Product Description
AE Stevens was designed as a test bed for the proposed technologies and concepts in the much larger "Stevens Battery" (which I also offer.) She was converted from the civilian ship "Naugatuck" and dutifully rebuilt almost in her entirety.
As completed, she had a reinforced wooden deck, a forward mounded hundred pound gun, an armored pilot house, and a series of ballast tanks that would allow her to be submerged to just above the waterline and greatly reduce her target profile. Her armament was later boosted with two, twelve pound howitzers. As with Stevens Battery, crew were meant to load and fire her guns from within the hull. She was the first armored vessel ever accepted in Revenue Cutter Service/Coast Guard history.
In 1862, she was seconded to the Navy, which mistakenly entered her in the logs as "Naugatuck," however, her Cutter Service crew continued to refer to her by the proper name of "EA Stevens." (And as such, this is why we've insisted upon offering her under this name.)
In action at Drewry's Bluff, her 100 pound rifle burst. Normally, such an explosion would kill or seriously maim the crew, but there were no injuries to speak of, essentially proving the validity of the ship's design philosophy. The Navy, however, saw this as a design flaw in the ship itself (despite the gun not having been significantly modified) and she was returned to the USRC. The gun itself was not provided by the designer, and her removal from the Navy appears to have been a matter of politics.
She was thereafter repaired, re-armed, and reattached to the Revenue Cutter Service. The USRC continued to use her to patrol waterways and rivers though she continued to serve alongisde her Navy cousins. She ended the war on the James, and saw heavy action throughout these deployments.
To my knowledge, we were the first company to offer this vessel in 1/600 scale.
Historically, the EA Stevens has been described as having a black hull with stained wood deck, white pilothouse, and red gunwales