Magnolia, a wooden, seagoing, sidewheel steamer built by J. Simonson of Greenpoint, New York for Charles Morgan's Southern Steamship Company.

Launched in 1854, the ship was impressed as a public vessel in New Orleans, Louisiana, 15 January 1862, by Maj. Gen. Mansfield Lovell, CSA, acting for the Confederacy's Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin.

On 19 February 1862, while trying to escape from Pass a' l’Outre in the Gulf of Mexico with a large cargo of cotton and rosin, in a dense fog, she was detected and chased by Union ships Brooklyn and Mercedita.

En route on the 31st, she captured British steamer Memphis near Cape Romain, South Carolina, bound ostensibly from Nassau, Bahamas, to Liverpool, England.

By mid January 1863, repeated boiler problems slowed down Magnolia’s activities on blockade, and 15 July she sailed for New York for extensive repairs.