotland. The steamer was owned in part by L.G. Bowers of Columbus, Georgia, and had been built at a cost of approximately £22,682 especially for the purpose of running the blockade. The vessel was registered as owned by Henry Lafone. Her company owner was the Importing and Exporting Company of Georgia (which was sometimes called the Lamar Company). The Federals misidentified the blockade runner in their initial reports calling her the Mary Powers. The Federal boarding party took a bell and a few other items from the wreck. The Mary Bowers had made two previous successful attempts through the blockade, on one of which, she was chased by the U.S.S. R.G. Cuyler and had been forced to throw overboard sixty bales of cotton to escape. On October 6, 1864, the wreck was subsequently run into by the blockade running, sidewheel steamer Constance Decimer, which was bound from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Charleston.