With her Parrott rifle installed, she was used by the Navy as a gunboat to patrol navigable waterways of the Confederate States of America to prevent the South from trading with other countries.

On her first attempt to run the Federal blockade, Tristram Shandy outdistanced a Union pursuer by dumping cargo overboard to gain a few more knots of speed.

Repaired and converted to a gunboat at the Boston Navy Yard, the ship proceeded to Hampton Roads, Virginia, where she was commissioned on 12 August 1864, Acting Vol.

Although within range of Fort Fisher's guns, Tristram Shandy closed the disabled blockade runner to destroy her before she could be salvaged by Southern forces.

Commencing fire with her Parrott rifle and her 3-pounders, the Union gunboat soon reduced the grounded runner to a blazing wreck, down by the bow and sinking from numerous hits.

Through skillful maneuvering by her commanding officer, Tristram Shandy emerged unscathed, as she kept behind the clouds of smoke from her own guns and thus confused the Confederate lookouts spotting for the fort's heavy rifles.

A frontal assault by sailors and marines drawn from landing forces in the Fleet suffered disastrously as fusillades of gunfire from Confederate sharpshooters and cannoneers swept them down as wheat before a scythe.

On 26 April, the ship returned to Hampton Roads to continue her duties as a dispatch vessel, operating off the Virginia Capes, concurrently serving as a lookout and keeping watch for the Confederate ram CSS Stonewall, believed to be still at sea and unaware that hostilities had ceased.

Tristram Shandy then conveyed Confederate prisoners of war to Fort Pulaski, Georgia, in late May and returned to Hampton Roads on 2 June.

The erstwhile blockade runner and gunboat operated subsequently in mercantile service under a succession of owners until she ran aground off Havana, Cuba, and was declared a total loss in 1874.